I am new to BIAB. I am used to thinking in terms of Intros, Verses, Choruses, Bridges and Outros. How come this only seems to want to support intro, outro and chorus? No versus, no bridges, I must be missing something.
I tend to use 'A' for verses and 'B' for choruses.
You can also have instruments muted and come in at later bars to add contrast.
If you are looking for more variations, you could look at MultiStyles PAK 1
"MultiStyles for Band-in-a-Box® Have you ever wished that you could create more elaborate arrangements in Band-in-a-Box® with more than two distinct-sounding substyles? MultiStyles can fulfill that desire with the ability to incorporate up to 24 substyles in one style! And, now we have special add-on PAKs that give you a huge collection of these advanced styles. Each MultiStyle in these PAKs comes with a demo song that shows off the sound of all of the substyles. But that's not all, you can also access the component styles of these MultiStyles in order to view the full instrument lists from the StylePicker and access more great demo songs! Each MultiStyles PAK offers Country, Rock-Pop, and Jazz styles, and some of the styles transcend these genres completely! Don't limit yourself to two substyles per style, light your creative fire with MultiStyles PAKs!"
Besides the MultiStyles add-on packages, some multistyles are included in the various versions of BIAB and can be selected from the StylePicker and are marked by the + sign at the end of the name. In the search bar, enter + for a list of included MultiStyles. Most of the styles are from 4-6 part markers.
It's also quite easy to construct your own custom MultiStyles just like PG Music has done with the MultiStyles PAK 1.
I am new to BIAB. I am used to thinking in terms of Intros, Verses, Choruses, Bridges and Outros. How come this only seems to want to support intro, outro and chorus? No versus, no bridges, I must be missing something.
First off, welcome to the family.
To your question. BB uses slightly different terminology from what you are used too. BB refers exclusively to choruses..... or if you unfold the song form.... to one chorus.
Ignore that totally for all intents and purposes. BB will provide you with a typical intro and outtro. It also has styles that generally have 2 different grooves. Some have 4, but most have 2. The blue part markers are generally identifiable as verses and tend to be more laid back, and the Green ones are more like choruses in the way they feel. The green tend to be more aggressive and it's certainly noticeable in the drums as well as the guitars.
Many of us, write our own intros, verses, choruses, bridges and endings using the long form of ONE CHORUS in the vernacular of PG Music. We differentiate the verses and the choruses by using different part maker colors.
Hopefully this helps
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.
thanks for the welcome and the tips to date folks. I am still working to wrap my head around how this works. Seems to be a lot of tribal knowledge, but I would say the ramping curve is steep. Maybe once I have consumed more, I can help with some newbie materials to help lower the bar for adoption.
As mentioned, ignore the term chorus and think of it as the body of the song. I had the same brain freeze as you.
After playing and looking at a few templates and demos of songs I learnt about the markers, the changes to style etc. and began to employ them.
It does take time to get used to the user interface and there are squillions of things within the program that reveal themselves as you progress. I've been using Reaper for more than a decade and think I know about 15% of that program at best.
We simply set the key/tempo, enter our chords on the chord sheet to correspond to our arrangement, enter our RT/RD/MST selections (or per a style) and generate. We then enter blue/green part markers as appropriate.
Afterwards we move all the tracks to our DAW (Logic Pro X) as we are Mac folks and do not have access to Window’s RealBand. We will frequently regenerate select RT’s until they play what we like and if that doesn’t happen we bring multiple regens of that RT into the DAW and cut/paste them into what we hope sounds good.
This may not be applicable to your planned work flow as there are so many ways to use this great program. Welcome to the community!
Bud
Our albums and singles are on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Pandora and more. If interested search on Janice Merritt. Thanks! Our Videos
On a related note, I'd like to mention to the OP that there are numerous, outstanding YouTube videos on how to use BIAB. IMO, it's a great kickstarter towards getting up & running. It's an incredibly deep program, and I haven't scratched the surface of everything it can do, but I have been able to identify & master the features that are most applicable and useful in my personal workflow.
You might want to quiet some RT instruments during your verse and then let it all come to life during the part you normally refer to as a chorus.
Another way to bend BIAB into your workflow is to make multiple versions of the same song, and import everything into your DAW (same as Janice & Bud...and same methods). The you might end up with a lot of tracks playing the same chord progressions - then it's all up to you to decide what goes in the verse...ect
But please do reach out - everyone of us is still climbing up this brilliant BIAB mountain.
MacMini M1 - BIAB2021 - Logic Pro X - iZotope Music Production Suite - Scaler 2 - far too many Waves plugins and Line 6 Guitars and boards + a fantastic Yamaha THR10ll mini Amp - Avid MBOX Studio
Peters' Garage is available on all major streaming services
Hinted at above, BIAB originated as a way to play jazz fakebook tunes. In jazz, we call a chorus once through the whole tune. A typical form for a song might be AABA, where B is the bridge, and that’s one chorus. If we say, ‘take a chorus’ it means to solo over the whole tune once.
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.
duselton re Why No Verses or Bridges etc. ive been tilting at this particular windmill for a long time, even though i'm an avid biab user and song creator. you might be interested in the following threads of my wishes.
my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..) https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs (90 songs created useing bb/rb) (lots of tips of mine in pg tips forum.)
As a long time US based gigging player I'm also used to intro, verse, bridge, solos, outro but Matt is also correct, in jazz the whole song is commonly called the chorus. To help with this Biab has the song structure function where you can at least use A, B, C, D etc to identify the various sections.
The song structure function does the job very well - maybe a few improvements regarding max amount of parts + max amount of bars (especially when you write songs in +140 BPM).
....after 7 years of being daily BIAB user, you somehow learn your way to make things work...but out of the box BIAB is not the easiest tool to work with
MacMini M1 - BIAB2021 - Logic Pro X - iZotope Music Production Suite - Scaler 2 - far too many Waves plugins and Line 6 Guitars and boards + a fantastic Yamaha THR10ll mini Amp - Avid MBOX Studio
Peters' Garage is available on all major streaming services
We simply set the key/tempo, enter our chords on the chord sheet to correspond to our arrangement, enter our RT/RD/MST selections (or per a style) and generate. We then enter blue/green part markers as appropriate.
Afterwards we move all the tracks to our DAW...
That's basically my process too. Are you guys downloading prearranged songs?
We simply set the key/tempo, enter our chords on the chord sheet to correspond to our arrangement, enter our RT/RD/MST selections (or per a style) and generate. We then enter blue/green part markers as appropriate.
Afterwards we move all the tracks to our DAW...
That's basically my process too. Are you guys downloading prearranged songs?
No. We enter our chord progressions based on our arrangement and select our choice of RTs and RDs. We rarely ever use a style as we prefer to roll our own
Bud
Our albums and singles are on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Pandora and more. If interested search on Janice Merritt. Thanks! Our Videos
A core feature of BIAB allows you to create a chorus feel, and the tracks are produced with this in mind (so your choruses can sound different than verses in intensity). You can also change the feel of the drums in verse and chorus inside the real track picker dialog if you have it open, using selections from the menu. (I.e., you can change aspects of the drums in each section, see screenshot below.)
The use of "Green" or "b" sections on the chart, whether entered manually (or using the song form dialog (which I love) renders a "busier" and more "up" chorus feature. The drums get more emphatic, and the instruments a little more charged, as you want in a chorus.
Just click on a box until it changes colors. In multi-styles, colors beside green and blue give different feels. You have to experiment.
So, basically, I use "blue" for intros, verses and bridges, and "Green" for choruses. I think everyone does this.
But experiment--and click on the drum tracks you are using to see the range of options for the sections.
Here is a screenshot of a recent song I posted and a link to it.
Tell me if this makes sense. This may have been said here in different ways already, but it is pretty straightforward.
My approach is similar to David’s just above. In my jazz songs, I generally use a green part marker for the intro and the tag, and the bridge. BIAB defaults to using green for the middle choruses (soloing) but you can turn that off.
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.
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MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
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and if that doesn’t happen we bring multiple regens of that RT into the DAW and cut/paste them into what we hope sounds good. 
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