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Just purchased BIAB Pro 25 and just working my way around it.

I am new to all this stuff although a pretty good windows user so please be gentle with me grin

First of many basic questions:-

1. I have set a song to end at bar 23. "end" is written in red at the top left of this bar. How do I delete the end in this bar? Ive looked in help and can't make sense of it.

2. I have set my first 8 bars to repeat twice, and then it goes into a chorus. How do I set it to go back to bar 1 after the chorus?

Thanks all

Steve


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This is a start. Welcome to the forum. grin

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Dan,

Thanks for the reply. That should sort my issue 😃 I'll have a go later 👍


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Originally Posted by DrDan
This is a start. Welcome to the forum. grin

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Just given this a try. Its helped but I'm still slighly confused.

I'm trying to do a backing track in the following format:-

No Intro
8 Bar verse played twice (in a slected style)
8 bar chorus played once (in a different style)
return to start of verse and then repeat for a selected number of times.
No count in or 2 bar ending.

I'm struggling to understand how to do this using the many functions provided blush


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Hang in, we'll get there. You cannot (to my knowledge) make more than one section repeat using the little window shown in Dan's screen. So, I would not do a repeat just for the eight bars you said in this step: 8 Bar verse played twice. I would instead make that 16 bars. Then the number at the far right, the number of repeats for the whole song, is your "selected number of times".

ps these are not stupid questions in the slightest. These are normal questions for beginners, and congrats for asking them here. There is also Live Chat via this website, and that connects you directly to a PG Music support person. We are only fellow users here, with a few exceptions when folks like Simon or Andrew or even Peter Gannon (PG) himself post, and they identify themselves as PG Music staff.


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Originally Posted by Matt Finley
Hang in, we'll get there. You cannot (to my knowledge) make more than one section repeat using the little window shown in Dan's screen. So, I would not do a repeat just for the eight bars you said in this step: 8 Bar verse played twice. I would instead make that 16 bars. Then the number at the far right, the number of repeats for the whole song, is your "selected number of times".

Thanks for the reply.

I'd actually already done that as a work around 😃

I created a 16 bar verse followed by an 8 bar chorus with a 4x repeat at the end of the chorus. I then edited the song style to the one I wanted at the start of each bar of repeating verse's and chorus's

I'm thinking that I should be able to do this using the incredible number of functions/settings available to me 🤔

Last edited by Steve Oakes; 09/29/25 02:26 PM.

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Steve, you have jumped into the deep end of the pool. Best to start in the shallows to get your feet wet. What Matt has recommeded is a tried and true "workaround" which many of us have adapted.

The feature we are suggesting for starting out is called "Unfold to one chorus." This converts your song from the repeated, structural form which your are outlining, into a single, continuous linear progression of bars that you can edit manually. This is the most efficient way to extend choruses and manage the song's full structure. In the long run this will save you lots of frustration. Keep it simple, just write out the chords in a linear fashion instead of implementing "Repeats / Codas / 1st and second endings", which by the way is found by R-Clicking on a bar or you find it in the menu item for "Song Form" which includes tag endings. Of couse if you are a daring soul, then feel free to go down this road less traveled. There are guys here how can likely help - but not me! grin


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Are you used to working in a DAW?
If so the sister program, Realband, may be more intuitive for you. If you use a Windows computer, you got it free with BiaB.
Just a thought.

Otherwise, lots of good help around here for BiaB.

Last edited by rharv; 09/29/25 02:43 PM.

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Originally Posted by DrDan
Steve, you have jumped into the deep end of the pool. Best to start in the shallows to get your feet wet. What Matt has recommeded is a tried and true "workaround" which many of us have adapted.

The feature we are suggesting for starting out is called "Unfold to one chorus." This converts your song from the repeated, structural form which your are outlining, into a single, continuous linear progression of bars that you can edit manually. This is the most efficient way to extend choruses and manage the song's full structure. In the long run this will save you lots of frustration. Keep it simple, just write out the chords in a linear fashion instead of implementing "Repeats / Codas / 1st and second endings", which by the way is found by R-Clicking on a bar or you find it in the menu item for "Song Form" which includes tag endings. Of couse if you are a daring soul, then feel free to go down this road less traveled. There are guys here how can likely help - but not me! grin

If that's the way to go that works for me 👍


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Originally Posted by rharv
Are you used to working in a DAW?
If so the sister program, Realband, may be more intuitive for you. If you use a Windows computer, you got it free with BiaB.
Just a thought.

Otherwise, lots of good help around here for BiaB.

Not looked at RB yet and never used a DAW no.

I'll keep playing with BIAB for now and see how I get on 👍


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Originally Posted by Steve Oakes
Originally Posted by DrDan
Steve, you have jumped into the deep end of the pool. Best to start in the shallows to get your feet wet. What Matt has recommeded is a tried and true "workaround" which many of us have adapted.

The feature we are suggesting for starting out is called "Unfold to one chorus." This converts your song from the repeated, structural form which your are outlining, into a single, continuous linear progression of bars that you can edit manually. This is the most efficient way to extend choruses and manage the song's full structure. In the long run this will save you lots of frustration. Keep it simple, just write out the chords in a linear fashion instead of implementing "Repeats / Codas / 1st and second endings", which by the way is found by R-Clicking on a bar or you find it in the menu item for "Song Form" which includes tag endings. Of couse if you are a daring soul, then feel free to go down this road less traveled. There are guys here how can likely help - but not me! grin

If that's the way to go that works for me 👍

Hi Steve, I do all of my songs in the "unfold" mode. For example I would have measure settings like this, 1,100,1. That is start at measure 1, have 100 measures, and only have 1 chorus; chorus being the jazz term for only play the song once. Most of the time I have to change the number of measures. This saves me the ton of headaches and frustration of working in BiaB. Note some people are experts at working in BiaB using it as is and with some workarounds. Me, I just want to get the song's basics down prior to transferring the song to my DAW. YMMV


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Originally Posted by MarioD
Hi Steve, I do all of my songs in the "unfold" mode. For example I would have measure settings like this, 1,100,1. That is start at measure 1, have 100 measures, and only have 1 chorus; chorus being the jazz term for only play the song once. Most of the time I have to change the number of measures. This saves me the ton of headaches and frustration of working in BiaB. Note some people are experts at working in BiaB using it as is and with some workarounds. Me, I just want to get the song's basics down prior to transferring the song to my DAW. YMMV

Thank you. I'll be doing the same 👍


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Originally Posted by Steve Oakes
No Intro
8 Bar verse played twice (in a selected style)
8 bar chorus played once (in a different style)
return to start of verse and then repeat for a selected number of times.
No count in or 2 bar ending.

I'm struggling to understand how to do this using the many functions provided blush

The first thing to note is that BiaB uses the jazz musicians meaning of "chorus", which is the body of the song, not just the chorus as one would use in, e.g., popular music. Jazz use is just Intro, Chorus(es), Outro/Coda/Tag.

As others have said, often the "one big chorus" approach works best ... there's no ambiguity about 1st/2nd/tag/whatever.

The second thing to note is that BiaB is big and quite complex and has more than a few quirks and gotchas that sometimes see, out to get us. Don't be embarrassed ... we all trip over lots of them.


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Originally Posted by Gordon Scott
Originally Posted by Steve Oakes
No Intro
8 Bar verse played twice (in a selected style)
8 bar chorus played once (in a different style)
return to start of verse and then repeat for a selected number of times.
No count in or 2 bar ending.

I'm struggling to understand how to do this using the many functions provided blush

The first thing to note is that BiaB uses the jazz musicians meaning of "chorus", which is the body of the song, not just the chorus as one would use in, e.g., popular music. Jazz use is just Intro, Chorus(es), Outro/Coda/Tag.

As others have said, often the "one big chorus" approach works best ... there's no ambiguity about 1st/2nd/tag/whatever.

The second thing to note is that BiaB is big and quite complex and has more than a few quirks and gotchas that sometimes see, out to get us. Don't be embarrassed ... we all trip over lots of them.

Thank you.

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Gordon and Mario make good points. Since the meaning of 'chorus' in BIAB is the jazz meaning* (once through the song), if you are attempting to repeat any sections within the song, and then repeat the whole song, you should follow their advice and Edit, Song Form, Unfold to One Long Chorus.

About a DAW (digital audio workstation) Rharv has a good point too. I think most of us would put together a song that had a complex form by using a DAW, and BIAB ships with a free one bundled, called RealBand. I believe many more of us might be using RealBand if we had not learned another program first. However, if you are new to digital audio, definitely check out RealBand. It has one extremely important advantage over any other DAW on the market: it reads BIAB source files.

*BIAB started as a program to play along with songs from jazz fakebooks


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Originally Posted by Matt Finley
Gordon and Mario make good points. Since the meaning of 'chorus' in BIAB is the jazz meaning* (once through the song), if you are attempting to repeat any sections within the song, and then repeat the whole song, you should follow their advice and Edit, Song Form, Unfold to One Long Chorus.

About a DAW (digital audio workstation) Rharv has a good point too. I think most of us would put together a song that had a complex form by using a DAW, and BIAB ships with a free one bundled, called RealBand. I believe many more of us might be using RealBand if we had not learned another program first. However, if you are new to digital audio, definitely check out RealBand. It has one extremely important advantage over any other DAW on the market: it reads BIAB source files.

*BIAB started as a program to play along with songs from jazz fakebooks

Thank you. I'll take a look at Real Band


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One of the things that will help going forward is to include your OS build and version plus your hardware in your posts. Sometimes, it makes a difference whether you are on Windows 7, 10, 11 or an Intel or Apple Silicon Mac etc.

Click on your name in the upper right corner to edit your profile and signature to add this.

If you want to have some fun with this, you can use this Hex Color Code Library along with these Formatting Instructions to add color. Go to What UBBCode can I use, and how can I format my posts? on that page.


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Originally Posted by Mike Halloran
One of the things that will help going forward is to include your OS build and version plus your hardware in your posts. Sometimes, it makes a difference whether you are on Windows 7, 10, 11 or an Intel or Apple Silicon Mac etc.

Click on your name in the upper right corner to edit your profile and signature to add this.

If you want to have some fun with this, you can use this Hex Color Code Library along with these Formatting Instructions to add color. Go to What UBBCode can I use, and how can I format my posts? on that page.

Will do Mike 👍


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Originally Posted by Mike Halloran
...
If you want to have some fun with this, you can use this Hex Color Code Library along with these Formatting Instructions to add color...

People don't realize that it can have some visibility issues when the dark theme is used though, which is my default setting crazy

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Good one!

This board is quite customizable using HTML.


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