PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist A looping weakness that really needs to be fixed and so cheap to do so.

Hi, I like to use F10 a fair bit to loop highlighted sections of a song. I found what appears to be a weakness in the process that I suspect needs some programming to fix. If I am correct that it needs to be programmed the programming is about as easy as programming can get yet the improvement alone is probably enough to get me to upgrade because it will get me using the feature a lot more often :-)

The problem is the fact that the difference between the highlighted chord view cells and the cell that is playing right now within the loop is so slight that it becomes very difficult to know which cell is the current cell playing and this is important to know at a glance if one gets lost or if one just wants to tend to something else then get back to working with the loop. I would recommend simply changing the current cell playing background colour to (light yellow against black letters) to contrast with the (black background with white letters) of the highlighted section. You might want to make this the default option with the option to change the background colour to other light colors such as light blue or light green that contrast well with the black letters.

I thought there was a work around but unfortunately not:
Okay so I discovered that once the loop is playing and while it continues to play I could highlight a cell outside the loop and I could easily see the current cell playing within the loop. However this creates two problems and is a very poor work around. 1/ there is no way to pause the loop such that I can restart it with F10 only (the loop is lost and F10 restarts the song from the beginning). I tried both space bar and ESC and they both stop the loop but again pressing F10 restarts from the beginning of the song (not good). 2/ Highlighting outside the loop so one can see the current bar playing can cause one to forget where they set the loop. So it is better to keep the loop area highlighted as it currently is now and have the current bar playing be changed as I describe above.

That's it, I would give this a high priority if I was in PG-Music's shoes simply because it is so easy to change yet could get someone to upgrade (in other words the payback period could be within a day if people are notified of this fix). Notifying specific people of fixes they have requested is a good idea but a lot harder :-) I have requested a few things and have no idea if they are in (I get so busy).

Thanks,
John

My system is Windows based and I'm unsure if you have a PC or Mac version of BIAB and I'm also unsure if this works with the Mac version of BIAB the same as the Windows version.

However, on my Windows BIAB I can input a looping command that does not highlight the looped section but rather, it highlights the bar playing just as BIAB does when it's not in looping mode so I see the bar playing and the Chord Chart appears as it normally does. When the looped section reaches the end of the loop, the highlighted bar jumps back to the first bar of the loop and continues the looping process. This allows me to clearly see where BIAB is playing on the Chord Chart. I can stop the loop playing with the spacebar and hitting space bar again and the loop continues to play from the bar it stopped on. I can also stop loop play and select any bar within the loop and the loop will continue from that bar forward and continue looping.

To do this on the BIAB Windows version:

. Select any bar on the Chord Chart. It doesn't matter if there's already a Chord placed in the chart. The Chord returns once you hit the Enter Key.
. Type the command in the bar: L4,1 and enter. The L commands BIAB to enable looping. The 4 is the number of bars to loop. The comma separates the number of bars to loop from the bar you want looping to begin at. In this example the beginning bar is 1.

This command instructs the song to begin playing at bar one, play for 4 bars and loop back to bar 1. L2,9 will loop 2 bars beginning at bar 9.
Follow this procedure to loop any number of bars beginning at any bar.

Hopefully, this process will work for you regardless of which version you have.

Thanks Charlie, I got your method to work including the space bar pause and the restart from any bar. That certainly solves the issue #1 of my work around (the more important issue). I will document it in my reminder database and set it for frequent repeats initially so I get in the habit of using it and being able to remember how to do it.

However issue #2 of these workarounds is not solved and I think it would still be worth having solved. It is also easier to highlight the bars than having to enter the commands (both easier to do and remember - no need for a reminder database entry which most user's won't have programmed for themselves). So for just these two reasons PG-Music may still want to make the change considering the fact that the change can probably be done within 10 minutes by the programmer who knows exactly where the code is (not by other programmers since finding the code may take quite a while).

I agree and will add my plus one to your proposal.

So here is my reminder database entry with a slight rewording of Charlie's instructions:

Subject:
There is a way to loop BIAB that allows you to (see the current bar being played) and allows you to also (pause and restart the loop with the space bar) and allows you to (pause the loop then highlight any bar within the loop and restart it from that new location with the space bar). See notes for how to do this.

Notes:
To do this on the BIAB Windows version:

1/ Select any bar on the Chord Chart. The command I am about to give in point #2 below will temporarily hide any Chord that appears in that cell but pressing enter to initiate the loop causes the chord to reappear (no need to worry).
2/ Type "L4,1" in the bar and enter. The L commands BIAB to enable looping. The 4 is the number of bars to loop and the 1 is the bar you want looping to begin. This command instructs the song to begin playing at bar one, play for 4 bars and loop back to bar 1. As another example, L2,9 will loop 2 bars beginning at bar 9.

As stated in the subject line press space bar to pause the loop and press space bar again to restart it. Before you press space bar to restart it you can highlight a different bar within the loop to restart from.

Sorry I didn't read it all, but do you just want to change the color to see it better ?

Yes, just a colour change :-) I have BIAB version 2018 and 2016. I noticed yours has a blue background for the one that is being played (perfect). My versions have almost the exact same background as the highlight background for the whole loop (next to impossible to see which one is playing at the moment even if I stop and try really hard - in fact I think it is impossible - must be the same colour). Did you set a parameter somewhere to get the current bar playing to a different colour?

I tried (options, preferences, colors, chord cell) as the attached picture shows but it did not change the current cell.

Can't recall if this feature was in the 2018 version, but try options > Preferences > Display.

Yeah, I'm not sure what version had what ???

Thanks Pipeline, I got the colors I want for the current playing bar against the highlighted loop bars. Your dropdown located at the top right of display options was all I needed. I had looked there before but didn't notice that drop down. So after analyzing the selections for a while I finally figured it out (I could not read your selections). Actually I went back later while proof reading this post and with Google chrome using ctrl+ I was able to make your post's characters larger so eventually I could see your selections.

So Between Charlie's info and this is it is pretty much solved.

Having said that, it seems Charlie's approach is the only way to get pause to work without loosing the loop. The space bar pause does not work with the highlighted bars approach (the loop is lost).

I clicked the (loop button, Loop Section Dialog) sequence and found reference to the L command Charlie pointed out. You can leave the default to 4 bars or change it to a different value. I also tried entering L3 then pressing enter. It defaults to beginning the loop from the current highlighted bar.

In the end (because I generally only loop small difficult sections for improvising purposes) I will probably use the highlighted bars approach and if I have to stop with the space bar I will just restart it from the beginning with the F10 key. But I will keep my reminder entry and maybe in the future I will have a need for the L command. Come to think of it, if one gives a 2 bar lead in to a large difficult section there is probably no need for all the loop to be highlighted. I find the loop in itself normally takes a bit of practice.

If you hold ctrl then use the mouse wheel it will zoom the page in/out.
I asked for this ages ago for the chord sheet rather than having to go into display options, as most apps work this way like word processors, text editors, image editors, browsers etc..