While creating some BIAB instructions for three of my Jazz Jams Club members who have gotten interested in BIAB, I stumbled on a video called "Band-in-a-Box® 2021 - Everything you need to know in under 6 minutes!* (plus the 49-PAK!)". My first thought was "This is impressive, maybe I should upgrade". I noticed a feature in the video that says I can export the chord symbols of a BIAB song to a midi file to be drawn into a DAW as a label track. Click here to go directly to the spot in the video that shows this feature. My question is has anyone tried this with Audacity?
Hey John, hope you are doing well. I’m not sure, but to my knowledge audacity is audio only or has that changed in the last couple years?
Okay my bad. Here is info from the net regarding audacity
MIDI and Allegro playback Note tracks containing MIDI data (or Allegro data) can now be played in Audacity. Loop Play and Play Cut Preview also work with Note tracks. But note that there will no use of the Playback meter while Note tracks are played.
If I get sometime later I will try it and report back.
Last edited by Rob Helms; 12/24/2003:34 AM.
HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB/RB 2026, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 11 , Presonus Audiobox USB96
Been there done that. Works like a charm! I do it from the BIAB VST the chord blocks can be dragged and dropped directly from the VST to Reaper then from Reaper to Audacity. A great example of how BIAB is starting to play nice with other music apps.
I made a video recently showing 2021 BIAB VST to Reaper to EZKeys and Scaler. Audacity works the same way. This is an early 2021 version, but working even better with newer versions.
Hi Rob & Dan, thanks for your response and Merry Christmas! I hope you guys have great holidays!
I only use BIAB and Audacity. If I can drag the chord midi file directly to Audacity I will probably upgrade.
However for helping the members of my club if would be even better if I can get the chord midi file into the Windows directory that the individual BIAB tracks are exported to as .wav files (Audio, Export Song As Audio File, checkbox one file per track, click render, etc) and zip them all together as I do now to send to the club members then maybe the club members could include the chord midi file in their Audacity or whatever DAW. This would help them as they record their tracks which are sent around to the other members to do their own mix of each song we are working on. Its our covid-19 lock down activity you can hear at this link :-)
I only use BIAB and Audacity. If I can drag the chord midi file directly to Audacity I will probably upgrade.
However for helping the members of my club if would be even better if I can get the chord midi file into the Windows directory
Thanks, John
Well I got good news and bad news for you.
Good news is BIAB has provided a feature to export only the chordal midi (block chords from chord sheet) for decades. It is called "OutputCh" and it is in the option-preferences menus. This should allow you to do exactly what you want. More Good news. The current BIAB-VST 2021 does this as good if not better than it is done in BIAB since it also provides chord names with the midi.
Bad News. I believe "OUtputCh" is broken in BIAB2021. I may be wrong since I only spent 30 minutes trying to recreate the workflow into Audacity for you. But looks like the midi file made has got its channels mixed up and there is no single chord track on Channel 1. Last night, Pipeline reported in another thread some unusual behavior with OutputCH.
Good news. If you have not yet updated, BIAB 2020 should do just what need.
I have BIAB 2018. I found (Options, preferences, OutChan) which brings up the "Output Chords on Channel". So I did a YouTube search "band in a box output chords on channel" and found no videos. I then did the search on google and found this. https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=289338 I am studying it now. He says to click the "save as" button. I have no such button. Still trying to connect the dots :-) I checked the chords check box and I am playing the song to see if it puts a new file in the same directory that the BIAB song file is located. No Cigar, no file found. "File, File, Wherefore art thou fine file" :-)
I clicked the "Save As" button then I chose "Save Song as Midi File F6" but I do not get the same popup as in the above link. I get the attached popup. "File, File, Wherefore art thou fine file"...lol.
I am afraid you are getting mixed up or getting me mixed up. Things are different in the BIAB2021 and the BIAB-VST2021 in regards to midi chord file output. Combine that with the fact that we have just concluded certain features worked in BIAB pre-2021 but are no longer working in BIAB2021. So it is not surprising that we all would be a bit confused.
My understanding was you wanted 1) a midi file which corresponded to the chords in the chart you were providing to your jam mates. And 2) you wanted this to be imported into Audacity to be rendered to wav. Since you only have BIAB 2018 we can talk only about that since this feature is currently broken in BIAB2021, however, works well in BIAB-VST2021, but you don't have that either. BIAB 2018 should be able to accomplish #1. Putting the midi file into Audacity is a good way to play the midi file and to see that things are as they should be and of course render to wav. Audacity should do that just fine.
Does this sound correct?
If so, I would be glad to put together a quick video with BAIB 2020 which should be working well (last I checked) using the OutputCh feature to make the chord chart midi file and then opening up in Audacity and rendering to wav. Let me know.
I have asked for this so many times over the many years. Make sure you have the # Ticks before chord change to 0
If you had BB21 you simply open the SGU in the Biab Lite Standalone and drag the chord midi markers out.
If you have an older version of Biab you can drop the BB Chord Output midi file into Reaper and it will write the midi chord makers in the file so the others in the group can read the chords in their DAW.
You can also save as musicxml and drop that in Reaper and it will create midi chord markers.
Another way is save to youtube video and convert to mp4 video and send that to them as most DAWs will have a video track.
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