I was planning to skip 2018 until I watched the chord wizard video. I upgraded today.

I must say my first experience was really unsettling with the GUI misbehaving badly. And nothing I was looking at matched the video. Eventually I stumbled upon the "Fullscreen Chordsheet View" in the Windows menu. Once I checked that, my screen matched the video and the GUI worked a lot better. I suppose that mode has been available for awhile, but I never used it. It is evident to me that the non-fullscreen mode is not very well tested. I stumbled on numerous serious bugs inside the first five minutes. But I think I can learn to use the fullscreen mode all the time, and that seems a lot more stable.

This is life with BIAB -- and I say that in a loving way, considering I've probably had more than a dozen BIAB versions. The program function is amazing and the GUI is really a pain. I am hopeful that by using the fullscreen mode I will be closer to the path that gets better testing.

Now the chord wizard ... Of course it isn't perfect, but I have tried it on 4 widely varied pop and jazz songs this evening and it works better than I expected. The automatic bar detection isn't quite as heuristic as I had hoped, but it is pretty easy to insert a bunch of bar lines manually. There is room for improvement there, but it isn't a big problem.

Detecting the chords is really impressive. I think in the best case, the wizard got 80-90% of them reasonable (not exactly the same spelling I would give the chords, but close enough for a BIAB style to sound like the song.) In the worst case, it was probably 60-70% good.

That sounds like a low number, but it is quite easy to go into the chord sheet to change the chords I don't like. I think this is a potentially very useful work flow.

I did not try any songs that had really dense harmonies or intricate rhythms. I expect it would not really be worth the trouble in those cases, but I could be pleasantly surprised.

I can see many uses for this capability. My particular interest is rather specialized. I often write arrangements for various ensembles -- most often jazz big band. I like to use BIAB in the early stages to preview a structure for the arrangement. I use MIDI-based styles. Once I have the harmonies and chart sequence sounding right, I transfer the basic MIDI tracks (piano, bass, guitar, drums, maybe strings) into Finale so I will have a realistic rhythm section bed. From there, I write the horn parts. By the time I have worked the chart in BIAB, I pretty much know what I want the horns to do, so the scoring usually goes fast.

And in the final stages, I simplify the rhythm section MIDI as needed to print parts that work for those instruments.

That may be the end, but if we need a realistic rendering, then I'll send all the Finale stuff into a DAW where I can give the sound a lot more polish. This may seem complicated, but it actually flows rather nicely and allows me to be more creative by using BIAB at the outset where I can try more ideas quickly.

In the past, the first step of the process has been very manual. If it is a standard tune with a lead sheet available, then I simply enter the chords into BIAB and develop the structure from there. If there is no lead sheet available (say, if covering a pop tune), then I will have to transcribe the chords by ear. That's where the chord wizard can save me some time, even if it only gets the chords 75% right.

It is a big step forward, even if not perfect.

Last edited by Pumps2; 12/23/17 08:54 PM.
BIAB: 2024 UltraPak
DAWs: StudioOne 5 Pro, Cubase 15 Pro
Audio: Scarlett 18i20
OS: Win10 64-bit CPU: Haswell 4790 Mem: 24 GB Vid: GTX-760Ti

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