I'll step slowly through what I'm doing to see if what goes wrong gives clues.

My mxl file has a repeating four-bar vamp to begin, a 16-bar chorus with a jump to tag after bar 14 of the chorus and a repeating four-bar vamp to finish.

As I've not yet found any reliable way to make the vamps loop, I insert 8 bars before bar 3, highlight bars 1&2 and and use copy from ... to to fill the new bars with the notes and chords. I copy everything but the bar settings. So far everything seems fine.

I use Edit->Song Form->Settings->Title/Chorus to set the chorus start (bar 13) and end (bar 28), click OK, then click Cancel as I can't yet set the tag as I have only one chorus. End has now moved forwards to bar 29 where the tag is to start and I have some trailing greyed-out bars, probably two, the original ending.

I now set the choruses to 2 (I'll eventually want more ... maybe I should set more right now?) and answer Yes to adjust the melody. Again, so far everything seems fine. Hmm ... I'me running though this again to check and this time it did _not_ ask about adjusting the melody. (I was repeating the process to identify when some further greyed bars were added. Might that have been the moment? I don't know.) It still seems to be working OK.

I insert 8 bars before bar 31, highlight bars 29 & 30 and copy from...to to bar 31 four times ... Ah, this may be part of the problem ... I'm in the ending for this copy, but the dialog shows chorus #1 which has already ended before this point.

After this, the song structure has changed ... the chorus is extended from 28 bar 38. Undo the change.

Try the same using chorus 2 instead of chorus 1 ... same outcome. Undo change.

Ditto with chorus 3(?), song structure changes to chorus end at 32. This is clearly not going to play ball. Give up, start over.

-----8<-----

This time I'll add both vamp repeats before changing anything else.

Vamps ... chorus ... vamps OK.


Again I use Edit->Song Form->Settings->Title/Chorus to set the chorus start (b13) and end (b28), click OK, then click Cancel as I can't yet set the tag as I have only one chorus. End has now moved forwards to bar 29 where the tag is to start and I have some trailing greyed-out bars, probably ten, the last two thirds of the closing vamp and the original ending.

I set choruses to two and answer the Yes to adjust melody track to new # of chorus. Things still seem OK, though of course it's still stoppping 1/3 way through the end vamping.

I use Edit->Song Form->Settings and the ending options: Tag exists checked, Tag after bar 26, Tag begins at bar 29, Tag ends after bar 40. I leave everything else on this dialog untouched ... maybe I need to set some other things here?

It's copied the notes from bars 27 and 28 into bars 29 and 30, despite me checking "tag exists". That seems(!) wrong to me, however, let's carry on.

I don't want the copy of bars 27 & 28, so I delete them, but the tag start then moves to bar 27, which is not correct. I answer Cancel to both "There are existing notes..." and "there are existing lyrics..." and Undo.

I try to copy From...to bars 31 and 32 to bars 29 and 30, but the chorus-end moves from bar 28 to bar 30, which is not corrent. Undo.

I select bar 29 and go to notation editting mode. I've tried copying notes to here before and they just seem not to happen, so I delete all the existing notes in bars 29 & 30. There are some leftover decorations that I ignore for now.

I now try to enter the vamp manually. The first notes I enter on beat 1 set to eight notes, not the usual long notes ... odd. The notes on the second beat set long, though only 5 beats ... I'm not sure if that's as expected, though it too seems odd to me. I go to staff roll mode ... here the 1/8th notes look like the 1/2 notes I expected, so I leave them alone. Other times I've done this, they haven't and I've adjusted them either here of by note edit. There are two notes and they sometimes show different lengths here and/or in note edit. I try to "edit note" the second pair of notes, None change appearance, but the staff roll shows sensible durations. It plays as expected, subject to the extra two bars of vamp for the end, rather than BIAB's original ending.

Things seem OK, so I save the file at this point.

At this point, out of curiosity, I use F5 to look at the settings. Chorus #1 has stars. I don't know why.

I set the number of choruses to 6 from the main window and answer Yes to OK to adjust melody. Again it continues to play though as expected.

I go to the first bar and press F5, select chorus 2 and Mute the melody, then select chorus 6, set melody back to normal and click OK.

Ohh ... the melody is not muting even now. I'd planned to add realtrack soloists next, but it already has a problem. Oh! I've also just had a short and quite loud burst of white noise. I have no idea why or from where ... maybe something else entirely.

I've saved this copy for now. I may try plaing with the F5 options again, but it didn't help before...

Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2025 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
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