I just did a test of entering the notes in editable notation mode to see what pressing shift and ctrl do. Unfortunately they alter the placement by 1 semitone up or down. The question becomes "Would it be better to have Shift represent snap to the closest scale note and ctrl be snap to the closest chord note". Maybe BIAB could be improved such that we users could personalize BIAB to have these keys serve the function I am suggesting instead seeing as I wonder how many need to have the current semi-tone adjustment. Snap to scale or chord makes more sense to me in that I bet it would get a lot more use. It might make sense to have a floating reminder appear when ctrl or shift are pressed such as this.

When you press Ctrl - "A7 (A root, C# 3rd, E 5th, G 7th)"

When you press shift - "C melodic major (C, D, Eb, F, G, A, B)"

Maybe where the note will snap to first gets a ghost note before you left click and maybe if even sounds.

This snap feature applies to all notes that BIAB is capable of sounding.

Now this Idea I would also suggest. Maybe improvisers could enter the scales they wish to focus on improvising with for the whole song before hand and even have them print as well. These would be the shift key scale snap to notes. These scales would change with a song transpose (so useful). To do this the root of the scale would be entered to transpose and there would be a comment attached that prints with the root of the scale. In my case I enter F melodic major as F-3 and F Harmonic major as F-6 and F harmonic minor as F-3-6. Only the F transposes and the rest is the comment. I place the scales next to the chord like this E7\C-6 then once all scales are marked on the print out I go back and highlight the scale portion with green highlight. Having this built right in to BIAB and optionally printable would allow members of my jam group to download the PDF and know what scales I am using (many do not know how to select scales to use for improvising). Again the scales transposing would be s o useful for me because vocalists have joined the jam group and I am doing a lot of transposing for my improvising.

These are refinement ideas not written in stone but clearly I would immediately upgrade if this feature was in place (especially the last one).

Last edited by bowlesj; 04/19/21 02:59 PM.
John Bowles
My playing in my 20s:
https://www.reverbnation.com/johnbowles