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1. Is it correct that I can only transpose the entire song? I can't select a portion of it and just transpose that?



I have forgotten which version of BB added the "Key change at Bar" feature, you can find out if you have that very easily by RightClicking on the bar and selecting "Bar Settings" -- peruse the window that opens and see if there is a keychange block in it. If there is, you should be able to invoke key changes at Bar. If there isn't, may be time to bite the bullet and upgrade.

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2. What is a good way to try out different key changes to see how they sound?



Noobs don't like to hear this, but there is really nothing new under the sun here. Study the works of JS Bach. No kidding, its all in there. Handel is another composer where you can peruse a score and learn a heckuva lot about the art and science of music transposition on the fly. That said, there are some tricks that will always work. For example, one can generally almost always get away with an "abrupt" transposition (a transpose in which no intermediate chording is needed in order to get there) if the transpose is simply up one half step or one whole step. You can go down also the same amount, but most feel that going downwards in key like that doesn't add any animation to the piece. An example would be the end of a song area, where the same verse or chorus just abruptly goes up one half step and repeats.

Transitions larger than a whole step usually require use of "Interim" chords in order to have the music line "get there" and still make sense to the ears of the listener. The easiest way to do that is to simply invoke the V chord (or better yet for harmony's sake, the V7 chord) of the target key and then go right into that key. An even smoother transition is the "two-five" change where you start on the 2 (uisually minor) of the target key for half a bar and then go to the V7 of the target key for the 2nd half of that bar, followed by a full bar of the new key's I chord. For great examples of this one, study songs like, "Cherokee" or "How High the Moon" (same changes) where the 2-5-1's are part and parcel of the Bridge. Note that in these situations, the key signature is not changed on paper, even though the songs go through several keychanges using those all-important 2-5-1s.

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3. Is it only possible to have one BIAB document open at a time?



That is correct. However, if you want to do that simply to hear your key transitions at work, you could open one song in RealBand and then Import the next song and tack it onto the first one, etc.

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Because here's what I've been doing--- I copy the chord progression (say 8 bars) I want to transpose into a new document, transpose it, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it back into the song I'm working on. Try it. Nope, close song, open transposing doc, try another... awkward method, but it works. Sometimes I simply write down the transposed chord symbols, then I can try a bunch of different ones without having to open and close the documents multiple times.

Forgive me if this seems outrageously Newbish. Is there a better way? How to other people do this?





I just manually type in the new chords into the first songfile after using the Edit -> Insert Bars command to yield the proper number of empty bars in there. Not a cut and paste speed operation, but it works, and along the way my weak brain has learned a heckuva lot about transposition from doing it that way.

**MANY transpositions are internal and there is no change of key signature involved. This is not just true of today's popular songs, either. Those aforementioned works of Bach and Handel do the same thing, they simply go to the new "inside" keysig, leaving the main keysig invoked and use accidentlas on the note until the thing goes back to the original key. The result sounds the same and is often simply and easier read for musicians.


HTH,


--Mac

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