Noel, thanks for taking the time to give such comprehensive, clear and useful responses to my questions. That's really very kind.

CTRL+T does indeed show a screen that is more familiar, though even that's more modern and more complicated than the version I had all those years ago. In those days, one of the clickable icons on the menu bas was a hippy with long hair and a headband!

Part of my problem is unfamiliarity with the terminology. The Notation View toggles between what I regard as the 'Bar Chords' page, where I can quickly get the structure of the song laid down, and a 'Music Score' page, where I now easily add a melody, thanks.

The Mixer also appeared after CTRL+T, and this gave me the track 'M' & 'S' buttons I know. Again thanks.

So, next question:

4. I laid down a simple melody with individual sings notes, 4 to the bar. I then decided I wanted to change instruments so I used the mixer desk and right clicked on the instrument name, picked a RealTracks piona that sounded great on audition. I pressed 'play' and it was still the original instrument, so i figued I had to re-generate the song to get the instrument change to take effect... Except that it over-wrote the simple notes of my melody with a virtuoso elaborate piano part. So again I'm missing something here - how to change instruments without getting my original melody over-written?

5. If I use the same method to change to a Midi patch instrument instead. BIAB doggedly hangs onto the original RealTrack instrument. Even if I switch to the Patches tab from the Mixer and use the dropdown, I can change between RealTracks instruments but I can't select a midi patch instead. (Same happens if I right click on the 'Melody' radio button at the top (as per the Help page)).

6. Exporting Midi: If I export a Midi file, playback from Windows is silect, apart from the lead-in count. I'm guessing this is because my song consists of Realtracks and these cannot be 'mapped' to Midi equivalents. If so I'm back to Q5. How do I set Midi intruments to allow a Midi export (MS GS Wavtable and GM2).

7. Exporting MP3: File > Save Special >.mp3> "MySong" > Save... 'Rendering File...' > Select output format [?] > Name = untitled [but I just gave it a name and the dropdown contains nothing... > Save As* > [Format name - "blah"] > OK > MPEG3/56 kb > OK... "Driver cannot do the requested conversion" [very helpful!]. It actually creates an MP3 file called "MySong" (not "Blah"), but it's 0 bytes. *(Same happens if I don't create a 'Format name' and Save As, but just hit OK). The Help topic seems to just cover .wav, which is too big. I can sucessfully export .wma, but this is then OS-dependent, somp3 is what I want.

I have the LAME codec installed and this works fine in Audacity creating MP3 files OK. Does BIAB need a different codec/driver for MP3 creation, or is there something else I'm missing?

Again any help gratefully received. Thanks for your patience.


Last edited by Marlin; 05/20/18 01:43 AM.