Trevor,

When pedal point is used classically, a note or two remains constant while the harmony changes. With this approach in mind, I set-up BIAB to change chords over a pedal point.

To do that I entered the following chords.



As you can see, I set chord settings on the F chord so that the C bass played for 3 bars. This means that it played while the chords change to Dm and G7. This is similar to how classic musicians would use it.

I set it this way because, from a classical perspective, pedal point is approached by consonance and ended by consonance. In between these ends, dissonance features. Even though it seems that I have a pedal point for only three bars, since the starting chord is C, and the pedal is C, bar 1 is actually the consonant beginning bar. Bars 2, 3, 4 are the dissonant bars and bar 5 returns to consonance. Thus, in the example above, pedal point is really over 5 bars (although to get BIAB to do it, the setting is applied for 3 bars as shown above).

With the above set, all worked well. Although bar 1 played more than the required C bass, it still wasn't too bad.

To see what happens after the three bars, I removed the C chord in bar 5. Below is what resulted (I used a midi style). This seems to reinforce that the pedal point bass is ok because, in bar 5, the bass reverted back to G and the 3-bar setting had ended. I haven't yet tried this with a Realtrack bass.



Hope this adds some extra insight.

Regards,
Noel

MY SONGS...
Audiophile BIAB 2025