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Bluegrass employs a lot of half (two-beat) measures to alter the rhythmic feel of a song. Yet, when I program those measures in, they seems to confuse whatever RealTracks set I'm using. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a way around it?
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Could you give us some more information on what Real Tracks and Style you are using?
Also, what version of BiaB?
That would assist to check further.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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Bluegrass employs a lot of half (two-beat) measures to alter the rhythmic feel of a song. Yet, when I program those measures in, they seems to confuse whatever RealTracks set I'm using. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a way around it?
Yes, I have experienced something similar what you describe. Try this... To get the Realtrack back on track, put a chord on beat 3 in the cell that you've set as 2 beats. This chord doesn't play (so it doesn't matter what it is), but it helps realign the Realtrack generation. If you have BIAB 2017, the chord on beat 3 in a 2-beat bar will be gray to show that it is inactive. This is the beat to use. Regards, Noel
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2026
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Could you give us some more information on what Real Tracks and Style you are using?
Also, what version of BiaB?
That would assist to check further. I'm running 2017 BIAB on a MacBook Pro. I use "_BG_Band" a lot and swap in "_BG_BDFS" (fiddle), "_BG_BDGS" (guitar), and "BG_BDMS" (mandolin) when I want a soloist.
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Bluegrass employs a lot of half (two-beat) measures to alter the rhythmic feel of a song. Yet, when I program those measures in, they seems to confuse whatever RealTracks set I'm using. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a way around it?
Yes, I have experienced something similar what you describe. Try this... To get the Realtrack back on track, put a chord on beat 3 in the cell that you've set as 2 beats. This chord doesn't play (so it doesn't matter what it is), but it helps realign the Realtrack generation. If you have BIAB 2017, the chord on beat 3 in a 2-beat bar will be gray to show that it is inactive. This is the beat to use. Regards, Noel Sorry, but this doesn't work. I get two beats of silence, then the RealTrack musicians are two beats ahead of the actual chord change.
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If anyone is willing to try this, here's a simple experiment. Use _BG_BAND.STY as the style. Key = G; Tempo = 130; # bars = 9.
1) G
2) C
3) G
4) D
5) G
6) C
7) G D
8) G
9) G
Bar 9 is set to 2 beats using the Bar Settings feature. Everything else is standard 4 beats/bar.
When I do this, I get a pause during playback at the end of the chorus, and the instruments are out of alignment with the chords after that.
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If anyone is willing to try this, here's a simple experiment. Use _BG_BAND.STY as the style. Key = G; Tempo = 130; # bars = 9.
1) G
2) C
3) G
4) D
5) G
6) C
7) G D
8) G
9) G
Bar 9 is set to 2 beats using the Bar Settings feature. Everything else is standard 4 beats/bar.
When I do this, I get a pause during playback at the end of the chorus, and the instruments are out of alignment with the chords after that.
Thanks for this. After setting bar 9 to 2 beats, did you set bar 10 back to 4 beats? Also... after entering chords on beat 3 in a 2-beat bar, all tracks need to be unfrozen and the song regenerated for the chord(s) to take effect. Lastly, I've put your above chord progression together and set bar 9 as 2 beats and bar 10 back to 4 beats. I then added an Eb chord on beat 3 of bar 9. After generating the song, it played fine for me (BIAB 2017 build 470). When you get a chance, can you try the chordsheet that I put together? You can download it from the link below. I'm interested in knowing if it works for you. Test SGU file with 2/4 in bar 9Regards, Noel P.S. I notice that bar 9 is the last bar of your song. Do you have multiple choruses by any chance?
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2026
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Hi Slick Salmon,
Time signature changes when using RealTracks have been doing this in the Mac version for a while.
We don't have an immediate fix for you (sorry), but I'll check to make sure the development team is aware of the issue.
Thanks
Kent
PG Music
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Noel96, your file works perfectly. When I do it myself as a repeating 9 bar chorus with a 2-beat measure in bar 9, the problem persists regardless of whether I set bar 1 to 4 beats or not. However, if I do the tune as a continuous 18 bar chorus, setting bar 9 to 2 beats and bar 10 back to 4 beats, everything works perfectly. Apparently, the program gets confused when the 2 beat bar is the last measure of a chorus, but it doesn't mind if an internal bar is 2 beats. This is going to be tricky to program, since bluegrass routinely employs 2 beat measures at the end of a verse.
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Hi Slick Salmon,
If Noel made the test song with the Windows version, it will likely play fine on a Mac. When we tested this bug, we found that the difficulty generating RealTracks with time signature changes only came up if the song was created with the Mac version.
Thanks
Kent
PG Music
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Noel96, your file works perfectly. When I do it myself as a repeating 9 bar chorus with a 2-beat measure in bar 9, the problem persists regardless of whether I set bar 1 to 4 beats or not. However, if I do the tune as a continuous 18 bar chorus, setting bar 9 to 2 beats and bar 10 back to 4 beats, everything works perfectly. Apparently, the program gets confused when the 2 beat bar is the last measure of a chorus, but it doesn't mind if an internal bar is 2 beats. This is going to be tricky to program, since bluegrass routinely employs 2 beat measures at the end of a verse.
I'm glad to read it worked. If your song is less than 255 bars long, why not set it out as a linear progression rather than using repeats or multiple choruses. That's what I always do. I like the control that it gives me to add part markers where I like. If you want to use multple choruses, though... .... have you tried setting (say) bars 1 to 4 as the introduction and then have the song repeat using bars 5 - 14. I've done that in the songfile that you can download from the link below. See how it goes. Since the song repeats from bar 5, I've set that to 4 beats. Test file (2) - with introRegards, Noel
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2026
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Noel -- I wasn't able to play your second file, because it crashed my program. I don't know why, since your first file ran just fine. Given Kent's comment, I'm becoming increasingly convinced the BIAB is not happy running on a Mac. Nonetheless, the structure you used with the four intro bars is one I use all the time, so I'm familiar with it.
As for laying out tunes as one long chorus rather than repeating choruses, I just don't know the correct approach. The program seemingly wants you to use repeating choruses and provides a wide assortment of tools (eg., jumps, sections, first/ second endings, etc) that make traditional composition possible. It certainly make printing chord sheets a lot easier. On the other hand, the way the program manages soloists makes such a layout challenging. I haven't landed on a comfortable approach.
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Hi Slick Salmon,
If Noel made the test song with the Windows version, it will likely play fine on a Mac. When we tested this bug, we found that the difficulty generating RealTracks with time signature changes only came up if the song was created with the Mac version.
Thanks
Kent
PG Music Just for clarification, Kent is correct. The fix that Noel provided initially appeared to work, but doesn't reliably do so. The Mac version of BIAB is unable to handle time signature changes with RealTracks. Frankly, without this ability, the utility of this program for me is significantly compromised. I'm going to have to switch to a PC version.
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As for laying out tunes as one long chorus rather than repeating choruses, I just don't know the correct approach. The program seemingly wants you to use repeating choruses and provides a wide assortment of tools (eg., jumps, sections, first/ second endings, etc) that make traditional composition possible. It certainly make printing chord sheets a lot easier. On the other hand, the way the program manages soloists makes such a layout challenging. I haven't landed on a comfortable approach.
To lay out a song a single chorus is just a matter of (a) setting the number of choruses to '1' and (b) manually adding part markers to define the various sections of a song. Part markers are obtained by clicking on bar numbers. The first click will put a blue box around the bar number, the second click changes the box to green and the third click removes the part marker. - Blue part markers tell BIAB to create a backing that is simpler and with less energy. These are usually well suited to verses.
- Green part markers tell BIAB to create a backing that has more rhythmical and performance energy. I use these for choruses.
To see these in action, simply open up one of your songs that uses multiple choruses (by 'chorus' I mean 'once through the entire song') and then go to "Edit | Song Form Unfold" and the song will be turned into a single chorus song, 'once through' format. This is linear format. EXAMPLE SONG
Let's say the below is the song that I want to generate.
1. Time signature: 4/4
2. Key signature; C
3. Intro: 4 bars
4. Verse 1: 8 bars
5. Chorus: 8 bars with 2 beat bar following the 8th bar (i.e. in 9th bar)
6. Verse 2: 8 bars
7. Chorus: 8 bars with 2 beat bar following the 8th bar (i.e. in 9th bar)
8. Repeat Chorus
I'd set the "number of choruses" to '1' and then layout the song as shown in the following SGU file. link to example songGiven that my original files with the bar changes worked for you, this one should work, too. The Eb chords are on non-playing positions in the 2-beat bar. They should just help to re-align the Realtracks for the change back to 4-beats in the following bar. Let us know how you go. All the best, Noel
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2026
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Thanks for sticking with this Noel, but laying out tunes as one long chorus isn't helping. I got it to work once, but haven't been successful after that. Kent is saying that it's a fundamental problem with the Mac version of BIAB, and I'm inclined to believe him. I'm working with customer support to try to transfer all my work to a PC. I'd rather work on a Mac, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I don't know what else to do. It's either that or abandon the program altogether.
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Just one very last thought...
Rather than use my file, have you tried creating your own by starting with a brand new, blank chordsheet.
To do this....
1. Select "File | New". (Don't simply delete the chords on an existing chord sheet. It's important to create a brand new, blank one.
2. Now select a style, tempo.
3. Set number of choruses to 1.
4. Add a couple of 2-beat bar mid-sheet.
5. On beat three of the 2-beat bar, put in some chord (it won't play).
6. Make the subsequent bar 4 beats.
7. Generate and play.
Does that bring any joy?
Regards,
Noel
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2026
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