In the attached song I wrote on both the treble and bass staffs. When I play the song back I hear both staffs. Sometimes I would like to only hear one of the staffs. Is it possible to play back only one of the staffs at a time? It sounds like the audio has been saved to just one track. The mixer panel show both staffs being played by only one instrument.I would like to switch between the two staffs. I hope I don't have to renotate another track with just the bass line on it? Simple guidance will be appreciated since I have never worked with a music composition program before.
It looks like you've notated the music on the Melody Track. Because of this, everything is on the same midi channel and both bass and treble will play.
Some more information ...
When in Notation Mode, the Melody Track is the button that's on the left of the pair that I've highlighted above. The Soloist Track is the button that's on the right. Whichever button you click, will set the Notation Mode editor to work on that track.
If you follow the 1, 2, 3 in the image below, it's possible to copy the Melody Track to the Soloist track.
Once the notation is located on the Soloist track, you'll be able to delete one of the clefs. You'll also be able to delete the other clef of notes that's on the Melody Track. That should give you what you need.
Before doing this, though, save the song with a new name as that will allow you to return to the original at any time.
I have copied the melody track to the soloist track easily. I, however, can not find option of deleting either of the two clefs? Where is that option found? Once found and implemented I will save each clef version as its own separate song? I can then play back each clef as I choose? I could also mute each clef somehow when I wanted to listen to the other? Even now muting the soloist track on the mixer panel still mutes both clefs.
Thank you Noel for being so patient with my inexperience. I am a good, all be it slow, learner. I hope to be able to return the favor to someone who has similar questions in the future. Everyone on this forum has been very helpful.
My apologies. I should have been a little more thorough with the explanation.
There is no command for deleting a clef.
As an aside, the staves that you see in notation mode is what's called the Grand Staff. It's actually a single staff (which is how BIAB uses it for note entry). Under usual circumstances, musicians use only one section of this staff - most commonly the bass or the treble but there are also regions defined by alto, tenor and soprano clefs as well.
Back to deleting either bass or treble notes ...
There are a couple of ways to do this.
ONE Enter into Editable Notation Mode, hold the "DEL" key of the computer keyboard down and click on the notes you want to delete.
TWO 1. Enter into Piano Roll Mode.
2. Compress the horizontal display so that more notes are available on-screen. These buttons are on the bottom right corner of the screen. (The notes are represented by rectangular blocks on a pitch grid.)
3. From a recent post you made, I believe you have C6 entered as the note that separates the bass and treble clefs. If that's the case and if you want to delete bass notes, drag the mouse cursor around notes below C6 to select them.
4. Hit DEL on the computer keyboard. (If you accidentally delete some notes and you want to undelete them, CRTL+Z is a handy shortcut to keep in mind.)
Using Piano Roll is my preferred way to operate. It only takes a minute or so to delete a huge number of notes.
Hope this helps, Noel
P.S. There's nothing wrong with inexperience. We all drove that boat at some point in time
Hi Noel, I have another novice oddity in my song. I used the piano roll to highlight and delete the upper (C5+) melody line. The bars disappeared. I saved the song. When I went back to notation function sections of the melody notes were still there. They were scattered throughout the measures. Most of the notes were missing but many segments were still there? When I played the song back the complete melody line was still there. It was acting as if I had done nothing? I reopened the song under piano roll function and the notes are still completely missing? No random segments like what appeared in the notation function. What have I done incorrectly?
One is that maybe the track is frozen. If that's the case then sound will still be present.
A second possibility is that maybe you rendered and audio file and what you are hearing is the audio file.
To check this second thought out, on the Track menu, select "Audio" (it's next to the mixer) and see if you can either mute it or kill it. Killing it will delete it from the hard drive if it is present.
You, again, have given me some insight. I think I may be being unrealistic in my expectations of BIAB. Being a newbie I am exploring what the program can and can not do. In an attempt to let the software do most of my work I may be creating my own problems. I have a MIDI file of this tango. It has both a bass and melody line. I was hoping I could strip the melody part away and just have the bass line that I could accompany with my hammered dulcimer. I would also add some RealTracks as backup. I am learning that maybe I can't expect to be able to strip away one or the other MIDI parts? I may be better off simply notating the bass line in just by itself in a new file. It is a simple bass line with two parts repeated throughout the song. Once I have the bass pattern notated once, I will copy and paste the pattern in the measures for the entire song. Is this a better approach? I had thought that importing a MIDI file, instead of an mp3 file, version would be easiest but apparently not? Thanks again for your guidance and patience!
Ahhh ... a midi file ... That's probably why what I explained has not worked fully. I made no allowance for a midi file. This is moving into more advanced territory now.
Matt is correct. Piano roll will cater for this. Here's a little more information that might also be useful.
When you import a midi file you can import it to either the Melody track or the Soloist track (those two tracks I've mentioned in an above post).
If the file is recorded on multiple midi channels, the Melody and Soloist tracks become multi-channel midi sequencers and you can use the green Sequencer button (see below) to control those channels.
Depending on how your tango midi file was prepared, it might be that the treble clef is on one channel and the bass clef is on another channel. Once the midi file is loaded, if you open the sequencer button, it will be easy to see this because multiple channels will be listed. If this is the case, it's very easy to disengage the channel you don't want. By loading the midi file into the Melody track and also into the Soloist track, it would be possible to play the different channels independently and you could accomplish what you want.
Below is a link to a short video clip from PG Music on how to use the Sequencer.
If, however, the bass and the treble clefs are recorded on a single midi channel then using the Piano Roll to delete the notes would be the quickest way.
After looking at the MIDI track in the sequencer it appears to have both the melody and bass lines on one channel. I again have tried to use the Piano Roll option to delete the melody line. It still leaves me with random measures with notes still there. Since I only want to have a simple bass line for me to accompany, it seems like it will be easiest for me simply to notate the bass clef myself and not try to import the MIDI file.
Thanks for all of your ideas---I'm learning as I go. The seat of my pants are wearing thin!
The sequencer tells me that the melody and bass lines are embedded on the one MIDI track and will not separate. So I will simply notate the bass line and leave it at that.
If you scroll back up to my image of the Piano Roll, you can see that the range of notes shown on the screen is from the B below C5 to the F above C6.
The reason that some notes are still playing after the deleting process could be because there are notes outside the above range. To access those notes, it's necessary to use the vertical scroll bar on the right side of the Piano Roll window.
Hope this helps, Noel.
P.S. During the course of this thread, you've gone on an impressive learning journey! Far beyond 'newbie'. In my opinion, how you've approached this is definitely the best way to learn the intricacies of BIAB.
OK. In case it helps for the future, there are two standards for MIDI files: Type 1 and Type 0. Type 0 has all instruments on one track, so that sounds like what you have. It is up to the program that created the file to save it as a Type 1.
I know there are converters to take a Type 1 to a Type 0 (which is required by some keyboards etc.) but I am not aware of a converter to go the other way (that is, if the SEQ button doesn't work).
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
I had used the vertical scrolling already to limited avail. Some random notes are still visible and playing. Life and music would not be fun if it weren't also confusing and frustrating.
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