PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows How to control repeats?

Zerozero,

In the blues songfile, all the tracks are frozen in the file that I downloaded. If you unfreeze all the tracks and then regenerate, the song will play the chords written.

I'm guessing that at some point in time, the song was in a major blues. This was generated and, after generation, the tracks were frozen. Frozen tracks always reproduce what the song's state was when the tracks were frozen. Any changes to the chordsheet after freezing is not generated.

To unfreeze all the tracks in one go, right-click on the "Master" track (to the left of "Bass" on the top menu), and then select "Unfreeze all tracks".

Regards,
--Noel

Good catch Noel.
I missed that.

Firsrt I fess up and say that I was wrong about both of the above points. My bad. Thank you both for correcting these errors.

I normally I never usually freeze (but am learning new uses at the moment).

I also don't go to the right click menu to repeat a loop. I use f10.

I find the only way to keep a custom loop functioning, is to use f10 and not touch anything else.

It's easy to get to a situation where a loop is shown on a screen in the chord sheet window, but is not functioning.


While we are discussing this right click menu, of the loop icon, there are the following:

1] Play loop in highlighted section, (f10)

2] Loop section enabled. This I find an utter mess. First, if I am in the Chord sheet window, the Notation window opens up, and the song starts. W.T.Potato.! Then if i go back to the chord sheet, from the notation window, to work on my custom loop, it has vanished again (again. again. again).

The term "Section" here is confusing. A newbie could think it means all sorts of things including the "section" they just looped. What the newbie needs to understand here, is that looping and repeating are two different things and that a loop and a section are also two different things. At least I think this might be the case?

The Edit repeats and endings dialogue is found in teh right click menu if you are on a chord in the Chord sheet Menu - here is misnamed " Repeat codes first and second endings" which is not actually the name of the menu.

"Repeating" is confined to the musican notation concept with an attempt in the chord sheet window to represent notation concepts. You will see these repeats in the Chord Sheet Window, IF you use "Edit and Repeats and Endings" tehy seem to show iup visually in the chord sheet window, but if you use "Repeat Section" there is no indication in the chord sheet window of anything repeating. One might think, that if one had highlighting a loop in the Chord Sheet window, and seen a change of color for the contained bars, this would mean that the playback is contained within the highlighted window, whilst these bars are highlighted. It's not. The goto to restart a loop, might be the space bar, but this simply ignores the loop, only by F10 will the loop function - most of the time, unless you dare to click outside.

Then the newbie needs to know what a "Section" is in Band in a Box. It's not the "section" you have just looped. Maybe Sections are also called Part Markers? I really do not know. I looked up "Section" in the Help Menu, this lists about 50 topics none of which is about Sections. Google is sadly no better.

A lot of my research refers to the "Conductor Window". Now I remember this. I never used it and it has disappeared from my screen and does not come from a short cut command.

So this menu item "Loop section Enabled" I abandoned. It was a train crash.

Restoring my loop, which vanished again, simply because I referenced the notation window, I try right click, "Loop Section Dialogue" .

Now we see an Entirely Dialogue box. The "Loop Section" box (not to be cofused with the "Edit Repeats and Endings,that goes under two names).

Will any of this perhaps help keep my loop fixed until I desire it to vanish?

We have:

"Looping is enabled". What is that? I suppose it is looping a section, but what is a section?

So i try it. It's a disaster.

First my song, Whiter Shade... no longer has a customed looped section that I put in, this has vanished again (again again again).

Note: Whiter share is set up with one chorus and one repeat, (64 bars in total) then an outro.

My repeat starts at bar one and contains 32 bars, then there is a sixteen bar outro. Now, after selecting "Looping is enabled" in the chord window, if I click on say bar 65, the song starts on bar 1. I am only able to click and "play from" within the first loop. The outro is out of bounds.

Why do we have this function? We can already click and drag a loop woith a mouse, this function shows absolutely no markers in the Chord sheet window and one has to mentally remember, perhaps across months, that one has ticked this obscure item. If the newbie forgets they get punished by a song that will only part function and htey will not know why.

So, it seems, that a section might be a loop, except any section the user might define by clicking and dragging in the Chord sheet window? I'm confused!

There are a lot of items in the (Loop icon) Loop Section right-click-sub-sub menu. It get's totally crazy. None of these options are indicated in the Chord Sheet window, so if you choose them you better remember that you did. For example, you might want to "mute the 9th repeat" . Why?

According to the panel, All these "Section Loopings" respond (apparently) to the "L" short cut , NOT the f10 command, which I use successfully to loop. Exept they do nothing on my system - this does not work. If I press "L" in the chord sheet view, it just dumps an illigitimate L as the chord.

Here, in this menu "Loop Section Settings", we find the most obscure possibilities, like muting the nth loop. It offers gteh ability to advance to next loop, but I have no clue how or why one would need to have two loops. I think the idea might be to have this dialogue permanently open whilst looping, but tjhe dialogue box dissapears ifther is any outside activity. Again, why is there no indication in the chord sheet view that anything is looping?

Are you understanding so far? I am not! I am completely mystified by this whole menu.

How is our newbie doing? Has he packed up his bags and left the studio?

Why is this So hard?

It needs a total rethink!

Z