I think your first statement is correct; I don't know how to do that either. You can print out just the chords.
This topic has been raised before. I even have a vague memory of Peter Gannon commenting something about the subject, but it was years ago and I think it was more focused on the reverse: how to enter lyrics or chords into BIAB from a prepared text file.
Unless someone else answers here how to do it, I think you should indeed put this in the Wishlist.
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.
Thanks Matt, over the years there have been a handful of times I needed this feature. Two of those times have been in this week. I will take it to the wish list.
and scroll down to jerrypettit's workaround from 2011. I just tried it and it works fine.
Good luck! LLOYD S
From Jerry long ago... If you go to the notation window and add a lyric (I just insert a letter "X" at the very beginning), then go to Lyrics/Copy Lyrics to Clipboard, you'll get the chords AND the lyric--and they are finally "pasteable" as text to Notepad, or WordPad, or whatever
That is indeed a good workaround for me. Thanks for looking this oldy up.
and scroll down to jerrypettit's workaround from 2011. I just tried it and it works fine.
Good luck! LLOYD S
Lloyd,
Thanks for mentioning this. It was not something that I had tried or was aware of. As I've said a few times in the forums, there's always something new to learn in BIAB.
To try it just Import the midi to the melody or soloist track. It will only give 64 bars of lyrics (bar numbers and beats) at the moment. After you paste it Edit > Replace "- " without the "" so you just want to remove all instances of the hyphen an the blank space after it.
Let me know if you can use it if so I will make more bars.
Write a Metronome track in RealBand starting @ bar 1 ending @ ??? Select all notes in piano roll Hold shift and drag the front of the first note to just before beat 1 so all note will be just before the beat Drag export or save midi track
\1 x x x \2 x x x \3 x x x \4 x x x \5 x x x \6 x x x \7 x x x \8 x x x \9 x x x \1\0 x x x \1\1 x x x \1\2 x x x \1\3 x x x \1\4 x x x \1\5 x x x \1\6 x x x \1\7 x x x \1\8 x x x \1\9 x x x \2\0 x x x \2\1 x x x \2\2 x x x \2\3 x x x \2\4 x x x \2\5 x x x \2\6 x x x \2\7 x x x \2\8 x x x \2\9 x x x \3\0 x x x \3\1 x x x \3\2 x x x \3\3 x x x \3\4 x x x \3\5 x x x \3\6 x x x \3\7 x x x \3\8 x x x \3\9 x x x \4\0 x x x \4\1 x x x \4\2 x x x \4\3 x x x \4\4 x x x \4\5 x x x \4\6 x x x \4\7 x x x \4\8 x x x \4\9 x x x \5\0 x x x \5\1 x x x \5\2 x x x \5\3 x x x \5\4 x x \5\5 x x x \5\6 x x x \5\7 x x x \5\8 x x x \5\9 x x x \6\0 x x x \6\1 x x x \6\2 x x x \6\3 x x x \6\4 x x x
(just duplicate the above and change the bar numbers to add more)
Karakan > Karaoke > Export as MIDI file with lyrics.
Biab > File > Import Melody from MIDI file Enter how many bars from the long midi file you made that you want to Import to match the song's bars, you can Edit > Song form > Unfold to make it easy.
If you enter the bar numbers and beats lyrics horizontally they will show correctly in the big Lyrics window.
Code:
\1 x x x \2 x x x \3 x x x \4 x x x \5 x x x \6 x x x \7 x x x \8 x x x \9 x x x \1\0 x x x \1\1 x x x \1\2 x x x \1\3 x x x \1\4 x x x \1\5 x x x \1\6 x x x \1\7 x x x \1\8 x x x \1\9 x x x \2\0 x x x \2\1 x x x \2\2 x x x \2\3 x x x \2\4 x x x
And they will paste left to right.
1 [D] x x x 2 [F#m] x x x 3 [G] x x x 4 [A] x x x 5 [D] x x x 6 [F#m] x
x x 7 [G] x x x 8 [A] x x x 9 [Bm] x x x 10 [F#m] x x x 11 [G] x x x 12 [D]
x x x 13 [Bm] x x x 14 [F#m] x x x 15 [G] x x x 16 [A] x x x 17 [D]
x x x 18 [F#m] x x x 19 [G] x x x 20 [A] x x x 21 [D] x x x 22 [F#m] x
Inspired by your 'out of the (band in a) box' thinking, I thought I'd play around by thinking within the box (I'm not in your league when it comes to being creative).
I would never have worked this out for myself if you hadn't given me the leg-up to begin with.
What I did was as follows...
1. I entered a chord progression.
2. In bar 1, I entered quarter notes on each beat in Notation Editor.
3. I then put an x for the lyric of each note.
4. Using "Edit | Copy Special | Copy from... to..." I then copied bar 1 to bar 2 (only the Melody and the Lyrics were checked for copying).
5. I then copied bars 1 and 2 to bars 3 and 4. Then bars 1 to 4 to bars 5 - 8, etc. When I had 8 bars, I used that as the block to copy to the rest of the song. (It took around 5 minutes.)
6. After that, I copied the lyrics to the Clipboard (setting the left margin to 0 characters) and then pasted from the Clipboard into LibreOffice.
7. In LibreOffice, I needed to format the lyrics a little so that I had four bars per line. That wasn't either time consuming or difficult, though.
8. Lastly, I replaced the 'x' character with the '/' character.
The '/' character can be used in BIAB for lyrics so I could have used it there rather than replace it in LibreOffice. It's worth noting, though, that the '/' doesn't show up in the Big Lyrics Window.
Below is what I had in LibreOffice word-processor at the end of the journey (thank you for the inspiration, Pipeline)...
Yes that's an easier way if you don't need the bar numbers. You can just multiply that up to 255 bars, save it as a midi, that way you will have it for any song by importing only the number of bars you need from the 255 bar midi file. Then just do a 3/4 one.
Here's some 4/4 3/4 chord copy lyrics you can try, set import to number of bars (it still imports all the lyric events though but you can delete then in Notepad). The first character is before the chord but you can correct it. You can change the beat lyric | with whatever you like, in Notepad > Edit > Replace > Find what | Replace with / > Replace All. You can use ASCII by holding the Alt key down and typing the ASCII code, for ƒ hold the Alt key and type 159
Try it out you maybe able to improve on it, I will make up one with bar numbers next.
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