PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Fake sheet printing

I am still waiting for PG Music to announce any significant upgrades to the print portion of BIAB. As far as I know this function, especially fake sheet printing hasn't been updated or fixed since 2004.

There are so many errors in the software that it is really hard to keep track.

Now many people will say that they don't use the print function. I can say the same about Real Tracks - I just don't use it, but I do not want PG Music to stop developing the product either, I would just like the printing to be brought up to the same standard as all of the other features.

If fixing BIAB is not possible I suggest working with one of the print product, such as Finale Notepad to allow a clean print to be produced directly from the BIAB file. We need to be able to export melody, chords, lyrics repeats / endings. I would buy the print program without hestation if this could be accomplished. The scores produced by BIAB are second-class, and I would dearly like PG Music to put some effort into completing something that they started more than 7 years ago.

Dave, you have to remember, the primary function of Band In A Box is to create automatic accompaniment using only chord symbols you input in a matter of minutes. The printing part is just a bonus.

Having said that, I do also sometimes wish for better print options, better 1st and 2nd endings, better repeats, more control, etc. But all that adds up to Sibelius or Finale. SO, my next best wish is for Band In A Box Midi file exports to contain the chord symbol information as well as the notes so it can all be imported into Sibelius or Finale.

Dave, thanks for posting this, because I was considering upgrading from 2009.5 to 2012 with the hope that the printing would be better.

The ability to print out lead sheets is incredibly useful. I do it all the time to add a new chart to my trio's repertoire or change the key of a tune.

The main issues that I have is the the number of staves displayed is wrong (one less -- what a simple bug fix it would be), and the auto-set does not work. Also, the display of the first and second endings is pitiful.

I agree with Dave that I would like to see an improved printing function added, except I would add that I also want the harmony parts printed. You can already print them, but Dave did not mention them in his list. I would also like functioning accents and other musical markings. Also, substitute a proper Coda for the existing Tag, but do not think I did not appreciate the work that Oliver put into the existing Tag function.

I do not agree with Bob's description of the purpose of BB and I have to tell you that all my mates use it for producing lead sheets for their jazz groups. I play in three traditional/mainstream jazz bands that have their entire libraries produced in BB - over 200 tunes for the repertoire of each band. For my band, I also produce the harmony parts. However, you have to edit them with a pen and add many other musical markings. Moreover, I never have mastered the repeats.

In the old days, I used BB only for practicing jazz at home and I believe that was the 'original' accompaniment function. Its use as a live accompaniment for the solos acts and deadly duos, that get all the gigs these days, came much later but is was an obvious marketing move that, as a marketing manager, I applaud.

I also use BB for the first stage of a big band arrangement, using the many harmonies available. I then drop a midi, or two, into Sibelius for cleaning up any harmonies that I do not like and to add the correct markings and repeats to the score. I wish I did not have to do that and I genuinely believe BB is quite close to being a good print program. BB big benefit is that it has by far the easiest chord and note entry. Speed is essential in arranging and even producing leads sheet for my band. BB leaves Finale and Sibelius for dead in this respect! That is why I believe it would be profitable and not such a big programming job to put some time into the print functions.

Notwithstanding, BB is the best music software tool I have ever used!

!!!! and plus 4 or 5 to what Graham says.

I'm now playing in 3 bands plus the wife and I playing as a duo and my solo stuff.

I got where I am from Band in a Box. No longer a guy with a keyboard trying to look pretty while the rest of the band played Stairway.

Just saying.

Satin Doll solo. Improv. Bring it on. Before Band in a Box. No way.

Now, No Problem!

I have to believe that fixing the Print function would be difficult - otherwise I am sure it would have been done a long time ago. Many of the options are really just work arounds. Repeats aren't really repeats, they are just print directions. The code by now must be a real mess and just not worth trying to fix. All the bugs, like not being able to print a DS at the end of a multi repeat or the 3rd ending showing up under the first ending are probably mired in layers of old code. Fix one and something else will be wrong.

I am all for shipping off the melody, chords and lyrics to a separate program that can do a better job. I would really like to see dynamic allocation of bar lengths. Sometimes you have a bar with a lot of notes and lyrics, followed by a bar of "nothing" There is no real reason for them to be the same length,or for one to bleed into the other. This is especially a problem at the end of a line where there is no where for the lyrics to go.

We can at least choose the number of bars per staff, but again this is a print directive. It is something that a smart program would have done automatically.

I really don't ever see this being fixed without "outsorcing" the printing function. PG Music should just admit it isn't worth fixing and the new Real stuff is where they will be spending all their resources. The option is to find a product to ship off all the information, and get a good clean Fake sheet or score.

I think that's unfair. Especially the part where there a bugs and bugs .etc.

I use lots of software, and people put up with all kinds of stupid behaviour.

I also play from LOTS of books where there are terrible fonts, crappy engraving, and missing whole parts. You fix it and move on.

Band in a Box is touted as a musical BAND in a Box.

When they advertise that it's an elegant printing solution for all your musical engraving needs, you could sue for false advertising. Someone wanted lead sheets and they got added. Please do not ask for complete libraries and styles for bollywood music. A good friend of mine is playing Tuba in a bollywood orchestra, hilarious.

Sorry John, but the bugs have been there since fake sheet was delivered.

BIAB prints the last ending under the first if you multiple endings with different lyrics in each ending. The work around is one less ending with as DS al Coda. Music always pays fine - it's just the print.

Try putting as DS al Coda at the end of a 'Repeat' to go back to a point in the song. Song plays fine (it's all linear after all) but the DS al Coda isn't printed. The Sign is printed, and the jump to, and the actual coda are correct.

Try a 'start two bar ending early' with a repeat. It plays fine but BIAB prints two extra bars at the end, even when the flag is set to print two bar endings

These are only three problems that come to mind, but the are doxens more. They are simple print problems. BIAB always plays fine - I love it. I just wish PG Music would pay a little more attention to the problems that have been pointed out many times. I just don't see BIAB users putting up with fumdamental errors in Real Tracks, Audio, or any of the newer features that get added with each successive release. Every one touts 50 new or improved features. Notations is a the poor cousin and has been short changed over the past 6 or 7 years.

I can live with a bug, as long as it is acknowledged and fixed. Failure to do either seems to imply that PG Music doesn't care about Notation. Why are these bugs, and they are bugs, still around after so long?

For repeats, D.S., etc., I just pen them in. No big deal to do that. I always think of BIAB's notation program as a big plus to it's primary program of accompaniment. Gravy! Later, Ray

If a product is supposed to print the DS etc., why do you feel that it is OK when it doesn't?

If real band played a wrong note in a chord, there would be a flood of mesages complaining. But it's only one note - just live with it. Everything else works. No one would accept that

Sorry,raymb1, I just think we need an answer from PG Music as to why these "insignificant" bugs cannot be fixed, when they are obviously smart enought to give us 50 new features twice a year!

Love the program - hate the bugs

Simply because the notation program is not an essential part of BIAB's primary function. Those of us who have been with BIAB for years realize that the main use of BIAB is what is advertised on the main page. Later, Ray

P.S. Look at the main page. http://www.pgmusic.com/bbwin.htm

Raymb1, I have been with BIAB before it even had year designations, so it is not a case of not knowing what the product can do, or what it was originally designed for. But remember the product has moved on. It is now a recording studio in a box. So whatever the original concept was, the product has grown, and now performs many other functions as well.

I also use BIAB for accompaniment. Generally I mute everything except bass and drums and play or sing melody. So to do that I need the notation. As far as I know, notation has been with the product in some form since the very early days. My first encounter was in the days before repeats, DS, and the ability to use note based lyrics. The fakesheet was a great addition giving us multi-line lyrics and 'endings'

Eventually we got the ability to control the number of bars per staff, which was implemented differently in previous releases. They even fixed the ability to print 'start endings two bars early' and if I remember correctly, that where the fixes stopped. The remainding bugs are still there today.

So I am very familiar with the product, and I do use the product 'as intended', at least as far as I need to. Most of the new functions do not interest me. The difference between the midi drums and real drums are lost on my audiences. As long as there is a beat, they seem happy. I have never questioned the ability of BIAB to provide a great accompaniment. I am just upset that each year PG Music adds so many new (and exciting?) features, yet continues to ignore Notation Printing.

I would be happy to pay for a PrintMusic or equivalent software to get professional (and bug free) printing if PG Music were willing and able to pass all the necessary information to their chosen print product. But for some reason they seem to avoid this option all together.

You might give 'em the benefit of the doubt, there.

There is no standardized format for the digitization of music print, so in order for one company to be able to export data that could be interpreted by the musicwriting software of another may have to involve a licensing psrtnership between the two, as well as the exchange of proprietary information.

And then there's the matter of the aging MIDI standard, which never included Chord Data, which means that programs that can import a MIDI file will have to have their own chord engine inside to figure out the chordnames from a MIDI file. Most music notation programs do include that now, so it is not that bad anymore, you should get your hands on a good music notation software that can accept a MIDI file and then export your PGMusic songs as MIDI, import them into the fullblown notation software for editing, tweaking, etc.

Don't get me wrong here, for I would love to see the wonderfully fast PGMusic Notation Emtry system get the improvements we all would like to have.

Recpommend that you make sure that you put any particular requests you have along those lines on the BIAB WISHLIS forum, where development looks for ideas when it comes time to hash out those 50 new features for a new release...


--Mac

Mac,
If the exported Midi from PG Music doesn't include the chords, repaets, reurts, da etc, we are back to square one. Adding them into the new software is a little more than tweaking. If I then change the key in BIAB or add a new verse or repeat, I will have more editing to do in the notation software.

I really do think they have to work with a notation software developer and work out the legalities. I just don't see PG Music ever being able to adequately fix their tired "old" engine.

Just in case you don't understand what Mac is saying he's perhaps American. I'll tell you in Canadian. MIDI is a standard. It was a huge effort. It's very old technology. And the Midi standard does NOT include chords eh? Like they took off and did it like wrong, it's a whacked job. I think it was mostly American. Had it been Canadian it would have been 5% less, and had health care. As it is it's sort of dying.

Many people cling to it. But like all standards it's too standard. So you have most companies going in other directions.

When your big Yamaha's are too busy trying to make snow machines, you know their midi stuff is going to suffer.


So if you don't like how MIDI works it might be for sale eh?

Until then, Band in a Box was just to make music. The printing feature was an add on. To bad troff wasn't ported to run in Win 7/64.

Perhaps MusicXML support could be a solution. It's a widely accepted standard for music notation programs, support chord symbols and many other features, and would allow easy communication between BIAB and most notation programs.

It's interesting that in the PG Music online store you can buy a BIAB / Finale bundle. There seems to be some sort of relationship already between these two players.

Honestly, I don't really care how they share the information, MIDI, MusicXML, pseudo-scanned lead sheet or something proprietary that they develop between themselves.

There just has to be a better way, and probably it isn't BIAB. Let's let BIAB produce the music, and Finale print it.

Like a lot of the posters in this thread, I've been with BIAB since the time there were version numbers rather than years, with PowerTracks as the complementary product. Over the years, I've created many arrangements of commerical and original music using BIAB/RB, and have been glad to see the new features available with each update.

However, like Dave, I've been "tolerating" the need to hand-modify leadsheets, and have been stymied attempting to quickly create PDFs of the final marked-up material, when something like a quick key change is requested by the vocalist. I agree that Finale and Sibellius are the professional tools of choice for such tasks, but without the ability for BIAB/RB to export the arrangements, lyrics, varied rhythms and tempos, etc., I feel that this "ignored" piece of BIAB/RB will remain that way forever.

Someone mentioned MusicXML, which from my perspective, provides the perfect import/export medium because it includes the performance info (complete Midi data), plus the layout and publication information that is not represented by Midi. What is needed is an export tool that can parse the BIAB/RB file formats and produce the corresponding MusicXML files. Because Finale and Sibellius can import MXML, this provides a solution for getting arrangements out of BIAB and into a music editing tool for publication.

I doubt that PG Music has time to write such an export tool, but since there are likely some technical users who could do so if they had documented BIAB/RB file formats, it shouldn't take too long to implement this approach. (There is always the possibility that PG Music is unwilling to cede any portion of their product's feature set development to outside sources, in which case we can never expect to see officially-supported export methods from PG until they feel like doing so internally.)

Having studied up a bit on the MGx file contents, one additional "improvement" in the BIAB/RB file formats would be that some of the layout and printing settings are not saved with each song file, but rather are kept in the "current default" settings. If PG MUsic could let the MGx files contain a bit more of this type info, it would help in more-completely porting arrangements to MusicXML.

Thus, this thread is something of a challenge to PG Music as to whether or not they will be forthcoming with enough details about file formats to allow export (and hopefully import) with BIAB/RB and public-domain formats like MusicXML. I think it's realistic to recognize that each BIAB/RB release will have possible changes to the file format, but as long as the changes are documented, it shouldn'g be a problem.

Anyone at PG Music care to comment?