PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Songwriting BIAB for writing sheet music

Does anyone use BIAB to write piano music, or do they use other apps for that?

Thanks in advance

I use BIAB's notation regularly to create leadsheets. For full arrangements such as piano, though, I use Musecore 3. It is better suited to scoring.

I often use BIAB to put together music scores, including lead sheets.
It is fairly versatile.

Noel, it is 2025! MuseScore 4 software, version 4.0, was launched on December 14, 2022.

4.5, a major upgrade, was released a couple weeks ago and a bug fix, 4.5.1 soon after.

Muse Group tells me that version 5 is going to be the Finale/Sibelius/Dorico killer… Ok… I’d say that talk is cheap but Muse Group is spending billion$ in their quest to dominate the music industry. We’ll see…

When any of you score original compositions or transcribe a piece in BIAB, do you use the RealCharts and midi transcription created by BIAB instruments? Do you add transcription midi data to the audio you compose and insert into the BIAB Mixer in your BIAB project?

With the release of 2025 and the new Stem Splitter feature, Transcription and scoring combined with some other features that have long been included in BIAB, brings a new level of accurate generation of song covers and compositions that have been buried down in the program for years to users that don't write notation.

For example, now using 2025, if a user splits tracks of a popular song but the bass has some pretty bad artifacts. Using BIAB and the bass midi data from a midi file of the popular song, inserts the midi transcription for the measures with artifacts (this is underlying midi on the same track) and replaces that bad measure with a RealTrack or VST and restores the track, to near normal condition. This is one example, there are many other possibilities.

My thought is any of you that transcribe can create accurate underlying midi notation to fix audio regions of a split stem with artifacts. So, imported transcription from a quality commercial midi file could also be used by users that can't write notation to accomplish the same thing.

Since 2014, UserTracks and the Artist Performance File UserTrack have been capable of having transcription and guitar tab added to the track. Over the years since then, enhancements and new feature updates and additions have reached a point the complexity has reduced to a level it's now a fairly easy process for every user, not just musicians that can notate.

When you record audio in a DAW, RealBand or BIAB and place that audio onto any BIAB Mixer Track, BIAB converts the audio to BIAB's proprietary Artist Performance File. This conversion is automatically done by the program. An Artist Performance File can also be intentionally and manually created.

Artist Performance Files are considered by PG Music to be a type of UserTrack and Artist Performance Files can recognize and utilize every media format BIAB uses such as WAV, Mp3, Midi, SuperMidi and Loops. This is also true for MAC media format versions. These formats can be mixed and merged together and bounced to to a Mixer Track as an Artist Performance File. This is an incredibly powerful function I've not seen mentioned here on the forum nor seen displayed in the User Showcase.

Knowing most of the comments in this thread is made by people that can and do use BIAB for transcription, other than lead sheets, do any of you incorporate transcription into your recorded audio or just use and manipulate the midi data BIAB creates for the Style instruments?

Mac users haven't seen this yet. I'll be interested when it appears.

The new Stem Splitter feature and ACW upgrades aren't available to Mac users but these features and recent upgrades will make it easier for people that can't transcribe providing more ways to get accurate midi data and real audio from their original or even commercial tracks to incorporate transcription into their projects, their personal recordings and tutorials.

As noted in the PG Music Artist Performance File description in the attached screenshot, transcription for user created tracks has been available for both PG Music BIAB formats since the 2014 releases. 2025 versions increase users ability to secure authentic audio and midi data which is quite useful for practice, teaching, learning and demonstrating visually their personal, original tracks and could also expand into merging BIAB transcription onto Stems of commercial releases.