PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows ACW question

Hi Rob.

My apologies. When I read your opening post where you said...

...I took it at face value and in my mind, I heard your post as a genuine request for help. Then in your most recent post, you said...

From this, I can only guess that there were some other reasons behind your initial post that I was unaware of, and you weren’t really seeking help. Rest assured that I'll keep this mind next time I read a post of yours and interpret it as seeking assistance.

With the added benefit of hindsight, I now see that I misread the signs throughout your comments in this thread. When I read what I thought was your lack of knowledge about “L” to tap out timing when in manual mode, and then later when I read about an apparent confusion between ‘importing’ something into BIAB and ‘opening’ it, I thought I would find something to help clarify those aspects of the program and ACW. I found myself wondering if maybe your knowledge needed a refresher in the same way that I need to refresh my own understanding of BIAB from time to time.

Now when I read...

...I see that I was wrong, and I am sorry for stating the obvious. Maybe some others who read this thread will find my post useful.

I didn’t mention it before, but your comment about only being able to tap out around 20 bars before the program returned you to the start made me wonder if maybe you were running automatic marking (adding bars) as well as automatic analysis (adding chords) while you were setting things manually. I’ve never done this because working manually and automatically simultaneously seemed like a recipe for disaster to me.

For anyone reading this post who might find it useful information, the way I use ACW is given below. This a straightforward process that works easily and flawlessly for me in BIAB 2024 (1112).

• 1) I load the audio using “File | Open Special | Open Audio” and solo the track that contains the audio. (I don’t use ‘Open audio with chords.)
  
  2) I select the view that allows me to see both the audio waveform and the chordsheet.
  
  3) Next, I double-check that ‘Auto marking’ and ‘Auto analysis’ are not selected.
  
  4) I set the first bar by positioning the cursor and tapping “L”.
  
  5) I then start playback and tap L to set the first 10 or so bars to create a solid foundation for BIAB to interpret the average tempo information. (In the documentation and the videos, PG Music usually set 4 bars. I like to be a little more thorough because the way I see it, the better I prepare audio for BIAB, the better my ultimate results.)
  
  6) I manually adjust the barlines that I’ve tapped in so that they are as accurate as possible.
  
  7) After that, I activate “Auto marking” and let BIAB do it’s work.
  
  8) Then I play through the song to check that the bars are reasonably well aligned. I adjust any that are not. I’ve found that if the first 10 bars are well-timed, I only have to make an adjustment here and there for most audio unless there are areas of free/ad-lib tempo in the audio file.
  
  9) When I’m satisfied with the barlines, I activate “Analyze” to determine the chords. I usually have the chord-type set to “No preset” but occasionally I use ‘Diatonic Triads’.

EDIT
I have just tried the above process using the audio for the opening theme from the Chinese drama, "The Untamed" (see the video clip below). This sounds like it's mostly based around a pentatonic scale to me. There was a 2/4 bar (bar 5) and a 1/4 bar (bar 32) in amongst the 4/4 bars, some ad-lib regions, and a couple of key changes. Everything went well for me. An image of the chordsheet (including tempo map) I created is attached. Even though they are analysed for chords on the chordsheet, bars 18 – 25 are an orchestral interlude for which I did not bother creating an accurate section. (This is the first attached file below.)

You'll probably notice that I settled on a tempo of 45 bpm. This happened because I mistakenly ended up counting "4" and tapping the barlines in across what was really two bars. The tempo should be 90 bpm. Fortunately, that problem is easily solved in BIAB simply by: (a) deleting the tempo map; (b) using "Edit | Song Form | Expand duration of chords by 2"; (c) setting the tempo to 90 bpm. (This is the second attached file below.)


Regards,
--Noel

P.S. As others have already pointed out, there are issues with some aspects of ACW in builds 1111 and 1112 of BIAB 2024. PG Music are aware of these.