By now you ought to know how a written comment on a forum can sound to others, Dan.


--Mac

Hello,
Thanks. I've learned music theory with a piano when I was a kid and it's a little bit far!
The chords that I've mentioned are the intro.
For example, the first verse is: F#m A, E Bm, F#m A, E Bsus2 with capo on the second fret and the last chorus is chord is A C#m G D, A C#m G, D Bm E Bm E and a Bm at the end.
If I follow you, the song could be written in the key of Am? Or D? I'm lost!
That's possible, but I feel it strange.
In this case, I'll check the Am key before entering the transposed chords or check the Bm, enter the chords not transposed and then, change the key for Am in BIAB?
Lot of thanks for your help.
FB

I for one agree with JohnJohnJohn. Not everyone who uses a capo on a daily basis plays a guitar. I for one play bluegrass banjo and while the band may sing the song in Bb instead of G, I cannot tune the banjo to Bb otherwise I would be changing strings every song due to breakage. Instead I capo 3 and play out of G, the natural tuning for a bluegrass banjo for the large percentage of bluegrass songs.

When I teach beginning bluegrass banjo, I do not expect my students to be able to transpose from a song traditionally played in Bb into G when they are still just learning the basic rolls.

The ability to 'capo' so the songs at the correct pitch while still displaying the chords as if there was no capo is a long overdue addition to BIAB, especially if it can be song specific after you save it so the parameter loads each time the saved song is loaded. If I can pull up say Salt Creek, a typical beginning bluegrass song, have it play in the traditional key of A while displaying the chords in G would be absolutely great.

The tabbing program TablEdit has had that ability since it was written years ago simply by checking a small box in the options that say Capo Doesn't Affect Notation and it works great.

Let's see this in BIAB in the near future as an upgrade.

Dan, did you actually try this? I just entered chords in C (C/F/Am/G) and confirmed it plays in key of C. Then I transposed to E and said no to transpose chords as you suggested. Chords still show as C/F/Am/G. But when I play it it still plays in the key of C.

Transposition feature is one of the few things where we do not have to Regenerate a songfile in order for the results to happen, Dan.

But there are also different ways to Transpose inside BiaB and that can confuse.

Changing the main Key Signature block to another key and clicking "No" when prompted in the little window would leave all chords and note entries exactly like they were displayed in the original key. This feature is handy when you load a songfile that, for whatever reason, was saved with the wrong key signature selected. Quite a few user songfiles that people can download for free seem to have this problem, someone laid out a song in say, Eb, played in a Melody track, etc. but didn't bother to change the Keysig block before saving, most of these will still show the default key of C but at playback will obviously be playing a different key. That "No" checkbox is good for correcting such files when encounterd.

There is another Transpose feature in BiaB, though. Found under the Prefs -> Transpose OR when in Notation View->Options, this one is for viewing notes and chordnames of a song when you are playing an instrument that is not referenced to key of Concert C.

For example, the Bb Trumpet or the Eb Alto Saxophone, where the written C for the Trumpet sounds as a Concert pitch Bb, or the written C for the Alto sax is really a Concert Eb.

As for the Capo procedure, I'm here to tell you that it really could stand a bit of operational simplifying for the user.

And it looks like Peter has already indicated that implementation of that simpler routine is forthcoming. That really would be a good thing IMO, having used BB to teach I'd love ANY feature that would make the generation of charts for the kids to use to practice my examples easier to do. And faster. Without gettng confused in the heat of time issues and the like.

Not all people who enjoy playing the guitar want to go through the process it takes to become a thoroughly CAGED guitarist, after all, and the sheer accessibility of the guitar comes into play here.

The guitar is one of the easiest instruments to pick up and get rather instant results with only a small amount of practice and rote memorization of a few chord shapes, some have a lot of fun and satisfaction from that standpoint and others will eventually dig deeper, wishing to learn the theory of chord construction, scales, modes, etc. -- but the folks who wish to be, well, "folks" in the sense of Folk Musics, and I think there are and should be quite a few who can also discover and use Band in a Box as well, could benefit by having that simplified CAPO adjustment routine. And when and if you stop to think about it, the streamlining of the operation will likely prove to be an asset for the seasoned pros as well.


--Mac

I tried the procedure Peter suggested, and it worked (Song played in the same key, but the chord sheet changed by the -2 that I entered. )

I wonder if this is new, because in the past when this topic was discussed, I came away with the understanding that the chords in NOTATION view could be changed, but I never found a way at that time to change the main chord sheet without also changing the pitch of the song.

It may have just been added in order to accommodate the non-concert pitch transpositions.. I notice that when I use the new "non-concert pitch" transformation listbox, the value it sets gets inserted in OPT>PREFERENCES>DISPLAY>TRANSPOSE

Although you could manually add ANY number to this input box, the non-concert pitch listbox is just an interface that is pre-coded with some common transpositions. Apparently, what Peter is going to do is add more hard-coded options to the list box so we can visually pick "CAPO-2" or whatever...

But the real capability already exists to do what we're talking about.

The only problem, as has already been noted, is that it is not a song-specific change... it changes ALL songs, not just the current song in which you may be using a capo

Pat, this is not new. I've been transposing the notation in BIAB without changing the pitch for many, many years. In fact, we periodically see users in the forum who have accidentally turned on the notation transposition and are confused, as there are two different approaches to transposition in BIAB: notation and pitch.

I agree, I think what's being proposed is just to make it clearer to a user of a capo. Right now, the transpose is geared toward instrumentalists who play transposing instruments, but it has always been possible to enter whatever number of pitches is needed.

>>> Right now, the transpose is geared toward instrumentalists who play transposing instruments, but it has always been possible to enter whatever number of pitches is needed.

Correct. With the next version (next build, don't know when that will be out), I've added additional menus to the Visual Tranpose button, to make it easy to select these transpositions by "Capo". Also by "Tuning Down (to low Eb)" - that way if the guitar is tuned down to Eb, he can still see chords and notation like E, but the music gets transposed to Eb.

Cool.

I'm not a guitarist, but don't many of them play in DADGAD or similar, tuning the low E string to D? In other words, wouldn't they want you do D as well as Eb?

Yes, you can "tune down" from 1 to 8 semitones. Although there are other ways to do this, this also sets (internally) a "GuitarCapo" variable, and there might be other things to do with that in the future (such as making the guitar fretboard avoid notes that are lower than the capo for example.

Last night I was playing with a 'just for fun' group of friends. We had banjo, fiddle, guitars and ukulele. All were beginner level except for me. The guitars used capos. I used a capo on my banjo fr a different reason (as explained above.) The others did not use capos.

My friends were not particularly interested in learning the ins and outs of transposing. They don't really have a strong grasp of what it means to be in the "key of c" or why that is different fronm the "key of G." Mostly they are thinking of one chord at a time.

They just want to have fun.

Thinking about what they would need, I visualize a graphic of a guitar neck. Perhaps the existing guitar-neck animation window could be adapted. There would be a bar across the strings representing the capo. The user could slide the bar up and down with the mouse and see the shape of a C chord move with it. A window labeled "original chord" and "new chord" mght show "C" and "Eb" respectively when the bar gets to the 3d fret. Another window would show "original key" and "new key." Then the new chords would show on the chord sheet, but the key would not change. Perhaps the new chords could have a little subscript '3' or something.

Over time this would be a learning tool. The user would gradualy gain a sense of what transposition is all about.

.
>>>>....I'm not a guitarist, but don't many of them play in DADGAD or similar, tuning the low E string to D? In other words, wouldn't they want you do D as well as Eb?...>>>

DADGAD is an alternate tuning. Not the same as capoing. The isea is that the open strings sound different from fretted strings. The first such alternate is DGDGBD. This makes a G major chord on the open strings. It has a very nice resonant, full sound. Banjos and steel guitars use tunings of this kind, but the reason and the usage are a bit more sophistcated than just changing key.

The guitar animation already has options for a number of these alternate tunings. If you can get your hands on a guitar, try them out. Its a lot of fun. Kinda like playing on the black keys.

I would vote for global instead of song-specific, or else I can see myself getting very confused. I have instruments in six different tunings. It's easiest to always reference concert pitch and adjust from there.

Global settings for a "capo" doesn't sound like a user friendly approach. It should be on a song by song basis.

I agree with Kevin. If this would be intended to function like a capo the only thing that makes sense is song by song. But maybe there are two features here?

on a song by song basis, couldn't a person...

1) transpose, get it the way he wants it,
2) then freeze all the tracks
3) then set transpose back to zero
4) and finally put the chords wherever you want them

As long as you don't regenerate, this should make the occasional capo song show the chords you want without changing all other songs (which would be problematic if you were using JUKE box on a gig)


If I were using Juke box on a gig, I would probably have "special " songs frozen anyway.

anyway, we could do this now, without any program changes

The trick is to look at the yellow caution message reminding you a global transposition is in effect. If you want this to be saved song by song, then be sure to complete the Memo field.

Hello,
I'm still confused. I know the effect of capo on guitar.
But, first, I don't remember how to find the correct key for this piece of music starting from the guitar chords. If someone would give me a little lesson about that it will help me for the beginning.
The second point is that I would like to keep the chords with capo on the second fret for the guitar track. Because, if I play a D with capo on 2nd fret, counting -2, it is a C but it doesn't sounds the same!
How to say to BIAB that I don't want the "classical" C chord for that track only but an other?
Thanks for your help.
FB