PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist TO PETER GANNON.

>> about allowing users to relabel Bar Based Section Letters.

We could use the section text layer for this.

Here's what you can do already in BIAB 2021.

1. add section letters (right click on the bar and choose a letter)
2. add section text (using the section text layer, press display button)

What could be added in a future version, is to integrate the
"Song Form" feature with the section text, so that you could label each section, and the labels would show up, for example, if you label
A: Verse
B: Chorus
C: Intro
D: Interlude

then type CAABDABBA it would create a song form that has intro-verse-verse-chorus--interlude-verse-chorus-chorus-verse and label them as such.

And changing the form from 'CAABADBBA' to 'CAABDABBADA' is as easy as changing that string in the quotes, and they'd all be labelled.

I haven't read all these posts but in Reaper it's good as you can make
just about anything you can conceive of with scripting.
Users there like to go from one region/song section to another smoothly
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=250841
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=243277

This will also work from Midi Input like Conductor but with smooth transitions with RealTracks audio:


That's why I mentioned a couple of times A VST to send Tempo/Play/Stop/Loop/Continue to main Biab app from DAW
this way you could have any sort of Tab GUI setup in Reaper and Biab will follow it.
This way you are using the features already available in your DAW rather than asking for them to be implemented in Biab.
The smooth seek from section to section works with the BB Plugin in Reaper and would work with a Sync VST and Biab.

I think users are just wanting a DAW in Biab so they can do all they do in their DAW but remain in Biab.
For what I do I would like to see the BBPlugin advance, get all the code in the VST it's self,
get it generating and playing direct from the RT/RD source files,
as said this will be quicker to generate up than Biab.
Maybe some years down the track I'll come back here and find all that.

Peter.
before i reply to your latest posts back to me , and thanks for partaking in this thread, i would like to go on the record with a couple of things.
1. i have the utmost respect for how far you have brought your company and its products.
its not easy building a company. kudos to you.
also let me say you have a great team of people.
2. ive opened the eyes of more than a few musicians over the years , as to what can be done useing your products who were just not aware of what could be achieved. many times i would just sit the person down with me and open up powertraks and/or biab or rb , and watch their eyes light up as i went through building the bed tracks of a song and then adding the "cherries" on top etc.
3. i'm not trying to paint myself as a better musician or songwriter than anyone else on these forums. frankly i struggle to do the best i can in doing songs. there are many musicians on here way more capable than myself. of that i'm sure. i'm not trying to be a "smartie".
now back to the thread.
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the main issue for me is how to correlate the sections of a song in biab (or rb) with the markers in the daw i use. in my case the popular reaper. <<and i dont say that to knock rb which i like.

(thank you pipeline for partaking in this thread).

Peter, you will notice in PL's tabbed graphic < > arrows on the tab line. i happen to like this as i can work on various sections of a song as i need to. also an important point is , because the song is broken up into tab sections there wont be a slew of chords in each section.
i also like in that tab view the capability of just clicking the mouse on the tab to get whatever i want > intro or verse or break or whatever i have named.

lets examine another possibility peter.
ie another possible view akin to piano roll view whereby chords linearly along the top horizontally and instrument choices down left hand side vertically. includeing the new 16 trak biab approach.
and instead of those cel areas in piano roll, cels
users can clik on to either do a partial regen or mute part of a bar and sorta the features of F5 currently.
(no i'm not saying replace piano roll which is a different purpose, i'm just saying useing its layout as a view model.)
maybe Pipeline could do a graphic example ? as due to my vision impairement i'm useless at graphics.

Peter in your example those section texts certainly help
the correlation i need to daw markers. i'm useing layers currently for notes etc.

regards.
oldmuso.

Peter,
Thanx so much for getting involve with this thread. Because of your input I have learned a couple of new things that will help my workflow and enjoy BiaB a little bit more.

Oldmuso,
Thanks for the reply.

>>ie no big monitor. maybe its my vision impairement but i see no zoom buttons in chord view. even with big monitor. same.i do have the zooms in other views. not chord view.

Have a look at Jim Fogle’s screenshot above in this thread. It shows the chordsheet zoom buttons at the bottom right of the screen (to the right of the 3X test).

Note that those buttons are a 2021 feature. You can get the same behavior in 2020 or earlier by right click - display options - and set the number of columns to a bigger number than 4, for example 16. Then you’ll see 16 bars per row, and if your song is (for example) 144 bars long it’ll fit nicely on the single screen with 8 rows of 16 bars. Which means that you don’t need to use the vertical scroll bar as you’ve pointed out above. Each section starts on a new line, and you can visualize the whole song at once, not repeated tabbing to different sections to reveal the whole song.

> That's why I mentioned a couple of times A VST to send Tempo/Play/Stop/Loop/Continue to main Biab app from DAW

Pipeline,
Thanks for the suggestions. If you’re asking for BIAB to be a slave to play/stop commands, this isn’t advisable as we don’t (yet) support floating point tempos. So if the master tells us to play at tempo=124.54 , we can’t do it and tracks would be out of sync. It also wouldn’t work well as BiaB isn’t always ready to play instantly. It would also generally be a complicated feature to implement for us, many code changes and there is “lower hanging fruit” in that regard.

Peter (and all.)

i am somewhat happier now, haveing set chorus to 1 of course , and lots of testing out various display options in the chord sheet, as well as experimenting useing layers for entering text denoting whether a chord section/grouping is intro , break, verse, interlude, solo, bridge or outtro or whatever i name the chord grouping. ive been experimenting lots.
now i can correlate more easily with my daw song section markers text.

re fractional tempos. i dont think ive ever written a song with a fractional tempo. maybe i'm dumb , but, now i'm curious.
please allow me to ask under what circumstances would a songwriter use fractional tempo on a new original song ?
i'm kinda befuddled on this. thanks.

best regards.
oldmuso.

>> re fractional tempos. i dont think ive ever written a song with a fractional tempo. maybe i'm dumb , but, now i'm curious.
please allow me to ask under what circumstances would a songwriter use fractional tempo on a new original song ? i'm kinda befuddled on this.

There are several scenarios that people use fractional tempos like 123.54

1. When making a tempo change from 120 to 125 gradually, the DAW might insert a bunch of tempo changes like 120, 120.5 121 etc.
2. To sync to a rubato recording that might have varying tempos.
3. Dance tempos (eg. aerobic exercise) are very strict, and for them 130.5 might be different than 130.
4. Ultra-slow tempos like 35 vs 35.5 might sound different.

Adding fractional tempos to BIAB is on the list of features to add.

This is great news. Thanks!

I realize that but thought you could change the playback % rate ??
And once you drag it into the DAW ACID will fit it.
I could understand if it's not generated the tracks already there would be a wait but it should start instantly to follow the DAW once the users generates beforehand.
I remember mine never started instantly until I removed the Bandstand.ini from bb\ root that was still there from years gone by.
If it's just Biab users using it with their DAW they are likely to be whole tempos as you can drag a midi from Biab to DAW to set tempo map.
Are the complicated code changes to do with the decimal tempos or just receiving the VstTimeInfo play/stop/continue ?

Peter.
re fractional tempos.
yes i'm aware of the points you mentioned. includeing daw inserting changes. thanks.
sorry if i was unclear.
to clarify i was more interested in the motivation by a songwriter today creating a brand new song from scratch in a popular pop/rock/country etc genre , what would be his/her motivation for saying "today i'm gonna create a song with a (for example) 123.45 tempo or a 99.98 tempo" as an example ?
i'm trying to understand the motivation behind such a move by a songwriter.
cos when i start a new song i always think in terms of whole , rather than fractional numbers.

fyi i took an old song of mine which i originally did on a 2 inch multitrack years ago, imported the final stereo into biab as a test.
and then used biab to even out the fractional tempo (as a result of tape).
i was rather surprised the algo in biab did the evening out job to give me a constant tempo. mind you the song was originally recorded to a clik. maybe i was just lucky. i used the even out feature in audio edit.

a question.
would it be a less disruptive codeing job for your team if only whole tempos were offered, and thus you could throw up a message saying "only whole tempos supported" if a fractional tempo was detected.
i think users would be happy if starting off whole tempos were supported in biab.

best
sometimes my wife lays a tempo mop on me if i dont do the dishes lol.
oldmuso.
ps pipeline. nice !

> what would be his/her motivation for saying "today i'm gonna create a song with a (for example) 123.45 tempo or a 99.98 tempo" as an example ?

Probably something innocent like using a tap tempo feature, and tapping at the tempo he wants, and the DAW tells him it’s 123.45, so that’s what he goes with.

Yes, I’ve run into trouble trying to match a fractional tempo of a DAW track, however it got that way.

Is the ReWireVST suppose to be working now or is that just a bug that needs fixing to stop it working again ?
I just thought I'd try it as you have done a lot of fixing with VST support.
Can you try that with the BBMac21 in Beta.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/heftq3ymrs529bg/BB21-ReWireVST-Working.mp4?dl=0

Now you can color the sections how you like, it will load the SGU to get the chords.
You could maybe send commands/keystrokes from the Lua scripting in Reaper to Biab.

Full Screen

This is sending functions to Biab from Reaper, so it will play from the measure the cursor is on in Reaper:
Full Screen

Look at this post available in BIAB today for an alternate method that's a more extensive and versatile way to label and re-order song sections.
Render High Quality trax in BIAB DAW Plug-in

I'm bumping this so I can share what I am now doing with song form markers. All of my songs are unfolded. I assign song form makers a little differently than ABC etc. I use the following letters:
I=into
V=verse
C=chorus
B=bridge
P=prechorus
E=ending

You will lose the ability to better label things this way as the layers are not open but for me just the letters are all that I need. YMMV