Hello vcp,

Quote:

I imported an audio file into BIAB (2011) and spent hours syncing it up with some
Real Drums, changing a bunch of Chord and Bar settings, Part Markers, etc, until I had
exactly what I wanted. Sounded great so I froze the drums and saved the file.

But when I reopened the file it had changed dramatically from the settings I saved:
some bars of Real Drums missing or playing on wrong beat, audio file missing, settings
for Real Tracks changed (i.e. had muted all except drums - now all back on; had tried
deleting all RT's - now back.)



If your song has an audio track, this is simply a wave file that has the same name as the Band-in-a-Box file. So after importing your audio track and saving, you'll have "MySong.MGU" and "MySong.WAV" in the same folder. One way to lose your audio track, is to rename the MGU file in Windows Explorer, and then open it in Band-in-a-Box. In this case, to get the audio track back you could rename the wave file also and re-open the song.

Another way to lose the audio track is to use the feature "Play | Render song to audio track". This is one method of "freezing" the current arrangement (different than the actual freeze feature) by rendering it permanently to the audio track. Doing this will overwrite your audio track, although there is a warning message if an audio track exists.

Quote:

had muted all except drums - now all back on



Depends how you muted the tracks. The way you *should* do it, is type C.d in the first bar (that is, mute all instruments except drums). Then, highlight your entire song and go to Edit | Copy Rests. If you muted instruments by simply right-clicking on the tracks in the instrument panel at the top of the screen, that will not stick - it is not a setting that is saved with songs.

Quote:

had tried deleting all RT's - now back.



There can be RealTracks assigned to the song ("Song RealTracks", or built into the style ("Style RealTracks"). In the RealTracks Picker, select the track that has RealTracks you want to remove, and press [none]. If the track has "Style RealTracks", a message will ask if you want to disable RealTracks in the style - answer Yes. Now the track will either be blank, or there will be a MIDI track in its place. So if you want to get rid of that track completely, both MIDI and RealTracks, you would want to use 'rests'.

It sounds like you are essentially:

1. Importing an audio file that doesn't have drums.
2. Selecting a RealDrums track to play along with it.

If this is correct, why not start out with a blank style (select either the 4/4 or 3/4 Blank.sty from the StylePicker. Then you can audition and add "Song RealDrums" without having to worry about getting rid of existing tracks.

A second point - as others have mentioned, RealBand would probably be easier to use in this case, unless your audio file was recorded to a click track at a specific tempo, like 120 bpm.

One last thing that I thought of - There are two main types of Band-in-a-Box song file extensions - .MGU for songs with a melody track, and .SGU for songs without. Perhaps you saved your song as an .SGU file (after removing the melody), but then you opened the .MGU file...

Andrew
PG Music Inc.