Even though I use BIAB quite often to help me compose songs, I'm still quite a beginner when it comes to arranging a song in BIAB, as I mainly use Audacity to do the actual arranging after I've imported each instruments to my project from the rendered wav files, which involves a certain amount of copy and pasting.

When BIAB plays the song three times, the default is set to 'beef up' the rhythm the second time through.
I'm currently working on a new song where I particularly like the 'beefed up' rhythm in the middle, and I would like to use it for the whole song.
Can anyone tell me an easy way to get BIAB to repeat this 'beefed up' rhythm all three times in BIAB ?

The 'beefed up' movement that you are referring to comes from part markers. It's worth reading about this in the Help file.

If you click on a bar number, the bar number will first become enclosed in a blue box, a second click will make the box green and a third click will remove the green box that encloses the bar number. These blue and green boxes are part markers and they control the movement of the backing.

Blue part markers tell BIAB to generate less movement in the backing. Green part markers tell BIAB to generate more movement.

For you to have the 'beefed up' sound, click on the "1" for bar 1 and then click again until it becomes green. Now generate your song.

Regards,
Noel

• my latest song: What A Crazy Thing (cowritten with floyd jane)

In addition, the default is to use the sound of that B (green) part marker during the Middle choruses. If all your part markers are green, you will lose the difference (and some good fills leading back to Blue part markers).

first thing I do is to UNFOLD the song into one chorus.

That makes it easier to see and alter the song structure including the color of the part markers.

Yes.... the green ones have more "beef". I like to use them for verse chorus energy levels. I tend to keep verses on blue and choruses on green.

There's also reddish and brown markers too. depends on the style you picked. I find those are generally worthless to my style of writing.

The other colored markers are for multi-styles, which ave 4, 6, 8, or more substyles. There aren't many, but PGMusic has offered several multi-styles to use.

While they may not fit your bill, they do offer value in offering more variations. But better than selecting one of the existing multi-syltes, you can easily create one on the fly.

Rather than switch styles using the F5 key, say to go from straight feel style to a swing style, just right click on the bar where you want the new style, and select "define C/D". Then, instead of using F5 to switch between two styles (and only use part markers A and B), you can define C/D as the new style and then you can visually see where the different styles are on the chord grid. This way you switch styles by using part markers.

See the instructions at around page 101 in the PDF user manual.

Matt, Herb & John,

All excellent points. Like Herb, the first thing I do is unfold the WIP for the very reason he mentioned. And i really enjoy those lead-ins in green to transition back to the blue, as matt mentioned.

And John, I find those additional styles, in colors other than blue and green, a bit cumbersome at times. Choosing new styles involves a lot of trial and error to make it compatible with the blue and green sections. I'm referring to a totally different but compatible style - not just blue to green and opposite. Am I overlooking something?

Best to all of you,

Alan

Matt, Herb & John,

All excellent points. Like Herb, the first thing I do is unfold the WIP for the very reason he mentioned. And I really enjoy those lead-ins in green to transition back to the blue, as matt mentioned.

And John, I find those additional styles, in colors other than blue and green, a bit cumbersome at times. Choosing new styles involves a lot of trial and error to make it compatible with the blue and green sections. I'm referring to a totally different but compatible style - not just blue to green and opposite. Am I overlooking something?

Best to all of you,

Alan


Sorry about the double post; but when I try to delete the second one, it deletes both of them. ???

Thank you everyone for your very helpful responses.

I'm aware that I really should spend the time to read through the documentation properly so that I can better understand how to get the best from BIAB, but I'm sure that we must all experience those rare magical days when we're inspired to create a song and just want to get to work before we're distracted by something or someone, or have a limited amount of spare time available in which to capture it ?

That's where this forum and the users who contribute to it, are a great help.
And yes, there are occasions when I might like to start with a 'beefed up' rhythm for the whole song, and then make adjustments to the arrangement at a later stage.

.
As you see there are lots of ways to control the substyles.

Take a look at the menu that you get when you click "Song settings."

"Vary style in middle choruses" is what causes the variations you mentioned in your first post.

Try unchecking it and see what you get.