Hi Andrew. Thanks again for your advice.

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bb\50SONGS\JAYS_BLS.MG1, at least the unmodified shipping version, does not have a Melody patch saved with it. This means that if your Melody track is currently set to "79 Whistle", when you open Jays Blues and play it, your melody will play whistle. However, if you were to change the melody patch to Trumpet and save the file, say as JAYS_BLS_2.MG1, and open THAT file, then you find that the melody track would always play trumpet.

This is because the current version of Band-in-a-Box defaults to saving the melody patch with your song (unless you disable that option in the save with patches dialog).



Thanks. I get it. When I opened the song memo yesterday for JAYS_BLS.MG1 it read "melody has 187 notes, saved patch is 57 Trumpet". My incorrect assumption was that this was supposed to be the patch playing "by default" when the file opened. Apologies for my confusion. I did not fully understand how that worked, now I do. Thanks

After reading your post, I opened the file, cleared the chord sheet >"New", changed the melody instrument button to Jazz Organ and re-opened the file. Opened the song menu and the notation had changed to "...saved patch is Jazz Organ 18". Did that several times to confirm that understand that function. Got it, now. Thanks

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I think you would still find MIDI Monitor useful. Yes we should update the help to chm. By default it will be a "stay on top" window, so you can open and play files while watching it. Here are my filter settings, followed by an example of opening and playing a file. I am only showing the melody channel 4.



Thank you for those setting details, Andrew. Initially, I couldn't select or deselect the "x" in any one channel by clicking the box. THEN by chance I found you have to CLICK ON THE TEXT - NEXT to a checkbox. I did obtain those settings and played several files, making patch changes. Yes, each changed appropriately to the expected sound and patch number.

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My question is, when you are in performance mode and you send your synth BankMSB 0, BankLSB 0, does that default to the GM bank (D)....



Andrew, I'm not certain, but I think it is. When I load a GM song, JV in performance mode, the biab gui displays MSB 0, LSB 0. The midi monitor shows MSB 0, LSB 0, Program number equals -1 from the selected .pat patch number (corrected for 0 based, right?) and expected midi patches play.

One thing that was throwing me off was the melody (or soloist) I was keying on monitoring the patch changes. I was expecting the patches were "saved", in many instances, through my own misunderstanding. But, as you clarified above, Andrew, with the Jay's Blues example, some were not saved patches at all.

Much of my confusion and frustration arose from expecting the melody patch to change to what I expected to be a saved patch, which wasn't. Ok, guilty, I confess my ignorance, lol. I've had biab and rb for a couple of years but I haven't really delved into biab or used it a primary tool other than just sketching out ideas and taking them elsewhere. I next to never open rb. The learning curve on these programs has just seemed too steep to expect rapid proficiency.

So, I'll digest all this, play with the midi monitor some more over the weekend, and if I'm still not clear I'll post Monday. Thanks again to Andrew, Matt, Mac, rharv et. al.