PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Does 2012 version support MusicXML import/export?

Seems like this question has been coming up for several years now, but not much effort has been expended by PGMusic to implement this badly needed feature. Can anyone tell me whether MusicXML format is supported now in the 2012 BIAB or RealBand?

It's great to create music in BIAB, but trying to control the output like for printed leadsheets, chord box-charts, etc. is something BIAB will never be able to please everyone with. Being able to export in MusicXML format would really solve the problem since there are several good editors available that can do a much better job of laying out desired formatting. So many things like being able to create custom guitar chord charts for each song are sorely needed in BIAB, but it will be years before BIAB can add all of these things.

Likewise, I often can get music captured with something like PowerTab, which can export MusicXML, but there is no way other than manually re-entering this into BIAB, each note and chord.

I think I'm going to pass on my "annual" upgrade this year since without MusicXML, BIAB is getting more and more difficult to interface into my other tools. If BIAB were to focus on what it does well, and not try to provide all the "extra" stuff in a proprietary format, it would work a lot better for me.

Then again, PG may have added MusicXML support and not listed it in the "50 new improvements" area.

Wishin' and hopin' and prayin'

To my knowledge, MusicXML is not supported. I would like to see this as well.

I must comment about one statement you made, that you feel BIAB is getting more difficult to interface with other tools. By adding VST and VSTi support in version 2012, BIAB can take advantage of third party software synths and effects like never before.

MusicXML came years after the request for rewire & that is still no-where to be seen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I agree with Matt thet vst & vsti are a big inprovement but its another way of avoiding interfacing with other software & biab NOR rb can do what the bigger DAW's can do (nor can bigger DAW's do what BIAB can do. Rewire is a real big MUST & Music XML wouldn't be bad either

Unless there is total support to put the whole program on the iphone 2 I won't buy it anymore. I'm taking my pro tools and going home. All those things, xml/rewire, and the ability to act as a channel changer are essential. I have an old FM midi module that band in a box won't even recognize. As for me, I'm waiting. And the print is in the wrong font and I don't like it. I want the standard comic font.

I suspect, as a new user with a post count of -9 where my posts go through the collider in Switzerland, that my pal John who I never met, should not have agreed to let me make a post here. I off to deep despair and misery on me,
(cue the Hee Haw crowd), Aaahhhhhh
Why is there no hee haw plugin and style? That's a legitimate art form. Get with the program.

The limited experiments I have done with MusicXML were not fully successful in transferring files. Each software package has to implement it, and some variations seemed buggy. The very aged MIDI standard, however limited, at least seems to be solidly implemented by everyone. I hope this will all shake out soon with MusicXML, but until it does, it's a reason not to go there.

Mr Conley, while I agree often with your off the cuff, attacking humour, I wholeheartedly disagree with your attitude that taking biab into a new phase of the young blood & what is needed in the industry NOW. There are a multitude of pro users (& by that I mean people who actually earn 100% their living out of producing music, whether it be live or recorded) & long may that be BUT I rather doubt it while there is a (apparently by pgmusic) reticence to use other technologies that allow users to advance more easily with their projects.

Dave Berry retired and gave me his pen. I just see humour in strange things. People that have 4 posts come in a rant about defects in the 'product', because it does not behave the way they want. Those people probably don't have 5 kids like me, because I know they won't behave the way you want.

For a piece of software that shipped on 5 1/4 " floppies a few short years ago with under 100 styles to where it is today is quite a leap.

I don't think the intent of your first sentence is clear to me, perhaps it is to you.

I've never expoused anything but forward thinking. I think we are a few weeks away from a Ravi realstyle featuring eastern instruments.

But as the company is based in Canada I vote for throat singing long before the standard choir.

just for your info, I have 4 kids & I believe we will never see rewire in biab

Call a whambulance. I wouldn't know rewire if I fell over it. There also exists another common issue on these forums. People keep asking, talking about things and suddenly it's implemented.

The purpose of this software was to provide a backing band.

Everything you needed to do was part of the software.

Then RealBand and BIAB hooked up. Easy enough it seems, same developers and mindset.

But that still was not the use for having a BAND in a Box. forget the bass player, the drummer who can't count, and the drunk guitarist made out of lead, and that's a heavy metal. You see, it's a Band in a Box.

Now if they decide to make it a slave in a box so it streams data realtime to your other system i can tell you how to do this using linux to catch the midi data stream we are going to set up. Audio, well maybe not, but really, what's any of that got to do with the 3 piece backing band on a loop with Satin Doll in C at 120. There you go.

there is actually a way to do it (streaming the audio) but its a lot of messing around & introduces latency. It would be 100% easier if pgmusic just implemented it

If you have a program that reads XML AND will convert to midi, why not use that program to convert whichever part(s) to midi and import into Biab? Importing midi part(s) is a snap in Biab.

Entering a song's chords is also a breeze to do in Biab. You can usually find a song's chord structure on the internet 9 times out of 10.

What does XML do that other programs won't?

Trax

Currently, I have used many different methods to bring music in/out of BIAB/RB, including everything from MIDI to parsing the raw MGx files. The thing that very few people on these forums seem to consider are the publication-related problems that someone who must "describe" music to another person suffers.

There are many reasons for wanting symbolic representation of the music, such as Fake Books for Jazz and Guitar Tabs for Gypsy Jazz, rather than wanting say an MP3 or MIDI file that performs the music.

Granted, BIAB does an "OK" job of printing PDFs, and by hacking around, you can even generate things like Box-Charts. However, after working with other music publication systems, I don't think of BIAB as a fast and flexible music publication system. For example, a complex song can fill a whole page with just the box-chart chords, but how do you create a second sheet that has just the guitar/mando chord charts, including fingering for the chords. I don't mean a tiny chord diagram for each chord on each bar of the song - once someone knows how to finger the chords, all you need is the box-chart with the chord names. Plus, BIAB only has chord libraries for Folk and Jazz guitar chords, for example, so things like accurate accompanyment for Gypsy Jazz is impossible to insert into lead sheets and chord charts.

Creating Tabs is also something that needs a pro music publication system, plus a good app like GuitarPro, that can pull in a BIAB file, create the actual chord diagrams to be used, and add the real Tab symbols so that a person who reads only Tabs knows about hammer-ons, slides, tremolo, etc.

Because no app can "do it all", it's necessary to move the "music" between systems without losing information on systems that don't fully understand every component in the "package" that is passed around. MusicXML is specifically designed to allow, for example, a guitar chord-building and diagraming app, to embed custom chords into the package, and apps that don't understand these diagrams can simply blindly copy these parts from input to output.

Other publication issues, such as laying out music with three or four parts on the same set of staffs, are often required, but doing so in BIAB is difficult. Even things like editing note durations and force are very tedious on BIAB, whereas other programs offer much easier methods for doing the same.

So for those who use BIAB/RB to create audio and MIDI, I don't see that MusicXML would be of great use. However, for those who have to also publish the music, lack of MusicXML makes BIAB/RB a non-mainstream application. Because BIAB/RB is so good at the unique things they do, it's a shame it's so difficult to use in conjunction with other music editing and publishing apps.

Just my thoughts - I don't mean to start a flame war ;-).

Yup, I bought the under the counter real charts used by all the jazzers years ago.

There they were, bundled in plain brown paper. Freckled from bad photo copies. Almost impossible to read the fonts. When playing with someone else they remembered the right chords, and you were not playing them.

I remember the pages falling out. I remember having to pencil in for the 4th time the number of verses, or write in A B B A B outro.

Just a bummer.

NOW for the NEWS.

In case you never were told, this is the software to replace the guy on bass and the guy on drums. Or the guy on drums and the guy with the guitar, you know, used to show up with just a black case and a pick and ask where the cable was so he could plug in. Drank your beer too.

This is NOT for pete's sakes a dang photo engraving program. It does an ok job. Now buy a pencil. I'd far rather have vibraphone realtracks than cute wee fermatas that are going to change.

And I'm sorry, but if your musicians don't understand basic chords and how you want to lay out the piece that's a bummer.

I just got handed 1/2 my charts in the wrong key and in the wrong clef, and I have to drop 3 flats AND transpose to treble from bass clef in passing. Very nice. I can either take the whole piece, which is wrong to boot, and put it in Sibelius, and try to change the flow, but even I know that if certain people show up I need to change the p's to pp's etc.

BTW, I've almost learned how to transpose AND drop 3 flats on the fly. And I'm over 60. Hello!

I couldn't do that last year and I'm a moron. Just ask the several people who send me pm's and emails to tell me so.

If I cared what other people think I'd have jumped of the Tallahasee bridge too, long ago. Must not be much water under that bridge. Unlike mine.