Ok, I'm brand new here. Just got the software installed minutes ago.

Where is the song length? The manual shows a picture: start/stop/choruses
which does not look the same as my screen where I only see start/end.

I have 12 in the end. But the number of measures shows goes on to infinity, and the song does not stop playing after bar 12.

How do I indicate the song length or otherwise tell it to stop?

Thanks

Welcome!

You should see three numbers, left to right: bar for beginning of chorus, bar for end of chorus, and number of choruses. These would normally say 1, 32, and 3. In BIAB, a chorus means once through the whole song (which might be something like an AABA pattern, or verse, verse, chorus, verse).

If you want the song to play only 12 bars, put 1,12,1 in those three numbers. I'm guessing that the third number is still 3, so it is repeating twice more.

Also make sure Looping of the song is off. In the transport controls, it's between Stop (box) and record (circle).

There is much more to this, when you are ready.

Thanks Matt.
I think I discovered the problem.
There are two icons on my desktop: Band in a Box and Real Band.
I hadn't noticed there were two different programs.
The start/stop/choruses is in Band in the Box.
The start/end is in Real Band.
I set up two songs in RB. Then accidentally went into BiB and it did not even see the two song files.
So they are obviously different programs. Looks like I need to spend some quality time with the manual.
If it is not too much trouble, what is the difference between the two programs and when should I use which?

Good. Your question could take an hour to answer fully, and opinions differ. The shortest answer is to learn BIAB first. Once a song is mostly done, then open it in RealBand for finishing.

More later.

I 100% agree with Matt's take. Band-in-a-Box is designed for quickly building backing tracks from scratch by entering chords, and RealBand is great for recording your own parts over songs you've created in Band-in-a-Box.

Though you can build songs from scratch in RealBand as well, you'll be working harder than you need to, as it's not really streamlined for that purpose.

Cheers
Kent
PG Music

Thanks gentlemen, that helps.

BiaB first.