PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Getting Drum Lead Ins into Reaper

Hi All,
So I have worked out how to import my BIAB tracks into Reaper, but I am working on one song for which BIAB has a great drum lead in, but because it is a Lead In, it does not export to Reaper. Is there any way to get that lead in into the first bar of the song in BIAB? That way it will export to Reaper. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Thanks!

That just don't sound right? What you hear in BIAB is what you get on the track in Reaper. Keep at it, it works fine.

Dan

Boots49

heres some little techniques i use in marrying biab and reaper..ymmv/hth.
(ive used reaps since v0.99 with biab and realband, and done approx 90 songs useing the combo.)
1. i ignore the biab count off. i just let it prattle on...before song starts i do 8 bars of my own (eg key of A...key dont really matter.)
ie...a.d times 8 bars at start of bb chord sheet. the .d signifying of course play drums only.
if i want drum solo start i muck around with lots of the blue/green markers in bb. if i want it straight i use the bb markers more sparsely.
note..later on after song finished i might decide in the mixing phase in reaps whether to use some of the drum intro, or none or whatever. but the 8 bars is there just in case...ie flexibility.
i urge you to experiment with the above cos you can get some interesting drum lead ins and solos for a song.
2. i make sure my markers in reaps eg intro/v1/ch1/v2/ch2/lead1/v3/ch3/outtro
(where v is verse and ch is chorus for example) match my biab song sections so i can correlate tween the two.
(of course bpm's must match.)
3. if the song is very very complex, in the past ive divided to conquer..let me explain with an example.
on one complex song like that i had 10 seperate biab files. labelled such as drum solo intro, verse one, chorus one with bass run, lead break sax solo, lead break guitar solo, verse two, chorus 2 ...etc
need i go on ?? see what i do ? this simplifies. then i export the traks from each bb file and line up the audio in reaps easy peasy cos the file names i use in bb match my markers in reaps.
(if you read my bb wishes ive been wanting a new bb bars view...maybe one day lol.)

i dont have time to get into every technique , but hope this gets you started.
for example think on this...you might ask well how do i do subtle drum breaks in my song ?
no probs. create a bb file called drum breaks and fill it full of dotD's ...meaning play drums only,
and colored markers etc etc . audition/regen till happy and save...now in reaps have 2 drum traks.
one called basic bed drums following basic guide beat and another called drum fills. so you export drum fills from
the dotD bb file to reaps and then you can decide where you want fills in the song.
in reaps you could move the different fills around via cut/paste. (same in rb.)
so many tricks...lol.
best
oldmuso

Boots,

I wonder if you might be aligning BIAB's bar 1 with Reaper's bar 1 and that you have Reaper set so that bar 1 is the very first bar. (This probably sounds confusing. Please keep reading and hopefully, clarity will be added.)

Since BIAB, has a 2-bar intro (these are it's default settings, at least), I have Reaper set so that "bar 1" is actually the third bar of Reaper.

To do this, enter into Project Settings and set Reaper's first bar to "-1" (see #3 on the graphic below).

Once this is done, bars -1 and 0 can act as BIAB's 2-bar lead-in and bar 1 in BIAB and bar 1 in Reaper still align with one another.

Hope this helps,
Noel

P.S. Don't forget to set BIAB's Audio Export settings to include the 2-bar lead-in and the Drum count-in. These settings are found under the Audio menu.... "Audio | Export song as Audio File"

Wow, Noel, I thought about all that but did not have the energy to lay out all the info. Good for you mate. You deserve the "attaboy" award for your forum support services.

Thanks, Dan, but I don't deserve it these days. I think you deserve the kudos. You're doing much more to help people.

This will import the chords to regions ReaTrak Biab SGU MGU.. to regions.lua
just remove the .mp4 and load the script in the Reaper Actions window.

As I start my projects in BIAB I just do the structure in BIAB bbot Reaper & the DAW Plugin, drag the tracks in and then put markers in if I feel the need. You folk are too complex for my skull...though I'll have to try something like the described set up some time soon.

Hi MusicStudent
Yes, I would have thought so, but it does no. I guess it's because the drum lead in is not in the first bar.

So many thanks for all you folks for your replies! I am definitely going to follow up on Noel's and Oldmuso's posts. Some of the instructions are a bit deep for my newbie knowledge and skills, but I think, just getting that understanding of them will be priceless!
I guess I should have explained that the way I use Reaper is that, after writing and arranging the song in BIAB and saving it, I open a new project in Reaper, start a new track, add BIAB plug in and on the BIAB window that pops up, go to File, open up the song from BIAB, hit Generate and than click and drag all the tracks over to Reaper. It's been working really well, and I do get the opening click lead ins, but as I used a drum lead in on this song, I got the click but not the drums.
So, in the meantime I did figure out a work around, although perhaps a bit lengthy and not so elegant.
In BIAB I muted all the tracks except the Drum track. Then I exported the drum track as a .wav file to my comuputer.
Than, in the Reaper project (I had already dragged all the other tracks there) I just did Insert/Media file and inserted the drum track .wav file from my computer. It all worked fine.
Let me know what you all think of that process.
Thanks again for all the help!

Noel cleared up this issue. In fact the lead in is in the first two bars, but BIAB does not show these in its chart. But Reaper knows these are there and if you do as Noel indicated you can place the lead in bars at -2 and -1 if you like. So that is not the problem.

What I think is your problem is expecting the songs constructed in BIAB to be identical to what is done in the BIAB-VST. We are not there yet in regards to some of the fine details. Several folks continue to push the developers to move the entire kitchen sink into the BIAB-VST. We have really come a long way and I am excited to see "promised additions" for BIAB-VST 2022.

Otherwise, glad to see you have workaround options and this is not stopping you from having fun.

Dan