I've never understood why there's a split staff for the melody track by default in the first place (when a melody is nearly always monophonic!), and I can't for the life of me figure out how to get rid of that blasted F-clef one for my desired one-staff display. Anyone?

p.s. Ok, so I'm not exactly "new" to this program by a long way, but when venturing into an unfamiliar territory even the most experienced can run into something very elementary and yet absolutely trip over it. So I thought I'd swallow my own hubris for a second and give this a shot.

Note: this is for the Windows version.

I tried a few things and mostly couldn't get rid of the piano-based grand staff in Notation Mode.

You CAN get rid of the bass clef in the Print options.

Adjusting the split point from C5 to much lower doesn't do it.

In the Melody menu, Track Type is set to Single by default, but you have a grand staff. Even if you pick a single staff instrument such as violin, you get a faded out bass cleff where it becomes a place for TAB notation.

If you pick a single staff instrument as bass, the treble clef disappears but there's still TAB.

I think the Wishlist item here is to add a choice to the menu option Melody to include a single treble cleff staff (with no Tab).

Ok, I guess that's always something, but... how??
Interesting, I was so sure such an obvious thing as a single-staff for melody would already be in there somewhere :

Thanks a lot for clearing this up for me.

And hey, the good news I can take from all this is at least it wasn't due to my own stupidity that I hadn't found the way!

A typical pianist virtually never plays monophonic.

You may easily switch to your desired one-staff display via the Lead Sheet window and simply deactivate the bass clef in the Lead Sheet Options.

Thanks Martin. Good explanation. Unless the instrument is purely only monophonic capable (woodwind, brass, recorder maybe) I don't actually know any musician who would expect or desire to play a melody as monophonic.

As one of those monophonic (horn) players, I would like to have a choice. Since BIAB already handles some differences in the setting I cited above, it seems logical that they could add one more choice to have just the treble staff, without the Tab notation.

My argument comes from the mindset of one where a thing like a piano would be the obvious accompanying instrument much more so than the melodic lead, but fair enuff.

And now I've had a good few of you mansplane to me that I can "easily" switch off the lower clef, but none of you have actually showed me how to do that, so I'm really none the wiser than before I started this thread.

Thanks a bunch!

What an educative forum -> I needed to look up the term 'mansplaining' . . .

Eddie, just open up the Lead Sheet window and click on the 'Options' button. In the dialog's upper area you'll find options to deactivate a bass clef.

Have fun.

ROFL!!

Thanks for that one, mate, you just made my day a whole lot better

I was not familiar with "mansplain" so I also looked it up. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary mansplain

I learn something new every day. I look forward to mansplain showing up in the Readers Digest "Increase Your Vocabulary" section. I bet I will be one of the few readers that know what it means.

Thanks for increasing my vocabulary Eddie!

I had to look it up also!

Plus there is a womansplain:

"
Womansplain

When a woman talks down to another person by explaining a situation in terms that one would use when speaking to a child. Especially prevalent in women who have or have had children, or who are elementary school teachers."

What if wimen womansplain mansplaining . . .

Then they have children

HI,

I just bough BIB and would very much appreciate some help with tqo issues: 1. I created a simple chord progression. but can't listen to it unless I select some style. I just want to listen to the chord progression alone to see how it works. 2. I added a melody and same thing, I want to listen only to the melody and chords, but if the style is unabled, when I hit play there's no sound.

Please someone assist, I'm sure this is a very basic question, but you can see I'm real novice with BIB. Thank you

There are a couple of styles that use held chords that were added many years ago at my request. One is Heldbosa and I’ll find the other ( which is swing). Load that and mute the drums.

Just use the PNOSIMP3 (for 3/4) and PNOSIMP4 (for 4/4) styles. They're simple Piano-only styles that fit your purpose, and because they're midi they load and play instantly.

p.s. This really should be in its own thread, by the way.

Hi Icelander, Thanks a lot for the tip, I can listen to the chords and notes only, which is what I want. But since I play the guitar, is there a way to have a guitar instead of the piano? Much appreciated again.

HI, Thanks a lot for the reply. I tried it but didn't know how to mute the drums.

Easy, just use the menus for the instrument's tracks (e.g. ctrl-click on it in the mixer) and find the Select Midi Instrument, where you can make it sound like practically anything you want.
After that you can even open up a specific Tabs display to see what is being played in guitar tab (fret) format.

As I play keys, I settled for the grand staff anyway, even though I'm mostly just making leadsheets.

I seem to remember that if I switched the current instrument to a monophonic one the staff changed to just the single. If I'm right, the next gotcha is that you may still have to do something if the monophonic instrument is not in concert pitch. I haven't explored further as I have enough puzzles of my own at the moment :-)