I tried making a 7/4 style once, but the problem was that with the 4 major chord divisions in BiaB cell, I couldn't get the chords to fall on the actual beats, except for the first one. That's OK if there is only one chord per measure, but only if there is no more than 1 chord per measure that falls on the first beat of that same bar.

That's why I don't necessarily consider the cells in the BiaB matrix bars or measures.

And as rharv pointed out, sometimes it's difficult to even know what the time signature of a piece.

Is it 12/8 or 4/4, triplet based? Or 6/8? Or 3/4? I could write the same song in each of those, and it would sound the same.

I have written scores of fake e-disks for BiaB https://www.nortonmusic.com/contents.html#fake and for many of the songs I've had to get quite creative to get the song to have the right feel, often not using the assigned time signature.

But almost all rhythms can be subdivided into 2 or 3 at the most basic level. 4/4, 6/4, 2/2, etc. breaks down in to 2's. If it's triplet based, it also uses 3s in the subdivisions. So 12/8, 6/8, and 3/4 can be subdivided into 3s. But often, 6/8 is taken in two and the subdivision is in 3s. You can do 6/8 but making two 3 beat cells equal one 6/8 bar. I've even used waltz styles to make 6/8 that way (depending on the song).

It sometimes takes some creative thinking to get things to work out in BiaB, but the more you do it, the easier it gets.

So cells can be assigned 1, 2, 3, or 4, and the subdivisions can be broken down into 2 or 3 (EV or sw). From there, you can get just about anything to fit.

Additionally, how the cells built makes a difference. Example: For a 5/4 song if the cells are 3-2 the feel is different from 2-3. That depends on the song.

Getting further advanced. Sometimes the 3 measure needs to be a tad quicker than the 2. An example of that is Jethro Tull's “Living In The Past”. If the 3 part of the 5 is rushed a bit (or the 2 part dragged) the 5/4 is smoother sounding.

Once you forget about each cell equalling one bar of music, you can expand what BiaB will do quite a bit.


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