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I was just about to make a post with my regular complaint about wrong chords playing, when I tried a last-minute change and it fixed my current problem! I thought I'd share it for all. Maybe Matt Finley can update his December 2021 post on this? All I did was set the correct Key at the top, next to Tempo. I am almost always forgetting to do this! Lord knows how many of my 'wrong chord' problems this would have solved in the past. It immediately fixed all the problems I was going to complain about. 
A BIAB user for more than 30 years (if you can believe it) !
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Thanks. It’s actually there in the first edit. Sorry you didn’t see it a few years ago. https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=694482#Post694482Edit: I just revised the post to prioritize this tip.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Yes I see it there now Matt. I would recommend moving the tip to the top of the list, because it quickly solved all of my chord issues in one fell swoop and it's the simplest/quickest to implement of all the recommendations you made.
A BIAB user for more than 30 years (if you can believe it) !
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That’s a good suggestion. Thanks. EDIT: done! You'll be famous by Friday.  I do hope PG Music decides to pin that as a sticky post.
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That’s a good suggestion. Thanks. EDIT: done! You'll be famous by Friday. I do hope PG Music decides to pin that as a sticky post. You're welcome! Because I have fallen victim to this problem so many times I am also going to make a recommendation to PG Music. I'll recommend that by default, when a user starts to enter their first chord to a song (that's not in C) a pop-up comes up reminding them to change the Key of the song from C to their new key, unless they turn off the acknowledgment. Or better still, they change their programming so that when a user enters their first chord and it isn't in the key of C, BIAB AUTOMATICALLY adjusts the key at the top to match the first chord. I mean how difficult would that be for them?
A BIAB user for more than 30 years (if you can believe it) !
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This is a good suggestion, and Band-in-a-Box does have a feature to do this already. Currently, it looks like it only issues the message when saving a song, but there may be other times as well that I'm not aware of. To see it, start a new song (key of C), and enter a G chord at bar 1, then go to save the song - BB will issue a flash message "Key is set to C, but key signature should likely be G based on the chords". If this message appeared too often, people might get annoyed, but yes there are probably improvements that could be made.
Andrew
PG Music Inc.
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.................................
Or better still, they change their programming so that when a user enters their first chord and it isn't in the key of C, BIAB AUTOMATICALLY adjusts the key at the top to match the first chord.
I mean how difficult would that be for them? Not a good idea at all. Some songs and a lot of blues songs start out V-IV-I - V7. Thus in the key of C that would be G-F-C-G7. In your case BiaB would automatically set the key to G, i.e. the wrong key. What if in the key of C the first chord was a G7, F, F6,G9, etc, what would the key be then? I will agree with your first suggestion with the option like you said to turn it off.
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So few even use this setting that I don’t think it would be a good idea to make it automatic since that could work against the user who knew what the key signature actually is. You would get folks who asked, why when I set the key signature to X did it get changed to Y?
I’m good with the caution calling attention to it, though.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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I was just about to make a post with my regular complaint about wrong chords playing, when I tried a last-minute change and it fixed my current problem! ... All I did was set the correct Key at the top, next to Tempo. I am almost always forgetting to do this! Lord knows how many of my 'wrong chord' problems this would have solved in the past. It immediately fixed all the problems I was going to complain about. That's actually a good tip about something that's easy to overlook. Why not make a tip in the +++ Tips & Tricks +++ forum section.
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Not a good idea at all. Some songs and a lot of blues songs start out V-IV-I - V7. Quite a lot of jazz starts in the ii.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
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I was just about to make a post with my regular complaint about wrong chords playing, when I tried a last-minute change and it fixed my current problem! ... All I did was set the correct Key at the top, next to Tempo. I am almost always forgetting to do this! Lord knows how many of my 'wrong chord' problems this would have solved in the past. It immediately fixed all the problems I was going to complain about. That's actually a good tip about something that's easy to overlook. Why not make a tip in the +++ Tips & Tricks +++ forum section. Jim, take a look at my first post above. I did that several years ago. I think the reason more haven’t seen it is that the post is not pinned.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Not a good idea at all. Some songs and a lot of blues songs start out V-IV-I - V7. Quite a lot of jazz starts in the ii. Yes, that is quite common so thanx for sharing.
Principal: Your child always causes trouble in school.
Me: My child causes trouble at home, do I ever call you?
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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To all who don't think that adjusting the key after the first chord is entered is a good idea, allow me to flesh this out a bit more.
It doesn't have to be literally the first chord, there's room for nuance here.
All the seasoned musicians here know what chords are in a particular key of music.
BIAB also knows all about chord relationships.
BIAB can quickly and easily pick up on a ii-V that starts a song. Or a IV-V etc.
Yesterday I typed in a song in the key of E with the first chord a B7 next chord C7 and then B7.
That was followed by a lot of E chords.
I didn't even think about the key of the song (which was set to C at the top).
Well on play back I started to get a bunch of E9 chords playing instead of E, sometimes Eadd4 and a lot of other extraneous chords.
BIAB is smart enough to take a look at all the chords I typed in (it was a form of blues in E) and figure out the key.
And it could probably do this for 99% of songs typed into BIAB.
This is what I'm getting at.
If the user forgets (or in my case hadn't given it consideration for most of the time) they should have their
backs covered by BIAB that does this FOR A LIVING!
Last edited by BIABman; 02/05/25 08:28 PM.
A BIAB user for more than 30 years (if you can believe it) !
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This is a good suggestion, and Band-in-a-Box does have a feature to do this already. Currently, it looks like it only issues the message when saving a song, but there may be other times as well that I'm not aware of. To see it, start a new song (key of C), and enter a G chord at bar 1, then go to save the song - BB will issue a flash message "Key is set to C, but key signature should likely be G based on the chords". If this message appeared too often, people might get annoyed, but yes there are probably improvements that could be made. Thanks for your reply Andrew. BIAB is a very intelligent program right now. It knows its chords. I don't think it's a good idea to remind or prompt a user at the time they are saving their song. That could happen after some time and possibly frustration too. With BIAB's vast knowledge of chord progressions and keys it can probably figure out the key of a song after just a few chords are typed in. When it is confident it knows the key and sees that the Key at the top of the page does not match it should immediately put out a pop-up to that effect, alerting the user. Possibly even stating that not correcting the Key could lead to weird-sounding chords.
A BIAB user for more than 30 years (if you can believe it) !
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Yesterday I transcribed a Brazilian jazz song by Elaine Elias. It had G7, Csus at the end of the eighth bar, and most times you would expect the next chord would be FMaj7. When I saved the song, BIAB suggested that the key of the song was F major.
The first chord of the song was DMaj7 and the key of the song was actually D major. That next chord wasn’t an F but a B half diminished (m7b5). Surprise.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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My short tutorial on this subject is now a sticky post in the Tips and Tricks Forum. Thank you, PG Music.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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I was giving more thought to this.
As I mentioned in my post in the Tips/Suggestion Forum,
probably the simplest/easiest way to deal with this on PG Music's part
would be to have a pop-up message come up right when a user enters
their first chord, regardless of what their chord is or what key the song is in.
The pop-up would simply remind the user to enter the proper key for the song at the top of the page (possibly warning what might happen if they didn't).
There would also be a checkbox which the user could check that Disabled the pop-up.
All the veterans here would see the message once and disable the message from popping up again.
For users like me and beginners, we would leave the reminder on for as long as we felt it was still helpful.
A BIAB user for more than 30 years (if you can believe it) !
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I would not object to that, as long as I could turn it off.
Your point that is important to set the key signature first is something I’ve advocated for over 30 years. It made a difference long before RealTracks. Enharmonic spelling of notes is the big one.
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