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

I find the previous post quite condescending. It seems that every few weeks someone wants to rewrite the software. And it seems, people who use music software seem to understand how to write code, in any language.

EVERYONE wants perfect leadsheets, printed in a fashion that any publishing house would be proud of the kerning, and the whole software process understands you number of stanzas and your lyrics and the need to print 4 bars and all that stuff, AND they want it to have the sfz etc in the right spot and to Sound! Wonderful.

The throwdown challenge. I'd find that insulting.

I had to put up with this attitude for years with my POS system. I remember hearing nothing from a client for 2 years, and then a call ..."please help". My Unix system was in the back room, the terminals still working but all pulled out of place. A 12th grader genius friend knew everything about computers. DOS. Did not understand that there were 4 terminals and cash drawers and ONE inventory and computer. He put in a PC, it did nothing. He added 2 terminals, 6 months later they wouldn't even work. This went on all the time.

The users, put their proposed items in the wishlist. The development team decides based on market conditions, users, demands, timelines, difficulty and other considerations what to implement based on the wishlist.

Perfect leadsheets. Imagine. I have RealBook stuff, it's garbage. Full of 'stuff'. Missing things. Yet people pay good money for it.

I have used 3 different programs to print music. Every one of them misses something, or is too difficult to understand. 10 hours or more per page. Great fun.

Someone please tell me, how long it takes, from scratch, to enter something like "Satin Doll", so it looks just awesome, with 4 verses, intro, outro, and put in some solos. I'd like to know from the viewpoint of an average user, no importing a midi file and just putting a title on it, I want a bass track, a piano track, a melody, and if you are using such a great program a proper drum track.

Thanks.

Yikes - everyone must have cabin fever or something, so easily set off by this printing thing. I've followed John and Jazzmandan in these forums for years and have not seen such energetic responses to a forum post that they disagreed with. But this isn't about personalities, so let me restate part of my previous post with more "sensitivity" ;0).

First, there is a lot of music software available, some public-domain and some from private companies like PGMusic. Many, but not all, of the creators of these apps will acknowledge that their products have great strengths and capabilitiese, but also have some areas where the decision has been made to limit development and improvement. If you look at many of the apps, the developers made provisions for linking or coupling or importing/exporting with the other apps, particularly where another app could supply needed functionality.

For example, I think that PGMusic made an smart choice by not developing their own midi synth, but by integrating their product with synths developed by other companies (i.e. coyotte, Roland VSC, etc.). I'm glad that PG has spent their development efforts on the features that make BIAB/RB unique and useful (and since I spent 12 years in the 80's and 90's developing wave-table and modeling synths used in major commercial products, I know it's not something one can just pick up and easily create great-sounding synths).

My first post was in response to @Dave's request that PG develop better printing capabilitites for BIAB, and I was saying that rather than having PG spend time on improving the printing, all they really need to do is not hinder others who are developing export and import tools for BIAB/RB that would accomplish this.

Right now, I don't see that PG is trying to hinder such development, but it now requires considerable effort and time for an outside software engineer to reverse-engineer the song files that BIAB/RB produces so that import/export tools can be developed. Thus, my suggestion that PG make a small effort to make such development easier and less error-prone by making details of the file format available. I can't see there is much risk for them to do so, probably entailing the release of a few "header files" with the file format definitions, without disclosing their own intellectual property that makes BIAB/RB what it is.

The "challenge" I spoke of wasn't meant literally, but rather to see if PG would rise to the occassion and make a bit of information available for download by developers. There are already several tools of varying quality that import BIAB files into other products, both commercial and open-source, but these could be higher quality if the file formats did not have to be guessed at.

As Jazzmandan says, this is a user-supported forum and PG doesn't openly reply very often. However, it's likely the support folks (yea!!!) at PG do read these and can pass stuff like this back to PG. I know that the wish forums are the proper place for such stuff (and my request for opening the file formats has been up there for several years), but it seemed that this thread would be a good "use case" to substantiate the need.

My hope is that this thread dies with a quick hand-mute, and those who are interested in developing export/import tools for things such as improved printing arrange to talk directly with the developers. Those users who don't care about printing or exporting can go on helping others with their sage advice, as they have been doing for years. Sorry if I offended some of you.

Please feel free to take this off-line if further admonition is deemed necessary.

Jerry Schneider
Career hardware/software/firmware/music engineer, and member of Hot Club of Boulder, a gypsy-jazz-swing quartet.

I'd love to be able to export the chord sheet into Sibelius and be able to to do notation editing in there.

Support for Music XML export has been discussed here over the last several years, and it would be great to have. However, I have served as a beta tester for a music notation software program for many years, and their XML import implementation was buggy. Apparently it isn't as easy to program as they thought.

MusicXML isn't the slam dunk that it should be, but it's the best thing that's currently out there. It would be nice to have.

I think that PG Music have at least 3 take aways here.

One: fix what they have. Clean up the bugs in their notation printing function

Two: Consider strongly working with Finale since there seems already to be some connection, to allow a seemless transfer of a BIAB song including all the elements to a superior print engine

Three: Consider providing a file, probably in MXML, that can be imported into any music software that supports the protocol for printing.

Let's hope PG Music is listening. This thread has shown that there are many of us that want to have better lead sheet printing, and we tend to agree that BIAB probably isn't the best tool for the job. Let BIAB create the arrangement, and pass off the printing to a product that can do justice to the notation

May yer sfz get supinated. Sometimes times are tough.