I admit it, I am a newbie here. But for some reason I just can't wrap my head around the "repeat" functionality in BIB.
When I do a File/New I get a song with a 32 bar repeat. this is driving me crazy tonight. I know there is a way to turn this off in a song, but I have spent over half an hour trying to figure how to do it (again) rather than making music and I am feeling really frustrated.
What I am missing here? Is there a tutorial or blog post I can view to figure out how repeats work so I can adapt my workflow rather than fighting it?
Thanks in advance, Lou
BIAB 2020 MegaPak Sonar Artist Studio One Professional PreSonus AudioBox/iTwo Spectrasonics Keyscape & Trilian Roland D50 Proteus1/XR Korg X5DR Roland TD10
There are two main items which can contribute to a song / chorus repeating.
1: The number of choruses of the song.
2: The repeat indicator setting.
I've shown both below. Hope this helps:
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.
Windows 10 (64bit) M-Audio Fast Track Pro, Band in a Box 2025, Cubase 14, Cakewalk and far too many VST plugins that I probably don't need or will ever use
A lot of people including myself prefer to work this way.
From the edit menu-song form-Unfold (convert to 1 big chorus)
You can add or subtract as many bars as you like this way as well.
THIS ^^^^^^
I like working in a linear form. I tried for a while to use the musical signposts when I first started with BB, after all, I was trained by my piano teacher and music theory teachers in school to read music that way. However, I found it too frustrating to make BB do what I wanted and..... and.... if I am working on a song and want to start closer to the end of the song.... I really like to click on the measure where I want to start and go from there. In the 3x repeat, you really don't know where you are.... at least I didn't.
So it's been linear form for me.... unfold that song.... since a very long time ago. Copy, paste, drag stuff around, delete, add, and jump in at any point.... to me it only makes sense to work unfolded.
Last edited by Guitarhacker; 08/12/2007:18 AM.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.
The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
My operation is similar. I don't create songs so my songs use existing sheet music, but the process should be much the same.
I start of with a'song' of about 100 or so bars with no repeats. This is equivalent to an unfolded song, although it was never folded.
Then I add my melody, usually starting on bar 1, knowing I can add an intro later, unless I know what it is already. Copy and paste as needed, but save frequently
Once I'm finished,including all the passes and endings, it's time to play it through from beginning to the end. This is what BIAB will play regardless of how you define repeats, endings, DS al, etc.
Once it's to your liking SAVE (and SAVE again).
Then using the repeats / endings dialog you can develop the visual representation. It's purely a visual and won't affect the underlying song. Feel free to start again using the saved version - or update the save version if it's wrong. This process is often trial and error and many users give up. It's not always intuitive but it is repeatable.
I have note based lyrics for all my songs, so I typically use 3 different endings with the bridge being an extended 1st or 2nd ending.
It's not hard - but the key is a fully functional 'unfolded' base.
BIAB for Windows Version 2019 (643) Windows 10 (1909)
Thank you! Fellow BIAB neophyte and this has been driving me crazy! I use Guitar Pro and a repeat is as easy as "[ ]". This way seems overly complicated. I shall just write out the songs in full from now on with loop off. Cheers
The concept of unfolding the song is nicely explained here. What I didn't see is, there is a default value of 32 bars, and you can change it to whatever you want (less than 255). Look at the graphic in Videotrack's post. Do you see #1, the number of repeats (here called choruses, where a chorus is the jazz format of once through the tune))? The entry to the left of that, 32, is the number of bars that will be repeated. Just change that.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
I also tried briefly to use the built-in repeats/1st/2nd ending features in Biab, but found them too restrictive. So I do everything "unfolded". One thing that helps me keep the chart organized is using the "Layers" display for adding section text labels. Pull up the Biab help and search for Layers to get specifics on how to turn this on. I'll add labels for my song parts. Only think I'd like to see is that these labels could be exported in MIDI files as markers or text info (Cakewalk) or whatever other DAWs call such things.
Chuck Wiggins
BIAB 2023 Win UltraPak, Cakewalk, Windows 10 Pro Custom AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core, Focusrite Scarlett 4x4 interface
The current MIDI standard is very limited. I’m not even sure the upcoming MIDI 2 would do that. But try exporting the song as Music XML. Your DAW will read that, too, and it might contain this info.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
The current MIDI spec does have some metadata type messages, including "General Text". So for example the style sections (A, B) and chorus indicators from a BIAB chord chart do show up in Cakewalk as markers. Pipeline and I explored this a couple of months ago in this thread https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=83308&Number=595329#Post595329 . BiaB has a "Write Section Text as Text Events" on the MIDI Preferences dialog, but turns out there are also section text on the Biab Notation screen, and those are the ones that show up in the MIDI file. So would take some scripting in your DAW of choice to convert these to markers.
But all this is a digression from the original topic :-)
Chuck Wiggins
BIAB 2023 Win UltraPak, Cakewalk, Windows 10 Pro Custom AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core, Focusrite Scarlett 4x4 interface
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