If you place a Part Marker (making the beginning of that measure have a blue or green indicator), it will 'break' the line and place that measure on the start of the following line.
Click on the blue or green to change it to no color, and the measures will 'close up' back to the line above.
You also have the option to turn this behavior off. Right-click in the chordsheet and bring up Display Options. Uncheck "New Line for Every Section'.
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.
I know why the sections have different colors. What I’m asking is why the measures themselves are gray? Gray as in the color of the cells where the chord names exist.
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12 Core Processor. 3.79 GHZ; RAM = 32.00 GB; 64 Bit Operating System; Windows 10; Focusrite 8i18 External Card; Real Band; Band in a Box; Coyote Forte Wave Table; Oxygen 49 MIDI Controller
Have you changed the default colors of the Chordsheet? If not, there is a clear difference between the color of a cell that is empty or has a chord entered, and a cell that is ‘blocked off’ for the reason I described. Could you elaborate more?
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.
I know why the sections have different colors. What I’m asking is why the measures themselves are gray? Gray as in the color of the cells where the chord names exist.
Do you possibly have more bars than the chorus setting. i.e. that extend past the length of the chorus, like this?
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
I know why the sections have different colors. What I’m asking is why the measures themselves are gray? Gray as in the color of the cells where the chord names exist.
Hi,
Would you mind posting a screen-capture of your desktop when BIAB is open? It would help a great deal to see the situation that's confronting you.
The link below explains how to capture a screen shot and post an image in the forum should you not be familiar with this process.
When I see the gray bars it's because I haven't reset the END OF THE SONG number of measures. This will happen when I do a copy and paste that adds measures to the song that now extends it beyond the song ending in the number of bars in the song box. I don't recall the exact wording so excuse my verbiage.....
Simply go to the "last measure of the song bar number" box and edit it to be a higher number. It's perfectly fine for example to have a LAST MEASURE set to 150 and only need 120 measures in the song. I do that all the time when I am creating my own unique ending such as a slow down to a hold and don't want to use the BB canned ending.
Last edited by Guitarhacker; 07/07/2203:25 AM.
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.
I tend to agree, Herb. I think there are possibly more bars in the song than the chorus settings are set for. Hopefully the O/P will provide some feedback that can assist.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
An alternative reason would be if the song is in 4/4 time and you have some measures set to 2/4 time with 2 chords in the cell. Something to double check.
BIAB2026 Windows 10 Pro (Never Windows 11!) WA6NCB
Another good point, and one that definitely needs investigation and clarification. This could be exactly what is being witnessed.
Hopefully the O/P will provide a response soon.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
An alternative reason would be if the song is in 4/4 time and you have some measures set to 2/4 time with 2 chords in the cell. Something to double check.
FWIW, I had that after importing a MusicXML file, because BiaB was confused about something in the XML. The song was in cut-time (2/2), but BiaB was trying to treat is as 4/4 time and did as you show.
Quote:
2022 (912) is very much better. The MusicXML imports OK and appears to show chords and notation almost as expected.
The one thing which doesn't work quite right, the greyed out second half of each bar, I looked a little further into. This appears to be due to the time signature being cut-time and the import seems to misinterpret that. I changed the MusicXML file to common-time and the import then worked as expected.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful. AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11 BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software. Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts .
All valuable points. The interesting thing is that the O/P mentioned "Why Are Bars Gray and they Won't Play". No mention of the individual chords in the bars was made, only the bars. But let's hope that one of these great suggestions from everyone here assists to resolve the issue.
Our collective inquiring minds need to know
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
I can’t do a screenshot because I just deleted the song and started over. I can tell you this. The gray bars were inside of the song. So e.g. if the song was 24 bars long the gray bars might’ve been 19 and 20.
Also, I looked at the settings for each of the gray bars at the time. I put 44 time for all of them. So I don’t know where any time changes could’ve come from. I didn’t even make any
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12 Core Processor. 3.79 GHZ; RAM = 32.00 GB; 64 Bit Operating System; Windows 10; Focusrite 8i18 External Card; Real Band; Band in a Box; Coyote Forte Wave Table; Oxygen 49 MIDI Controller
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