An interesting question came up that caused me to investigate the effect of putting either anticipation or delay entries in the "Tick Offset" box in the "Notation Window Options".

The BIAB note about this feature says that it "Allows you to display the notes ahead or behind the actual location of the notes.
For example, the notation of jazz swing is often improved by an offset setting of about -5 because jazz music is typically played a little after the beat.”

I do not know that I agree with that statement about 'swing' being improved by "playing a little after the beat" because my school of teaching says that "pushing the beat feels not only natural but correct in jazz". Also I have always found and been taught that for rhythm you can achieve maximum swing by having the bass pushing and the drums dead set in the middle of the beat. And frankly that is what I hear from the really good jazz groups. The exceptions to this might be the Basie band where tunes like "Lil' Darling have the sections playing behind the beat. But I don't hear the rhythm section doing the same thing. The rhythm section in the Basie band is usually dead-set in the centre of the beat.

And that requirement of having only one or some instrument pushing or delaying is where I now have some questions. This is not the first time we have talked about this 'anticipation and delay' thing on this forum and I swear the advice I was given at the time said it was possible to set up a different degree of push for different instruments. I have not experimented with this for a long time because I have never had a big problem with 'swing' since RealTracks were introduced. However, I find that you now cannot have different settings for Base, Piano, Drums, Guitar, Strings, Melody & Soloist as far as Tick Offset is concerned. If you put an entry in 'Notation Windows Options' for Bass it carries through into the other instrument Windows.

So, am I dreaming about thinking you could once do this? I really think it was/is a good feature! I even have a setting of '5' marked for the Bass in my typical options entries folder that I have been keeping since I first had BIAB.

Is it possible that you can achieve the same single instrument, or group of instruments, anticipation or delay alteration somewhere else in the BIAB settings?

I am also puzzled by the “Auto Set Tick Offset” box which says, “If enabled, Band-in-a-Box will automatically determine the tick offset by analysing the notes on the track.” I would ask which track? And what criteria does it use to make these decisions?

I am aware that you can also push chords by 1/8 and 1/16 but I do not think this feature gives the fine degree of control for which I was looking.

Grah Jive Talk
"Don't worry baby, they'll swing their arses off."