PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist Automated Music Notation - Climbing the learning curve is painful. BIAB 2021 Version.

I am a loyal BIAB user, dating back a decade or more to early versions. I use BIAB to create great backing tracks but not an expert on music Notation. The learning curve has been frustrating to say the least. The automation algorithm is intended to save note entry time but it backfires. I waste a lot of time undoing its forecasted note durations.

The algorithm does rarely produces the right result first time, compared to other products that require the user to explicitly pre-select a note duration (i.e., quarter, eighth note).

I am starting to appreciate the rationale for BIAB's notation approach but shortening the user's learning curve and reducing early user frustation should be a PG (Pretty Good) goal:

1. If the user enters a downstream note before earlier notes, the algorithm produces a confused sequence of notes and rests. These automated notes then require time-consuming replacement. In the user’s manual and tutorial video, state the obvious importance of entering notes from left-to-right.
e.g.,
“The algorithm automatically sets the duration of each note and works best if these notes are entered sequentially from left to right.”

2. Add a simple way to delete rests (like notes). Perhaps this is disabled because the algorithm often places these rests and won’t let the user delete them!

3. An “undo” single-click button in the Notation window would very helpful.

4. A “Zoom” button in the Notation window would also be helpful. I found the scaling option (%) after a lengthy search. It’s helpful to turn off the right-hand views (e.g. Mixer) when using the Notation view. Double views take up too much useful screen space for placing notes more accurately. View-switching could be automated, at least set as initial default.

5. There are countless warnings when placing notes “almost” on a 16th-note grid lines. I eventually found the “lock to grid option” and that might help ease the frequency of these warnings? Why not make grid-locking a default?

Overall the BIAB options and user interface continues to become over-crowded. I realize that software developers have to make some hard choices. Perhaps more extensive customer beta testing is in order before release?

Thanks for the suggestions. There’s a YouTube user, call Doug Mackenzie, that uses our notation, and get great results for his (amazing and beautiful) jazz piano recordings. So I don’t agree with the idea that the automatic notation always “backfires”.
https://www.youtube.com/@jazz2511

Over many decades, I've noticed that BIAB users tend to be split in their opinion of the notation function. For many. it's fine, and they use the lead sheets.

I'm a composer and I am, or have been, a beta tester for two other major music notation companies. I have at some point used almost every music notation program, and I hate most parts of all of them. The perfect program does not exist. However, when I have a new project, I always start it in BIAB because I have never found anything nearly as easy and effective for initial note entry as BIAB. Then I can export it as Music XML to wherever it needs to be for the next step. I hope PG Music keeps the basic approach.

I do support your suggestions for minor tweaks, like the Zoom button and single-click Undo. And I don't see any harm in making Lock to Grid the default; I thought it already was.