PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows How to create a Stop in BIAB

You can do this a couple of ways; you'll need to understand how BIAB implements what it calls Rests, Shots, and Holds.

If you want everyone in the band to just play a hit (shot) right on beat one and then not come back in until the next bar, then you would just implement a shot on the chord on beat 1 (see below).

If you want the band to just stop playing after beat one, then you can implement a rest on beats two, three, and four, and then come back in on beat one of the next bar.

For all three, (rests, shots, and holds), once you set it, it remains in effect until the next entered chord.

Rests - implemented with a single period after the chord name. So in your case, lets say the chord for the first bar is a D and the chord in the second bar is a G. What you would do is enter a D on the first beat (to play a D chord) and then a D-period (D.) on the second back to tell all the instruments to rest. Then in the next bar, enter a G chord on the first beat. What you will hear is: | Play D-rest-rest-rest | Play G ... |

Shots - implemented with a double period after the chord name. So in your case (instead of doing the above), you would enter a D-double period on beat one (D..) of the first bar and then a G chord on the first beat of the next bar. This will play a shot (hit) on the first beat and all instruments will rest until it sees the G chord on the first beat of the next bar.

Holds - this isn't what you are asking about, but you should know the capability. Holds are implemented with a triple period ofter the chord name. So if instead of the shot in the example above, you instead entered D-triple period on beat one (D...), instead of hitting a shot on that beat, all the instruments will just hold the chord until it finds the G in the next bar.

And now for more information than you even asked for, but should know:

Rests, shots, and holds can be modified even further by excluding specific instruments. You do this by putting the legacy instrument (track) names (indicated by a single letter for each instrument) after the dot(s). The legacy instruments names (in the order they appear in the radio buttons across the top are B for Bass, D for Drums, P for Piano, G for Guitar, and S for Strings. Since BIAB allows you to assign any instrument to the tracks, these may not be what you see on those tracks, but you just have to know this. So even if you have a Fiddle (indicated by an "F") on the Strings Track, you still need to use the letter "S".

So, if you implement a shot on beat one of the bar, but you want the drums to keep playing, you would enter a D after the period (D..d), which means play the "D" chord, and all instruments play a shot except the drums (which will keep on playing). If you want to also let the guitar track keep playing along with the drums, just add both letters after the dots. So, if you entered D..dg, then the instruments on the bass, piano, and strings track will play a shot, but the drums and guitar will keep playing their normal riffs.

You can only do rests, shots, and holds on the accompaniment tracks; not on the melody or soloist tracks.

You can read more about rests, shots, and holds in the PDF user manual on about page 133, or just look it up in the help file.

Hope this helps and hopefully didn't make your head explode. This is a great feature to make your songs more musical.