Hi experts.

I'm new to this forum so I first searched the messages, but I did not find anything related to my question, which I think is funny, as I feel the question is rather obvious, but maybe I am being just too silly or the version of BIAB I currently use (2007.5 (242) ) simply is too old and I should upgrade (which I am planning anyway, as I am going to move to Mac).

Most of the lead sheets we use, give the song as a number of "parts" (Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D, ...), each part usually containing 4, 8 or 16 bars, and afterwards the song structure is given as the sequence, the parts should be played in (e.g. A-A-A-B-A-C-A-B-D).

When arranging a song, we keep moving the parts around, and of course I would like to do the same with BIAB, so that I easily can start practicing on the rearranged structure.

I did not find out how to make BIAB play Part sequences yet.

Any help ?

Thanks,
-Michael

As per your example, you need to use multistyle feature of BIAB to be able to play 4 parts : parts A, B, C & D. Multistyles were added in 2008 version. A multistyle can have up to 24 substyles. That is the way to go, if you want to get high level quality arrangements. Standard styles have only 2 substyles (part A and part B).
You can easily make your own Multistyles by combining parts from existing styles.

Hmm. In fact I seem to want to create a song from existing style(s) and not create a new style .

My intention is to define several parts (= different chord sequences, not different styles) and (when being played) have them arranged in a sequence. To me this seems like an extremely common way to create songs. I hoped for the BIAB styles to somehow auto-adapt to this underlying song structure. In fact they perfectly do auto-adapt to the count of bars defined for a phrase.

I would not mind if the style would not automatic change it's sub-styles, as I suppose I can make BIAB switch (sub-)styles at defined bars.

Maybe my way to look at this is wrong and I better should take a deeper look at the way repetitions can be defined, but to me the way this is done (with BIAB 2007) is rather cryptic and I am not able to handle it except for rather trivial structures.

Do you suggest to create a new style for each new song ? I suppose that would prevent me from changing the style(s) of a (yet unfinished) song.

Actually I did not yet dare to dive into style editing.

Thanks,
-Michael

Hi Michael,

If I understand your post correctly, what you are after is that you want to think of your song as a series of 'boxes' and you'd like to tell BIAB the order that you'd like to play these 'boxes'. If that is so, BIAB does not construct its songs in such a format.

You would be able to get BIAB to do some of what you want by using repeats and tags. The below link will explain those to you in more detail.

http://www.pgmusic.com/tutorial_repeats.htm

Essentially, BIAB works just like an orchestra score. It's basically a linear process. In an orchestra score, when a return to a section is required after a number of sections have been played, it's usual for that section to be written out. One important reason for this is that the musical 'seams' that 'stitch' the sections together are not usually repeated. That is, when going from D-section to A-section, the notes that are important links between the sections are different than when one goes from B-section to A-section. Such links could not easily occur by simply directing a performance to go from C to B to A, etc.

Fortunately, BIAB makes the ordering of sections extremely easy by using "Copy from ... to ..." command to copy and paste the sections into a linear journey through the song.

Hope this helps,
Noel

Hi Noel.

Thanks a lot for your reply, even though it is quite disappointing.

I would like using BIAB not only as a tool for practicing, abut also for printing the lead sheets we use when playing with the band. That is why it is not a good idea to stitch the song together by copying the bars of the parts. IMHO it would be a nice feature (and rather easy to do) to allow the users to define such a "virtual copying" that is only active in playback mode (just raving...):

The editor for this could be just a single small window doing something like this:
(a) Define the parts to be a sequence of ascending bars:
part pn = bar no. b1 ... b2.
Up to -say- 10 parts can be defined. (Best the parts should be named "A", "B", "C", if not a user editable name (such as "Intro", "Verse", "Chorus", "Bridge", "Outtro", ...) can be implemented.)
(b) Define the song structure to be a sequence of theses parts. (Sequence length up to to -say- 20 parts.)

No change in the normal editing is necessary. (OK displaying the part names wherever appropriate would be nice but not essential.)

When playing, the effect of parts would be a "virtual copying". Maybe an additional "Play using parts" mode (that might disable any editing while playing) would be appropriate or more easy to implement instead of always playing in "part mode". In fact a (temporary) file could be written that just contains the bars stitched together as the part list requests. (This is how I manually do this right now "the hard way".)

When printing a sheet with parts defined, it would be important to print the part names showing where a part starts and where it ends. Additionally, the defined part sequence would be printed below the normal score.

I will thoroughly read the tutorial on "repeats", as this of course is what BIAB does provide for the purpose in question, even though (for the kind of music in question) it's a lot more restricted, a lot harder to use and a lot less in-sync with many written style sheets than a simple part list.

-Michael

Hi Noel.

After reading the said doc, some comments:

Of course this is a very appropriate way to handle a not too complex song structure.

I suppose when doing any modifications is the "fake" mode, the hidden stuff will stay unchanged. This might or might not be wanted by the user.

When playing along with BIAB, following the song can be rather hard, when a "section" starts in the middle of a line, just because the previous section has a second ending. Is there a way to input some kind of "New Line" (just leaving the end of the line blank) so that each section starts at the beginning of a line such as the "feeling" of the song suggests ? Of course this should be active as well in the chord display as in a printed score sheet.



(Some more raving thoughts:

Obviously the "repeats" work similar as I suggested for the "parts" structure, so supposedly this would go together quite well.

It would be nice to allow for parts with multiple endings in a similar way as the "repeats" work, providing part names like "A1", "A2", "A3". When editing the content of a part in "non-fake" view (by this creating a modified part used in this instance), I suppose a new part should be auto-created and the structure would be updated.)

-Michael

Hi Michael,

You asked ...

Quote:

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Is there a way to input some kind of "New Line" (just leaving the end of the line blank) so that each section starts at the beginning of a line such as the "feeling" of the song suggests ?

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Provided you have a fairly recent version of BIAB, right click somewhere on the chord sheet and choose "Song Settings". About 2/3 of the way down the pop-up menu is an option for "Sections on a new line". That should do the job. One of your above posts seems to suggest that you have BIAB 2007. I don't think that this option was in that version of BIAB.

Regards,
Noel