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Why Are Bars Gray and they Won't Play, Even When they are in the song's total measures?


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It's to help readability for the form of a song.

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'.


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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.


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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?


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Originally Posted By: goofeyfoot
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?

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Originally Posted By: goofeyfoot
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.

https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=472139#Post472139

Regards,
Noel


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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; 07/07/22 02:25 AM.

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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.


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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.

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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.


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Originally Posted By: jcland
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.


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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 wink


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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


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Grey bars in the middle of a song is rare. But if it happens, then copying and pasting the chords to a new song project usually fixes it.


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The only other thing I can think of this happening would be if the style was changed during the song. If it was not changed then I am stumped.

Goofeyfoot: Let is know it the problem was resolved when you re-did the song. My curiosity meter is way up now.


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I didn’t solve the issue. I just did what Chantelle said. It’s just a workaround.


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If it happens again, please show us.


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It maybe a Band-in-a-Box notation setting that starts a new line whenever you add a part marker.

Access notation settings: Ctrl+E > Notation

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I did not know that was there. I wonder if it is a second way to do the Display Setting I cited earlier?


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The Fakesheet button and repeats/1st & 2nd endings can also cause grey bars in the middle of a chord Sheet

Last edited by Charlie Fogle; 07/07/22 10:06 AM.

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