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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Hi all,

does anyone have a automated/semi-automated workflow to take over the chords from ultimate-guitar website?

Data looks like this.... The question is, if there is a sensible way to extract and use it in Biab.

@PGM: Suggestion - it would be a hell of a feature to partner with this gigantonormous provider of tabs and chord sheets. To have a method established, that Biab user can take over the chords into a lead sheet and create SGU files on the fly! What do you think?? It would open up a universe of material.....

Example from ultimate guitar chord sheet.


https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/

[Intro]
G

[Verse 1]
G Em
I found a love for me
C D
Darling, just dive right in, and follow my lead
G Em
Well, I found a girl beautiful and sweet
C D
I never knew you were the someone waiting for me

[Pre-Chorus]
G
Cause we were just kids when we fell in love
Em C G D
Not knowing what it was, I will not give you up this ti-ime
G Em
Darling just kiss me slow, your heart is all I own
C D
And in your eyes you're holding mine

[Chorus]
Em C G D Em
Baby, I'm dancing in the dark, with you between my arms
C G D Em
Barefoot on the grass, listening to our favourite song
C G D Em
When you said you looked a mess, I whispered underneath my breath
C G D G
But you heard it, darling you look perfect tonight


Also attached a screenshot, there seems to be some sort of column delimiters ?!



Cheers Stefan

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Ultimate_Guitar_Chords.png (29.78 KB, 93 downloads)
Last edited by Museeker; 03/20/21 08:44 AM.

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If I see a song in a form like you posted I just google/bing a MIDI file of said song. Just load it into BiaB and away you go.

If you have fake books you can go to Notes site and purchase an accompanying disk. http://nortonmusic.com/
They are well worth the money IMHO.


I arrived early to a restaurant.
The manager asks, "do you mind waiting a bit?"
I said no.
"Good", he said. "Take these drinks to table 3"

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Thanks Mario for your point of view.
You make a valid point there. Still I would assume, that if possible it offers a go to solution in a one stop fashion and it skips the need to buy every midi file only because you what to take over the chord progression. My experience is also, that there is next to nothing what I could not find at ultimate-guitar in terms of chords and lyrics. I find it such useful, that I bought a life long subscription in the early days of this service :-)

PG could argue, that it get´s ultimate guitar lots of new users and make their portal even more usefull for musicians world wide.

With midi files come a lot of tracks I am not necessarily interessted in, if I only want to start something new, from scratch so to speak using the chords alone. And Biab is world master with experiments starting from there ;-)



But what do other user think about that?

Useful interface or not`?

Cheers
Stefan


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You could extract just the chords out of the text but what bar/beat do they go on ?
You could script it to prompt for where you want the next chord inserted,
you could move the chord sheet cursor then click the insert button and it will paste the next chord from the text at that position and so on.
You could do the same with the lyrics.



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as a guitarist i'm used to print outs like this. its very difficult to line up words and chord changes in a word processor document so whereas a guitarist can 'feel' his way, BIAB couldn't.

and with most tab sites you can get various versions - ultimate guitar has over 20 version of Ronan Keating's 'When you say nothing at all' and the quality varies.

ready made midis or BIAB files posted on line are at least editable. and by listening you can hear the quality. you won't know the tab is wrong until you try to play it.

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Check out "Copy/Paste Chords as Simple Text" in the manual - this might be your ticket.


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Is it really that big of a chore to have to type in chords to BIAB?

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I for one would not be interested. Many internet sheets are not correct and the time I'd spend correcting them I could put them in BIAB anyway.

Just my thoughts,
Mike


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Thanks to all your responses and I agree with everything you said.
It is pretty simple and versatile to enter chord in Biab.

I just entered another Tango chord sheet the other day. Maybe 10-15 minutes with checking and double checking for dal segnos and codas etc.
now I also enter the repetitions in a linear fashion as I ran in issues before after deleting and adding bars after having set up the structure. Thanks for those tipps as well.

I mark it as resolved - if PG finds this to be a worthwile feature, they can follow up as they wish....

Cheers Stefan


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