This surely can't be as hard as it seems. Maybe I'm over thinking it or something. I don't know.
OK, I have a song with an intro a chorus and an outro/tag/coda. That's all pretty standard IMHO, and I think the outro/tag/coda is the "my own ending" refered in a different thread.
I have the song as a one-chorus XML, which I import, but BiaB won't accept a tag with only one chorus (why not?).
No matter how I try to multiply that up to multiple choruses, BiaB keeps putting the tag within each chorus. I've tried copying from...to to overwrite those tags, but nothing I do seems actually to copy ... that darned tag is still there in every chorus!
I've unfolded the song into one large chorus, gone through and deleted the melody+bars every time the tag appears within the chorus, so now I have one large song with intro, five choruses and outro. OK, so far so good, but I'd like it folded so I can change the number of choruses ... intro, x-choruses, outro.
But when I try to refold, BiaB drops my outro and jumps back into the middle of the final chorus ... Oh, I've just played the final chorus again to confirm exactly what it does and this time it just jumped to a dead stop. Bizarrely most of the tracks have also gone silent! I regenerated and all the tracks played again; at the end of the last chorus Biab jumped back to bar five of the chorus (bar 13 of the song) then jumped to bar 33 and did an ugly abrupt stop. That skips right past four bars (29..32) that might be my tag, but the chords are wrong, so who knows? Right, well, I've just looked at the notation and yes, it's my tag, but it's greyed-out and BiaB skips past and does that abrupt one bar stop.
Intro+choruses+outro is pretyy standard. This should not be so darned hard!
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 .
I don't know all that much about tags. One thing that did occur to me, though, is to wonder whether you have set the start of your chorus as Bar 1. If you have an intro, the first bar of the chorus needs to be the one immediately after the intro. To change this number, just click on the number highlighted on the image below. (I have a 4 bar intro in the piece I'm working on so my chorus starts at bar 5.)
When you fold a song, it's necessary to specify the length of the chorus as well as which bar starts the chorus. I couldn't tell from your post whether or not you know this, but I thought it was worth mentioning just in case you did not know.
Yes I set the chorus start, to bar nine in this song.
I've tried several methods to multiply the son up to x choruses ... expand, don't expand, etc., but I always end some kind of mess, with chords and melody apparently misaligned from the second chorus onwards and with the tag inserted into or maybe between choruses.
To be honest, I think I've pretty much given up on trying to get BiaB to do this. The whole process is either arcane or fundamentally broken. I can certainly see why so many people just write a big unfolded version, because that does work OK, but it also means if I want different numbers of repeats I have to create multiple copies of the song, one for each number of repeats, when BiaB is supposed to do that for me.
It occurs to me that I haven't tried making the big multi-chorus version by copy from...to with inserting the bars at the destination, I've always overwritten (it says, but it appears not true) ... I'll try that this evening ... no, tomorrow when I get home, starting again right from the XML import, in case there are hidden markers or something within the song data that are implicated in the manhling. Sigh ... here I go again.
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 .
I've just gone back to the musicxml, imported again, set the intro and chorus again, exanded again and this time it's worked nearly as I would expect. When I did the song settings, I did leave in place the generate 2-bar ending, which probably I didn't before.
Now I have a five-chorus song that's close to sensible, except that whilst those four ending bars of mine have the chords shown, BiaB plays only chords from the first two bars of the four and the notation view does not show the chords in those final two bars. The leadsheet does something different, but I have yet to work out quite what it thinks it's doing ... it definitely goes back to bar 1 while the ending is playing, but it just stops there on bar 1 ... presumably it thinks the song was over in the two-bar ending that I have written as a four-bar ending.
All of that ignores that the song is supposed to jump to the tag instead of the four final bars, but that's something else I have yet to get to work properly.
The closest I've so far reached.
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 .
You're perseverance is highly commendable, Gordon!
It's good to know that by having the 4-bar ending engaged, the song mostly imported okay. If this automatic ending is still on after the import, this may be what is stopping the four bars of chords from playing. In the earlier days of BIAB, the ending used to be 2 bars. Then when realtracks came along, it needed to be extended 4 bars to given the instruments some time for the sound to fade away. The first 2 bars of the automatic ending, though, are playing bars and the last 2 bars are for the sound to naturally decay.
You're perseverance is highly commendable, Gordon!
At interviews when asked what I thought was "your greatest weakness" I'd answer that I don't give up easily ... sometime I should give up a bit earlier. Mostly that tenacity was beneficial, but sometimes not.
Originally Posted By: Noel96
It's good to know that by having the 4-bar ending engaged, the song mostly imported okay. If this automatic ending is still on after the import, this may be what is stopping the four bars of chords from playing. In the earlier days of BIAB, the ending used to be 2 bars. Then when realtracks came along, it needed to be extended 4 bars to given the instruments some time for the sound to fade away. The first 2 bars of the automatic ending, though, are playing bars and the last 2 bars are for the sound to naturally decay.
For this process I've mostly used MIDI styles, and yes, it's likely that that's what's allowing the first two bars of the ending to play the accompaniment but the final two don't.
If I uncheck the add-ending option, my four bars of ending are greyed out and don't play. The ending is also ugly, of course.
If I take what I now have and try to convert from an 'ending' to a 'tag', it again makes a mess of things.
I'm aware that different peiople have slightly different inderstanding of what 'tag' actually means. PGM don't saeem to me entirely clear about that, either.
The big attractions to BIAB were that is "sounds much better than iRealPro" and can be tuned better in the styles, and that it will play the melody for the times before I've learned the melody, so that I get a good aide memoir before I practice it or practice soloing. The problem is that I'd be better spending my time practicing rather than trying to get BIAB to do what I expect.
As a design engineer I used to spend quite a bit of time and effort making sure that my designs would work consistently and predictable even if the end user decided to do something logical but "completely silly". FGrankliy, it's wasn't for me to define what was or was not "completely silly". I remember my CEO and another guy hearing from a customer how they'd donbe a work-around of a fault. They said in chorus "they can't do that! That won't work", before turniung to me and again askeing in chorus "Will it?".
Well, yes, it will, provided they've swapped the whole lot to the other channel. It was logical, so I allowed it. There was no point in disallowing it just because "nobody will ever want to do that".
At this moment, my tenacity is feeling very strained.
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 .
My bandleader says "just ignore that, we'll not play it anyway" OK, that's fine if rather frustrating ... it means I can revert to a standard BIAB ending, exiting two bars early to skip the turnaround. Job done.
Oh, hold on it's now playing the turmnaround melody of the final chorus plus a part of the ending, then playing only part of my written ending.
So I look at the notation and see the unwanted bit, I mark the bit it shouldn't be playing, open the erase from-to dialog, set the melody bars to to be erased and click OK. Outcome? It's erased the melody from the two bars after the bars I named, leaving the wrong bit behind.
Enough!
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 .
Gordon, if the ending bars are greyed out after you've disabled the 4-bar ending, this usually means that the "ending bar" in the song settings needs re-defining to whatever bar you want the song to end at.
I think it isn't that. I've set the bars for the chorus OK, but the bars for the ending come after that.
It's really quite hard to work out exactly what is going on because it's not easy to look at the bars in relation to the notation. I've put some images below, one with the ending enabled, one with it disabled, both showing the bars counts. I've also attached the notation for the ending area showing the turnaround that comes from bars 27 & 28 in bars 29 & 30, then the real ending beginning in bar 31, two bars after due.
Looking before bar 29, bars 27 & 28 are omitted, so it appears BIAB is trying to do the right thing in pmittion those two bars, but it's putting their content into bars 29 & 30 instead. I can't tem whether that's the bar numbers screwed up, or some copying process screwd up,m b ut screwed up it is.
I've tried to correct it by removing the stuff from the old ending in bars 31 & 32 and adjusting the notes in 29 & 30, but the song now ends with a brutal abrupt stop about a 16th after the end of bar 26.
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 .
With the regard to the lower image in your previous post, the song's ending is set at bar 28, and the song ends at bar 28. This is why the chords past bar 28 are greyed out. Since the 2-bar ending is disengaged, if the song's ending bar is changed to 32, then BIAB will play the last four bars after the song has been regenerated.
With regard to the upper image, since the 2-bar ending is engaged, BIAB reserves the last four bars of the song to play the ending. So the song ends at bar 28 and then BIAB does it's automatic bit in bars 29 to 32. The catch here is that once the first bar of the "End" section is encountered, only the first chord in this section will be used by BIAB. After that first chord, BIAB launches into a pre-determined progression for the ending.
Too see whether or not the last four bars are indeed ending bars, you should see the word "End" on the upper left of bar 29. If this is the case, then whatever chords follow the first chord in bar 29 will be ignored by BIAB.
I hope this helps shed a little more light on your problem. --Noel
Even on the top image version the ending is bad ... BIAB plays melody, but it isn't the melody it should be and the accompaniment stops at the end of bar 30, presumably because this is a MIDI style, not a RealTrack style. I'll try a RealTrack style later an see how much it helps. But it's also playing melody from the bars from which it's supposed to be exiting early.
A new song we tried last night has a 16-bar ending. I can't presently see any way to handle that other than abandon this approach and just do the one-big-chorus way, even though that would mean making multiple copies to cover the range of numbers of choruses I want.
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 .
Given the settings that the top images shows, the following will happen when the song is generated....
1) The song will play from bar 1 to bar 28. This is the first time through.
2) The backing will then play from bar 9 to bar 28 four more times. This is the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th times through.
3) Once it gets to bar 28 on the fifth time through, playback will proceed to bar 29 and then stop at bar 30. All automatic endings are 2 bars long.
4) Only the first chord in bar 29 will be used to create the ending. This means all the chords after D7 will not play. Neither will any melody that's written in bars 29 to 32. Bars 29 to 32 are exclusively for BIAB's use to create an automatic ending.
5) If a tag is activated that starts at bar 29 and end at bar 33, which it currently isn't in the top image, then bars 29 to 33 will play the chords that you have after the fifth time through. Any melody you've written in this section will also play because BIAB is no longer in automatic-ending mode.
6) NOTE: Even though it says that the ending is 4 bars, the reality is that the actual musical backing is always 2 bars long for MIDI and realtracks. With realtracks, though, the last two bars of the 4-bar ending are for the automatic holding and fading away of chords.
I have BIAB 2023 build 1010. When I tried the above, it worked fine for me.
That's largely what I've concluded, though the melody does play after the MIDI accompaniment stops. But the melody in that area has been rearranged a bit as in that last image. That's with the option checked "start the ending two bars early". That changes the way the ending is handled, but, IMHO, not sensibly.
I'm not sure what differences there are between a "tag" and an "ending" in BIAB. There are times when it appears there may be a difference and times when they appear just two different names for the same thing.
I've been messing with this far too long. At this point all I now really want to do with this particular song is remove the turnaround from the final chorus, but even that seems to not work.
I've tried 1st/2nd endings, tags, "start the ending 2 bars early", unfolding, folding, refolding, trying to manually adjust. It feels like every single attempt has issues of some kind. I think I really am giving up on it. I have other songs where I've just erased the turnaround to circumvent this, or where I just accept the turnaround where there shouldn't be one. I'd convinced myself that the "must sensibly work", but I now think it just doesn't. I've run out of ideas. One big chorus seems at present like the only approach that works. That of course removes options like variations in the middle choruses, so anything like that also needs to be manual.
Thanks for trying to help and for being patient with my increasing fractiousness. I'm tired of trying to make it do what I think it should, I'm tired of trying to find out why it doesn't and of trying to prove the mechanism. Every attempt takes quite a bit of time and checking.
I haven't tried the "Song Form" options. Maybe that'll work, or maybe I'd just be heading into another long round of "what's it done now?" messing about. Maybe I'll try later, but not for a few days/weeks.
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 .
As I see it, the difference between a tag and a normal ending is...
(1) For a normal ending... after the last bar of the final chorus, the song goes to the ending four bars.
(2) For a tag... the tag can be inserted at any bar in the song. After the bar with the tag (coda) is played, BIAB will then jump to the tag.
To see the above difference between the above two processes, first play the tagged version of the song and notice how it jumps to bar 15 once it gets to bar 9 of Chorus 2 (the song I've created has a tag set). After you've done that, go to Song Settings and disable the tag and then regenerate and play the song again.
I'm looking forward to this being sorted for the greater common good. I've avoided all ending options simply becasue nothing seems simple. Would constructing the song in the FORM menu/dialogue help? It's a little thing I really like & use often.
Cheers rayc "What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
I'm not sure I'll get to try this until tonight. I'll be traveling about until this evening.
I'm now having doubts about my view that bars 29 & 30 were done by BIAB. I think I may have copied them myself, or possibly BIAB may be being very clever and copying the two bars ready for me to change them to a non-turnaround version. I'll try to repeat that this evening and prove whether it's BIAB being clever or a mea culpa moment.
I think the chord handling itself is probably OK. Where I'm having difficulty is with the melody.
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 .
I thought for a while that I could see how I was going wrong. Not quite so.
I noted that Noel's tag was spaced four bars beyond the end of the chorus, allowing space between chorus and tag for a four bar ending. I tried similar and it's working better, but it still goes wrong a bit.
The good news is that by forcing four new bars between chorus and tag, when I then multiply up the number of choruses, I no longer get the tag inserted within second and subsequent choruses. The choruses play as they should.
Where it's still wrong is when I remove the auto-ending and play the tag, because the melody in that tag is no longer the melody that I'd imported. It seems to be something from within the chorus, but identifying exactly what will be tricky with many repeated similar melodic patterns and with the funny little few-bars window into the notation.
What I may now be able to do, though, is enter the correct melody into those bars. It looks like that should work, but editing notes on a notepad with a mousepad is a pain. I may be able to copy and paste, otherwise I'll wait until I have two screens or a paper copy.
So. The outcome is definitely better and looks like it may be a reasonable workaround for what still looks to me like multiple bugs in this area of the software/operation.
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 .
I hadn't considered the piano roll for that. Thanks for the tip.
It occurs to me that that may also be a better place to correct the pick-up notes in the -1 bar, where they're left-justified in the bar.
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 .
I started over from the mxl import. Correcting the anacrucis seems easier in piano-roll, though it's still unfamiliar ... more to learn.
I tried copying the four bars for the tag into a area well up the song ... 129 (hopefully it'll be safe there). But after setting multiple choruses, I failed to find how to access it again to copy back (thinks .. unfold and extend should allow that, though whether it will then work as I would hope I know not).
So I tried another approach ... having checked that the melody was where I expected, in the chord view I highlighted the four bars and did a Ctrl-X cut. I assumed that cut chords and melody ... but maybe not.
I now manipulated the song, generated multiple choruses and then Ctrl-V pasted the four bars into place for the tag. Open song settings, set up the tag and did OK.
The chords view look sensible. Open the notation view at the tab and the notes are still wrong. I'm guessing cut and paste in the chords view doesn't copy the melody. Trying a second paste into the piano-roll did nothing, but maybe that's because I don't know what I'm doing in it.
Using copy from...to fails the same way. tag notes are still wrong.
Using copy from...to to get the tag after the ending, then deleting the tag from its old place seems to work OK, the tag melody is intact. So now I used the piano-roll to Ctrl-X cut the melody whilst I again manipulated the choruses. After the manipulations I again used the piano-roll to paste back the notes. At this point, things seem OK. But if I move the jump-after bar number four bars earlier, the tag gets moved to four bars later and plays too late. Restoring the jump-to bar number restored the proper behaviour.
Changing the jump-to bar number, then pasting the melody again into the correct bars and deleting the later copy from the later bars got the song back to as it should be.
I can now adjust the number of choruses, at least between 2 and five, an the song structure stays correct.
I had doubts about what would happen if I reduced the number of choruses to one as BIAB declines to allow a tag with a single chorus. Out of curiosity I tried it. The chords view looked OK with the tag after the ending and greyed out. OK, tht seems kind-of appropriate. The shock came when I played the song. The first thing I noticed was a piano 'thump' on the first beat of the count-in, then the melody started with the third and fourth bars of the tag, then no more melody! From then on the song is hosed. Undoing regeneration achieved nothing, undoing change number of choruses achieved nothing. Obviously reducing the number of choruses to one is a bad idea!
That's enough messing around for one evening. I think I'll now go and lie down in a darkened room.
Last edited by Gordon Scott; 05/20/2310:54 AM.
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 .
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