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just discovered that for some reason the notation will not create dotted eigth and sixteenth. called pg music tech support and told sorry that's just the way it works, it's not a good notation program!

see my screen shot:


/Users/stewlyons/Desktop/Screen Shot 2015-10-09 at 6.13.23 PM.png

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I don't know if this will help, but you can open an SGU in https://musescore.org

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Stew,

Unless I misunderstand your post above, your image shows dotted eighth notes.

You are correct in relation to dotted 1/16th notes. It's not a flaw but a limitation. BIAB's notation mode is limited by a resolution of 1/16th notes. This means that the smallest value dotted note is the 1/8th note.

Using Piano Roll mode, or when playing and recording, it's possible to enter notes that have smaller resolutions. From memory, these notes will show up as 1/16th notes in notation, though (it's been a while since I experimented with this). Despite this visual limitation, the playback will be accurate.

So, if you are step entering notes and want smaller time values, go to Piano Roll mode. If you want to construct sheet music that accurately reflects the notes' values, then I suggest you download MuseScore. It's free, it's great and it reads BIAB .SGU/MGU files reasonably well. Being a dedicated music notation program, MuseScore offers possibilities that BIAB does not. I regularly use MuseScore.

Hope this helps,
Noel

P.S. I see solidrock has posted about MuseScore while I was typing!


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Originally Posted By: stew
just discovered that for some reason the notation will not create dotted eigth and sixteenth. called pg music tech support and told sorry that's just the way it works, it's not a good notation program!

see my screen shot:


/Users/stewlyons/Desktop/Screen Shot 2015-10-09 at 6.13.23 PM.png


Don't know what you're asking. If your example is something you want to do in BIAB, it can certainly be done.

Just looked more closely at your example. The notation is wrong. Did BIAB create that? A dotted eighth can't followed by another eighth. The only way to get an eighth note value is to tie the sixteenth note to the first sixteenth of the next beat.

Last edited by raymb1; 10/11/15 03:47 AM.

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Originally Posted By: stew
just discovered that for some reason the notation will not create dotted eigth(sic) and sixteenth. called pg music tech support and told sorry that's just the way it works, it's not a good notation program!

I'm not sure you fully understand what dotted eighth and sixteenth notes would look like on a stave.

This is them, here:

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Originally Posted By: VideoTrack
Originally Posted By: stew
just discovered that for some reason the notation will not create dotted eigth(sic) and sixteenth. called pg music tech support and told sorry that's just the way it works, it's not a good notation program!

I'm not sure you fully understand what dotted eighth and sixteenth notes would look like on a stave.

This is them, here:


Notice that there are more than 4 beats in the measures.

This brings up the biggest problem with a lot of programs today. They try to be all encompassing. Some of the biggest complaints about BiaB as well as Sonar is that the notation is not very good. Neither program is a notation program. Companies add things like this at a very basic level. Sonar is a DAW and BiaB is a backing track generator. I wish both would drop all the extras and concentrate on their main functions.

YMMV

Last edited by MarioD; 10/10/15 05:35 AM.

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You are quite correct Mario. I didn't count the beats - my bad.

The notation 'elements' are correct. But only as elements, not when grouped.


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The dotted eighth notes followed by eighth notes makes no sense. Those should be sixteenth notes. Sixteenth notes are definitely supported, as can be seen. But there should be sixteenth notes after the dotted eighth notes.

I would try unchecking the "clean display" (which is supposed to clean up note clutter for notes entered in real time and not properly on the beat) checkbox and see if that fixes things.

Also, was this entered in step time (on the grid) or played in from a keyboard, for example? It might be showing the odd notes based on input timing, where the note was just a little longer than an 8th note, but not much and so shows up as a dotted eight, where the following note was longer than a sixteenth note and got interpreted as an eighth note.

That being said, yes, BIAB has notation features (which I wouldn't want to do away with, because I do read notation), but it is not a full featured notation program. I use other dedicated notation programs for that (and yes, I think XML will be the way to go for notation portability, so hopefully we'll get there, but that has to do with file format, not entering notes and display capabilities). And I think if they overhauled it the notation system to be more fully featured (and integrated), it would take a long time. Remember, the programmers that used to work on Sibelius at Avid went over to Steinberg to help create a new notation program for Steinberg (presumably to be integrated into Cubase). That was what, a couple of years ago? They're still working on it.


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I wonder if Stew is trying to print accurate swing notation.

BIAB always shows swing as two equal length eighth notes when in fact they are not. The first is twice as long as the second.

Many fake books will show an icon at the beginning of a song saying play tied eighths as a dotted eighth followed by an eighth.

I have never seen any music show triplet (swing) in any way other than tied eighths and often without the explanatory icon.

I have often thought that BIAB should put this on their printed music


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I wonder if Stew is trying to print accurate swing notation.

BIAB always shows swing as two equal length eighth notes when in fact they are not. The first is twice as long as the second.

Many fake books will show an icon at the beginning of a song saying play tied eighths as a dotted eighth followed by an eighth.

I have never seen any music show triplet (swing) in any way other than tied eighths and often without the explanatory icon.

I have often thought that BIAB should put this on their printed music


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