PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Formatting the song structure

Good thought...maybe that's it.

Thanks Mac

Or maybe you're just dumber than a salesperson...


YOU OWE EVERYONE ON THIS FORUM AN APOLOGY, DUDE.


--Mac

Ok,Mac. You're right. My apologies.

Brian

Actually, Mac I've been thinking this over and I think your comment to me was more insulting than mine to Peter.

So why don't YOU apologize to me since we are so into apologies.

Just who do you think you are? The apology god?

You know,Mac...with the number of anonymous visitors on this site every day who are trying to decide whether or not to buy into this program it might be wise of you, who obviously supports the product as do I,to be a bit more civilized yourself. I have already admitted my own guilt as to not being infallibly immune to confusion and frustration leading to perhaps imprudent expressions of emotion. (You can look that word up...from what I've seen of your posts it might not be in your vocabulary)

Dear all,

Brian doesn't owe me an apology.

Anyone who reads all the above responses prior to Mac's post (#323993) can see that there has been nothing in this thread that anyone needs to apologize for. It's all been "business as usual" in here.

For the record, I have really enjoyed helping Brian and he's been very sincere in his appreciation.

Regards,
Noel

Sheesh.

OK...Enough...my fault...my bad!

Let the comedy continue as we all continue to do what we do best....make music!

Let's just move on...OK? Enough!

Truce?

Everyone knows how to use "ignore", right? I suggest you do so, as I have, and see where he goes for help.

He does indeed owe the users here an apology, as well as needing some human being lessons. Cement headed bully doesn't work in 2011. At least not with me.

Actually, Eddie,I believe that I have already complied quite adequately with that request.

All the best,

Brian

NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATED?: Maybe. If you understand what BiaB is doing it may help. If you have a group of sections that will repeat more than once you can consider that collection as a "chorus" and create it that way in BiaB. Then enter the number of times to repeat.

Regarding the intro. The intro is any number of bars that you set BEFORE the "chorus" section. These bars will NOT repeat.

The outro/end exists as anything outside the LAST "chorus" bar.

If you use this procedure to create the basic structure you can then UNFOLD the chorus and BiaB will present you with a traditional linear presentation.

The explanation is here:
Band-in-a-Box uses the Jazz convention that a "Chorus" is the whole song. This topic covers the terminology of:

Intro

Verse

Chorus

Bridge

Tag

You'll need to use the "Framing Controls" of Band-in-a-Box, where you set the chorus begin bar, the chorus end bar, and the number of choruses to repeat. These controls are found just below the song title window on the main screen. The defaults for a new song are [1]-[32]x[3]

INTRO
How long an intro is, and what is included, is determined by what is in the 1st number box of the framing section of Band-in-a-box. So if your first chorus starts at bar #17, you have from bar #1 to #16 (16 bars) to do what ever you want to with. You could create a standard intro, or with instruments coming on one at a time every 4 bars. You may place part markers to go from lighter to heavier feels. You may include as many bars as you need to, but this section will only play once at the beginning of your song.

VERSE/CHORUS Section
"Chorus begins at bar #17" means that everything from bar 17 to the "Chorus ends at" bar (let's choose 48) will play or repeat as many times as you have indicated in "#choruses". In this section it is a good idea to make full use of the part markers, which will give your song a different feel, especially in the bridge.

BRIDGE
Contained within the main framing section of the song between the chorus begin and chorus end bar, the bridge is usually emphasized with the use of the "B" substyle. To make your song even more interesting, Band-in-a-Box allows you to do style changes at any bar. Experiment with two styles that are similar, and later with wildly different styles.

THE TAG
The tag can also be used similarly to the intro. You can make it as long as you like. It will fall outside of the "chorus begins at" and "chorus ends at" section, and it will only play once at the end of your song, after the choruses have been played. It could consist of the chords for a bridge, a key change and chorus restatement, then a full ending. To set up the tag ending, click the [S] button found just to the right of the framing controls to bring up the Song Settings window. Place a checkmark in the Tag Exists box and then specify how you want the tag to be played by typing the bar numbers in the 'Tag jump after', 'Tag begin at', and 'Tag ends after' boxes. In our example, say we set those to 40, 49, and 56. This means that the song would play through two chorus, play the third chorus up to bar 40, then jump to bar 49 and play through to bar 56. Note: A Tag will only work if there is more than one chorus set to play. If your song only has one chorus, the a tag isn't needed.

THE 2 BAR ENDING
This automatic feature can be selected if you do not want to create your own ending with held bars/instruments and/or rests. It will add 2 bars to the song and auto-create an ending for you. You can toggle the 2-bar ending on/off in the Song Settings window just underneath the Tag settings.

In summary, the entire song that we have set up in the examples above would play the following way: 1-48, 17-48, 17-40, 49-56, and if we have turned the two bar ending on, bars 57-58 would be the ending.

Band-in-a-box 2004 and higher also have options to use repeats, 1st/2nd endings, and codas in your song. The Repeats/1st-2nd endings/codas feature is mainly used if you need to create printed charts that show those symbols. Click here for more information about this.

I'm trying to figure out a few things here. Why was this thread resurrected after 2 1/2 years? The OP hasn't posted in a year and a half.

And what did the OP say for which someone demanded an apology to all forum users, while leveling an insult at the OP?

All praise to FrankRiffs for a great explanation but something not right here. How did he, as a Newbie, find this 2 year old thread in the first place and then have the knowledge to post such a comprehensive and thorough review?
Just my thoughts
Ian

Whew. I'm glad I wasn't the only one trying to figure all of that out. I went back through the thread discussions. I didn't understand what suddenly happened to change things. I interpreted that the O/P seemed to be genuinely grateful for all of the advice given. Then something went extremely wrong. Beats me why though.

Its the Internet.

Okay, "Welcome to My World" is up, nice 'n easy, key of Bb, One, Two, One, Two, Three, Four...

Matt, take the first solo, 'K?






--Mac

That kind of stuff used to happen more frequently then recently seen here. But things have of way of cycling.

And regarding how this tread got resurrected, to now include a nice overview, is beyond me?

Thanks Dan for the clarification. I'm glad things have changed. In any case, we're all actually supposed to be working on the same team, right?

Hi All, I found this thread by searching something like "song arrangement." I had become very frustrated in trying to do the simplest thing - arrange a song, lol.

P.S. My first BiaB purchase was for the DOS version. Coming back to it after more than a decade away.

Incidentally...people should know that there are SIGNIFICANT feature differences between the Mac version of BiaB and the Windows version. Just sayin'.