PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist BIAB as Beamer software

Dear BIAB-programers-team,

for a about 10 years I'm making music with BIAB now. And every year I've been loking forward to the next version and I upgraded each time since. It's such a great program and I love to make music with it! Thanks a lot for your great work!
When RealTracks came up some years ago this was a great step foreward to even more realism than before. At that time I supposed that this step would give way to the further development in the future: Not so much more changes within the program itself but more and more RealTracks coming up in the future. And that's what happened exactly during the past few years. After all, BIAB even is such a great program today - what more could be developed in in it?!

Well - the wishlist forum already knows some more details to improve or to add.
And here's one wish I want to add. To understand my wish you have to know how I use BIAB: I play christian worship songs and chorusses - mainly for myself, but often times alos in our home bible study group or even in worship services. In order for the other people to be able to sing along they need the lyrics of the song.
In the smaller groups I use a beamer as second display and project the "Big Lyrics window" onto the wall. This works quite well.
BUT: Its outlook is not really up-to-date nowadays. People are used to have much nicer display of lyrics today, with pretty pictures as background and fancy possibilities of formatting the text. And, what's really disturbing with the "Big Lyrics window" is: It's not possible to display whole phrases or sentences, the text flows and flows - without taking concern of the meaning of the words. This is very disturbing to some people, and I can understand this. Also it is much more difficult to memorize the lyrics of a song this way - but memorizing lyrics of good songs is a good side effect while singing them.

When using the "Lyric Document window" I can use phrases or even whole sentences within the lyrics in one line. But there are 2 problems with this window: 1) The text doesn't flow. Because I for myself am not able to play and to aline the lyrics correctly at the same time, I helped myself this way: I connected a second (wireless) mouse to my notebook and asked another person to take control over the lyrics after I started the song. This helped, but not for problem 2) The appearence of this window is - yes - ugly! It's really not nice to have a word processors window projected to the wall for a sing along!

That's why we often use ink jet print transparencies or printout papers for the sing along. Thus we have the high tec with the computer music on one side, and the good old printout on the other! This doesn't fit together! (In addition to that: there is more work to to with the printout - and what can you do, when there's no more transparent film at hand to copy on?!)

Therefor I'd like you to change something in this area. It should not be to difficult for you, I guess.
My suggestion is to add some changes to the "Lyric Documents window":

1.
It should be possible to change the overall outlook: Only show the borders of the window.
Similar to most of the TV-applications; best in 3 modes:
a) windows with all icons and buttons - as it is now. For working in the window.
b) sizable window with only border lines. (needed for projecting over distances too long for the beamers zoom).
c) full size window.
A double click into the window could easily circle between the 3 modes.

2.
Not only the colour of the text should be ajustable, but also the colour of the background.
If you want to add some more goody, than it should also be able to use an image file as background instead! (JPG-format as a preference; may be others, too).

3.
In order for the text to "flow" I could imagine these possible ways:
a) A Part Marker in the song lets the text scroll forward for an ajustable number of lines. (Possible entry in the F5-"Edit settings of bar" menu. Similar to the "Start a new line for chordsheet and notation" option.
b) A possibility of entering a new kind of a special "Sroll Lyrics Marker" in Editable Notation Mode. Entering it similar to "Inserting Section Text", with the possibility to specify the number of lyric lines to scroll ahead or even to jump back or forth to a specified line or defined section within the lyrics.

The realisation of this wish would be so great!!! I guess, I wouldn't be the only the BIAB-user to profit a lot of this feature!
(And you would have the privilege and the joy to know, that your product is used and appreciated even in churches to the glory of the Lord Jesus! )

So after writing this wish to you, again I'm looking forward to the next upgrade of BIAB. Maybe this will offer a special joy for me!


Greetings from Germany

Ulrich

I presume by "beamer", you mean "projector"?

Hello John,

you are right - I mean the function as a projector.
In our german use of the words, a 'projector' is used for transparencies (is this the correct word?) this is: copies from paper sheets on transparent films.
The word 'beamer' is used here in Germany for a device projecting contents directly from a notebook computer. I thought this is common use.

Greetings from Germany

Ulrich

Hi, Ulrich -

Thanks. This sounds like a valid wish, as I'm sure others use it for similar purposes (or would want to). So I second that request.

We call both of them projectors; the one for slides is usually called an "overhead projector".

I lived in Germany from late 1981 to mid 1985 (I was stationed there with the US Army). I lived in Aschaffenburg (50km east of Frankfurt) and Wuerzburg (70km east of Aschaffenburg). Those were wonderful times with great memories.

An alternative way to accomplish the same thing would be to save your song as an MP3 and embed it in a powerpoint presentation, which would give you flexibility to present the lyrics in any way you want. You can then advance the slides manually, or give someone in the congregation the remote so they can advance the slides, or you can time each slide to advance automatically in synch with the song.

Hi

What is the gadget called when you have a bed you put the paper on and it is transfered to the wall or screen through mirrors we had these at school many moons ago and when we gave a talk you just put a sheet or picture and it appeared on the screen

regards Dave Hoskins

Here in the states a "Beamer" refers to a BMW automobile.

Or, more in the past now, an employee of IBM.

another way to present lyrics and graphics that remain in synch with the music (powerpoint timing varies with the computer) is to use a video program like Microsoft Video Maker to embed the song then add frames of pictures or lyrics or whatever you want to display as the song plays. an upshot to this approach would be that you could distribute the video on youtube after you used for your initial use. The shelf life of your project would be dramatically extended.

I use a wall projector in my guitar/piano classes at a high school in Honolulu. I can't wait to start using the term "beamer" (of course I'll explain it's useage in Deutschland). My students will love it!

Thank you

BTW: The Big Keyboard window works very well for demonstrations and keyboard theory when I "beam" it on the wall and use a midi keyboard.

Sonar (and I think its less expensive versions as well-Cakewalk Home Studio,etc.) have a very nice Lyrics View, where you can set the font, etc. You might want to consider getting it.

If you create songs in BIAB, you could save to MIDI to import into Cakewalk/Sonar. If you have any RealTracks or Drums you want to keep, you save those files as .wav files, to import into Sonar.

I wondered what you meant by "beamer" too, also thinking of BMW car.

I guess you mean projector.