Originally Posted by Matt Finley
OK, that part is settled. Thanks.

Just curious, is the tempo really 260 bpm? In bluegrass, I would have expected it to be cut time and half that tempo. Your version of BIAB supports that feature which was added (I think) two years ago. Is there sheet music for this song?

Matt: It's the same BIAB problem we (Bluegrassers) have been having for a number of years. The is a thread about this problem back in November 2020 brought up by bobcflatpicker. Even you chimed in on this.

Can't find the message number but you can search the forum for " Peter Gannon, Will the problem with 8th notes being treated as 16th notes in BIAB in bluegrass style"

Bluegrass players play 8th notes, usually 8 to a measure. Most of the Bluegrass styles sounded 16 8th notes per measure and that threw most of us off. Peter finally came up with 8th note based bluegrass styles.

Mr. Gannon's response at the end:

We have about 15 Even 8 based styles in the bluegrass category, and over 100 even 16ths. Converting an ev 16 to ev 8 is easy (just set the tracks to half time), likely takes 10 minutes per style. Including picking the styles and adding memos names etc. probably 30 minutes per style. So it would take someone a few days.

We will do that! Thanks for the ideas, and the enjoyable discussion.

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Matt: Try this.

Make up a simple song of
G - C 1st measure
G - D 2nd measure
G - C 3rd measure
G, D, - G 4th measure

Use style _BG_BAND.STY. That is a typical bluegrass style. song using a 1-4-5 progression.

Play it at 130 bpm and now you have a typical bluegrass song at 130 BPM. You will see it plays 2 chords per cell in Chord Sheet view.

Now pick _BG_BAN8.STY. That is one of the 8th note based styles the Peter made for us.

Notice it sounds like crap.

Now go into Edit-Songform-Expand (durations of chords by 2) and you will see the chords lay nicely in the Chord Sheet. It now plays exactly like the song made using _BG_BAND.STY ------ BUT it now plays 1 chord per cell and the tempo is indeed up at 260.

Banj O’Lover has it set to 260 because of the 8th note based style.

The existing song at 260 BPM also be played using any one of the 16th note based bluegrass styles as long as the Song Form was reduced back the was it was with the first style we used.

You could do this all day, going back and forth between 16th and 8th note versions and never see any difference in the way the song was being played.

To answer your question on speed, in the real world, no the would not and could not be played at 260 BPM in a bluegrass jam session.

Here is the sheet music for the song.



Banj O’Lover - If it were me doing the song, I would try using style _BLUGRSM

I've had trouble making these 8th note based styles work when trying to modify measures. In the sheet music, the timing is changed to 2/4 time for the last shot and then goes back to 4/4 time.

Aubry Haynie did this version which is the way Kenny Baker plays.

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Last edited by Joseph Land; 07/03/24 12:52 PM.
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