Byron and Noel,

The point is I have a song in which the bars are not coming out right and it is hard to work with partial bars on BIAB. So, I thought that I would play the song into BIAB, naturally, the way it feels and the way I wrote it. Then I can see how the bars work out. It may be a fool's errand, but I think I need to try.

I had a previous, somewhat similar problem:

I wrote a song that I really liked. It felt natural when I played it live on my keyboard. It was an AABA song with 8 bars per section - supposedly. When I got it into BIAB I found it was:

A - 8 bars
A - 8 bars
B - 9 -bars
A - 8 bars.

This troubled me greatly. There seemed to be no way to force it into the "regular" pattern. So, in desperation I asked a friend who wrote songs and spent a long stint in Nashville what I could do. He said, "Nothing if the song feels right. There are no hard and fast rules in songwriting." He gave me examples of many hit songs by the Beatles and others that had odd or quirky bar structures.

The current problem is compounded by the fact that the current problem song is not a complete bar off. It is half a bar (I think). So, I just want to play it into BIAB sans accompaniment the way I wrote it without being burdened by typing the chords into a normal AABA 8 bar structure. Then, I can look at it and see what or where the problem is.

BTW, I may have found the easiest way to accomplish entering the melody with no accompaniment other than drums. I set the tempo, pick a style, and then mute all the instruments except the melody instrument and the drum. Voila! This seems to work in the first trial. And, if it accomplishes what I want to find out about the song, I can always "unmute" the instruments and "get on with it."

I'll experiment a bit and come back. Maybe I can mark this as "RESOLVED."

If you have other ideas, let me know.

Natcheztoo