I am a newbie with an odd problem. I have recently arranged a tango to accompany me while I play the melody on my hammered dulcimer. I have the "Loop of Entire Song Enabled", "Always Loop Entire Song" enabled so it will keep repeating the song while I practice the melody. The song plays through fine but when it ends the screen flickers/stutters! The song stalls and blinks quickly on and off repeatedly. Sometimes it will do this for 10 -15 seconds and then begin to play back at the beginning. Other times it is stuck permanently. If I click on the stop button it will stop and I can start the song again. What have I done wrong or what do I need to adjust? Simple newbie instructions are appreciated. Thanks
To assist in someone diagnosing this, can you give details:
What operating system? What version BIAB? What kind of video card? Drivers up to date? Using multiple monitors? When did this start? What had just changed? Have you run Malwarebytes to check for viruses? Does this happen only on this one song? Anything else?
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Hi Matt, I will answer your questions to the best of my ability, being a BIAB newbie and a computer novice in general. I have a Lenova ThinkPad SL510 laptop, 5 years old running Windows 7Pro. Single laptop screen I do not know how to tell what video card I have. I assume my drivers are up to date. I check regularly. I have BIAB 2015 + SuperPak, with the most recent build I run MalWarebytes daily with no problems found. I have arranged just two songs with BIAB. One is a waltz and the other the tango. I do not have the problem with the waltz, only with the tango. I can therefore assume I must have done something incorrectly with the tango? When I play the tango now at the end of the song it flickers for 5 seconds then starts to replay as it continues to flicker. It begins to play again while the screen is stuck flickering. About half of the times it freezes completely after a few seconds and will not replay. I am using several styles, BOSAMEP, SONTRIO,SONMON2,SLOBOSA, and BOSSAGT. The problem occurs on all of the styles. The only thing I did differently with the two songs is that I started with a MIDI file to get the melody and chords on the tango. When I arranged the waltz I did all of the notating by hand. I am experiencing the problem only with the tango. I have had this problem on and off ever since I began working on the tango. It occurs about 75% of the time. Sometimes it repeats just fine. Most times not. I hope this provides you with enough information to generate some ideas as to what I must have done incorrectly when I imported the MIDI file to get my melody and bass lines (both treble and bass clefs). With two of the styles, I used the Piano Roll function to delete the melody line, leaving me with just the bass line. I am having the same flickering problem regardless of whether I am playing the melody plus bass lines or just the bass line versions. Thanks for your patience.
Not sure if this helps but I always also have "loop entire song" enabled and I usually play four or eight bar loops within a song. Sometimes It switches me to notation mode. You MUST have the bars highlighted, or it goes off the end of the loop.
I have had issues with BIAB not accepting the end of the loop, with it switching to notation mode without being asked to, with loop markers being played incorrectly, or even when not present. When I get these anomalies I often start a new blank song and copy across the data, or write it in again. In other words rebuild a copy (not a duplicate), trying to give yourself least work. Perhaps try cutting offending sections out (using a duplicate of the original.
I have come across the problem you are describing. It hasn't happened to me in BIAB 2015, though. I've been sitting here this morning trying to get BIAB to duplicate it. I haven't been successful yet but I'll keep a watch-out for and get back to you if it happens.
Here are some things to try that might make a difference.
ONE 1. Generate the song and let it play through once so that you know the generation is complete.
2. Right click on "Master" and then freeze all the tracks.
3. Save the song with a new name (so that you can return to the original at any time).
4. Try it out and see what happens.
(Asterisks will now be beside the track names to indicate that the tracks are frozen.)
TWO Set the number of choruses to "1".
THREE 1. Open the song in Realband.
2. Using "Save As" save it as MGU or SGU with a new name.
3. Open the newly named song in BIAB and see if the problem persists.
(Sometimes, simply resaving a song in Realband can solve a problem with a file that seems to have developed some form of corruption. Also, if you haven't used Realband before, it takes a minute or so to generate the song so simply wait a little once loading the song.)
FOUR 1. Save the song with a new name.
2. Right click on "Soloist" on the upper toolbar and then follow the below highlighting to remove any midi that might be on the Soloist track.
Ok, the wild card here might be your statement that you began the problematic song "with a MIDI file". I wonder if there is something in that file that is causing your problem.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Ok, the wild card here might be your statement that you began the problematic song "with a MIDI file". I wonder if there is something in that file that is causing your problem.
Good point Matt. As I was reading through the thread, I was wondering if there might be MIDI notes after the end of the chorus marker. E.g. the song plays from bar 1 to bar 32 but there are some MIDI notes later than bar 32.
Larry might be able to check this as well.
Cheers Trevor
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
I used the Piano Roll to scroll all the way to the end, way past the ending measure and all the way up to C10. I did not find any extra notes out there. I think my next step tomorrow will be to copy the notes on to a new song file and see if the problem follows. There may be some sort of corruption in the initial master file I was using. I hope if I start fresh that whatever the problem was will get left behind.
Thanks again for everyone's suggestions. It saves a lot of wear and tear on us newbies!
Larry Another way to find quickly MIDI events is to use the Event editor. Every MIDI event is listed, and the bar/beat etc that they occur at. Trevor
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
Noel's idea of opening the file in Real Band then saving it as a MGU song from Real Band, then opening that newly saved song in BiaB is definitely worth trying.
Real Band might just filter out the bugs for you.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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