Originally Posted By: ThomasS
Thank you, Jim, I never tried the Song Form feature, so at your suggestion I checked it out and it works as advertised. I’m definitely going to use it for some purposes, but it could be improved in my opinion (see below).

I have been comparing the advantages of dragging and assembling different sections of a song into a DAW. You point out that BIAB has two features (“Medley Maker” and “Song Form”) which can do some of this work staying within BIAB. I have experimented with both (and in combination) to see what they can do. I think both Medley Maker and Song Form are great, but still have problems dealing with how I like to assemble an arrangement quickly and flexibly by dragging parts into the DAW.

1) I sometimes like to add custom transitions between two sections or styles that BIAB cannot do as easily. In this case I use what BIAB gives me and write my own transitions if necessary, or sometimes just change something in one or two BIAB tracks to make the transition logical. Probably a lot of users don’t need this.

2) Song Form is a good starting point for experimentation. But it is best when you have just one style for all sections. At present when I have different styles for different sections (marked in Bar Settings) Song Form does not recognize these style differences. If A is in one style and B in another, the next A keeps the last style (B) when it comes back. It appears Song Form only copies and pastes chord names (not other things like style-change). If you mark a certain range of bars as a distinct letter, Song Form should know to copy all the attributes of that section – or better yet - to have a dialog to choose what attributes of Bar Settings to include or not.

3) A problem with Medley Maker (as well as the traditional style-change in Bar Settings) is that the mixer does not display the instruments of the new style. The mixer only displays the track information for the first style, so I can't see or tweak or substitute instruments for the other style, which I should be able to do. In fact, it keeps the name of the instrument of the first style but plays the new instrument on that channel.

4) I assume the architecture of the mixer has only room for one main bass/drums/keys/guitars/etc.- of the first style - so it is impractical for it to keep swapping between them on the fly. Of course, with all-tracks-equal, I can manually duplicate a style by separately loading each instrument into a utility track so that they can all be seen in the mixer, and then mute or silence all the bars of each style when the other is playing, but this would be quite cumbersome and laborious, and take a lot more time than just dragging two separate songs into a DAW.

5) I'm thinking this will be corrected in the future since Medley Maker is a great feature and, of course, different songs are often likely to have different styles. Perhaps you know a way this can be done at present?

6) I'm wondering if I can have two or more different styles in Medley Maker (or just style-change in bar-settings) and could there be an automatic button to print the tracks of the new style(s) into utility tracks (and appropriately mute both styles when the other is playing)? In that case I would definitely find it useful to stay within BIAB longer.

7) If the above suggestion (6) were implemented it would solve the problem of different instruments playing on the same track when you drag and drop a file to a DAW. At present, the bass or guitar or keys track just changes patch or player on the same channel, and you have no ability to separately tweak the volume or panning, etc, which would be easy if every style change made a new set of tracks in the mixer.

8) Yet another bug I’m sure people must have found in Medley Maker is that it does not include any other utility tracks that are saved in the file(s) that it references. I assume this will be fixed at some future date, as will some other bugs in the Medley Maker (strange transitions? etc.)

In any case, I am not complaining, because I use BIAB for what it does best (and great!) and I know it is not a DAW, but a great resource. Still, I am impressed with so many new features like Song Form and Medley Maker.

Thanks again for your expert advice.

Very well said and thorough!

One of my biggest complaints about BIAB is every time I try to explore some "advanced" feature like you did, I run into limitations and bugs that negate the benefit of it. I know I sound like a broken record but I find the best way to use BIAB is to get in and out as soon as possible. I like (and use) your approach of saving separate songs to combine later in my DAW. Too many times I have run into issues like multiple styles not working properly together or a style change not showing up in the mixer or a new feature like utility tracks not being full-featured (even though they still claim "All Tracks are Equal" in the marketing hype!)

I finally gave up on anything even the least bit advanced and just create my initial song and make copies of it for changing styles or adding tracks beyond the original track set. This approach is almost fail-proof and really doesn't take any longer than diving into (and climbing back out of) BIAB rabbit holes!