I don't see a way to set metering in BIAB. Meaning, I don't see how to set whether a song is 4/4, 12/8, 3/4 etc. I noticed that when I would a load a 12/8 song from BIAB midi styles into RB, RB then sets the metering to 4/4. Of course, when you change it in RB, then the ruler gets out of wack and no longer lines up with the bars.

Right now, I am toying with the "demo" songs that are produced when searching the midi styles. I will load one up and then start using that song info and saving it as a mgu and then loading that into RB.

For me, I don't think of the BiaB matrix as numbered measures. Instead I just think of them as cells.

Each cell can contain up to 4 chord changes, evenly divided. 4 is the default, 3 for waltzes or use F5 to reduce it from 4 to 1.

Each cell can be two 6/8 measures or one 12/8 measure if using an appropriate triplet based style (sw). Each cell can also be two 2/4 measures.

Need 5/4? With F5 make one cell 3 beats and the next one 2 and both combined are a 5/4 measure.

You can get creative from here for 7/4, 9/8 and so on.

If you have a chord progression with more than 4 chords in a 4/4 measure, or a chord on a beat and the eighth note before that beat you can expand the song so that each cell is half a 4/4 measure, double the tempo and use one of Norton Music's EXPANDED styles. The EXPANDED styles are written to work properly when the song is expanded and the BiaB tempo is doubled.

There is a lot you can do with BiaB if you treat the numbered slots in the Matrix as cells instead of measures.

Of course, if you are depending on BiaB for notation purposes, this can make the notation difficult to read, but if you just want to play music, it can open up a lot of creativity and overcome some of the limitations of BiaB.

Insights and incites by Notes