Hi,

Is there a way to take plain text and paste it into BiAB, so that I don't have to type in everything manually by hand? I have a script that generates text of chords (e.g. "Bbm7" or "Gmaj7") for a 12-bar blues chord progression in all 12 keys, cycling through the circle of fifths. What I want to do is simply copy all the text, and paste it into BiAB, but it doesn't work for me. I would REALLY love to not have to type this in by hand, but simple copy and paste doesn't seem to work in the main chord entry window of BiAB.

Alternatively, is there a text-import function that would allow me to do the same type of thing?

Thanks

Jeff

Sorry, but no.

I've often wanted to do that kind of thing too.

Put this one on the BIAB Wishlist.


--Mac

Not sure how easy this would be ... but, BIAB would have to specify a layout of a text file, so the chords would end up on the right bar. Without that, you might as well keep entering them as you do now.

Interesting thought, though.

Cheers,
Mike

I think the format could be pretty easy.

But for the chord grid, it should be as easy as the BIAB chord grid (I would use an underscore to distinguish the first two beats from the 3rd and 4th beats):

|| - continue playing the last chord entered for this bar
|C| - C chord for whole bar
|D_G| - D chord for first two beats, G chord for 3rd and 4th beats
|C,F_ G| - C on first beat, F on second beat, G on 3rd beat
|C,F_,G| - C on first beat, F on second beat, G on 4th beat
|C_,G| - C on first beat, G on 4th beat
|,C_,G| - C on second beat, G on 4th beat
|_G| - continue playing last chord entered for first two beats, G chord on 3rd and 4th beats

From there, you should be able to include standard BIAB embellishments - pushes (^ and ^^), as well as rests (.), shots (..), and holds (...), as well as the different types of supported chords (C7, Gsus, Bdim, etc.)

You could have a simple header that might be something like:

Title
Style (would have to be spelled properly, or maybe the style file name)
Tempo
Start,End,Repeats
etc.

One Man Band has a similar facility for entering this type of information.

I've always wanted to write a program that would "Read" the chords of a PDF leadsheet or fakebook and put those chords into BIAB. Of course, I'm not a programmer, so I guess I have to keep dreaming. However, IF someone out there is reading this, if you have those abilities, I'll be your first customer!

I know that there are scanning programs for Finale and Sibelius, but I'm not sure if they tackle the chords.

Ed