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Band-in-a-Box Wishlist
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Joined: Dec 2020
Posts: 66
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OP
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Let me start by asking a question: Why, why, why, if I say I want a 6/8 time signature for a classic jig, does BIAB insist on notating it as either 12/8 or 4/4? You certainly don't get 6 eighth notes per measure, or just two triplets per measure, in either in the bar chart or the notation page. You get 12 eighth notes, or 4 triplets. It's awkward and confusing. One bar on the bar chart should correlate to one measure on the real-world sheet music. Always. So one bar in 6/8 time should be one measure of 6 eighth notes. If I wanted 12/8 time, I'd ask for it. If I wanted 4/4 triplet swing feel, I'd ask for it.
I'm going to bet the reason BIAB behaves the way it does is that it's your way of "shoe horning" in all your 4/4 swing styles so that they'll work for jigs. Why 4/4? So that you can pretend you have 4 triplets per measure, I'm guessing. That's certainly a clever trick if this is indeed what's going on behind the scenes.
But for us poor unfortunate users, this is confusing at best. BIAB is not intuitive much of the time, and it's things like this that make it that way. Apparently, no development time has been spent in making a 6/8 jig look like a 6/8 piece of music in actual 6/8 time -- you know, the way the user requested it, and the way virtually all jigs are notated in the real world.
If I'm wrong about this, then my apologies.
Please, please, how about making 6/8 be a first class citizen in the bar charts and the notation charts?
If there is a way to do this already in BIAB and I just failed to find it, I'd be happy to hear about it!
And I am making the same request for cut time notation: It seems to have been kludged into the product in a similar "clever" manner. So what is one measure (with 4 quarter notes) on a standardly notated "cut time" piece of sheet music is represented in BIAB as half a "bar" on the bar charts. It's awkward and confusing. One bar on the bar chart should directly correlate to one measure on "real world" sheet music. Always.
As it is, we can't easily correlate written cut time sheet music measures with the bars on the bar charts. We have to remember that they are "doubled" up on the bar charts. Similarly, in the notation view, again, what was one measure on the standard cut time sheet music is half a measure on the notation chart. Again, this results in a lot of confusion and mistakes when going back and forth between real world sheet music and BIAB.
Please, please, how about making cut-time be a first class citizen in the bar charts and the notation charts?
If there is a way to do this already in BIAB and I just failed to find it, I'd be happy to hear about it!
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Band-in-a-Box Wishlist
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Joined: Dec 2003
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I have been wishing for time signatures other than 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4 for years. When you bring in other time signatures into a DAW it gets very confusing with those are the only three available.
I understand RealBand will work and the one time I tried it it didn't because the style I used was an old 5/4 style.
Another super big +1 for correct time signatures.
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Band-in-a-Box Wishlist
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Joined: Jul 2000
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No, you’re right. It is a kludge, and this is one of the more frequent and longest wishlist topics.
Peter Gannon has written about this but it was several years ago. I recall he explained how everything could be constructed from 3/4 or 4/4 (or something along those lines).
BIAB only supports 3/4 or 4/4. Other time signatures are contrived from these. It has always been that way, at least since I first used BIAB in the early 1990s, so I’m guessing there is some 8-bit holdover in the coding, or worse, in the file structure. And there is a quirk that if you want to mix these two, your song must start in 4/4. That ones catches novices.
At least last year they implemented cut time visually, so perhaps there is hope the same trick could do 6/8.
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.
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Band-in-a-Box Wishlist
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Joined: Dec 2020
Posts: 66
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OP
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Thanks for the history on this, Matt. I see I wasn't quite right about 6/8 in the notation charts. I was experimenting some more this moringin and see it does split into measures of the correct number of beats. Don't know exactly what I was seeing before. However, in the bar charts the measures are doubled-up. While cut-time is implemented better now visually than before, it's still not quite right in the bar charts -- same problem as 6/8 time. It's my unfortunate luck that the two most used time signatures for the stuff I do is cut-time and 6/8. Oh well 
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Band-in-a-Box Wishlist
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Are you Irish or Brazilian? (kidding)
About this statement, could you elaborate? I'm interested, because I and few others like bobflatpicker worked with PG Music to get this.
While cut-time is implemented better now visually than before, it's still not quite right in the bar charts -- same problem as 6/8 time.
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.
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
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