Hi. New user here. My wife is the music teacher. I do recording but am new to computer software recording and things midi.

The main issue with our first project was a built-in repeat (with a 3 on it) that I had a hard time getting rid of. Finally made it go away but can't seem to remember how.

Any suggestions as to how to setup so that when starting a "new" song there are no repeats already there?

...or quick way to remove? Thanks.

Band-In-A-Box defaults to a chorus definition of starting at bar 1, for 32 bars, with 3 repeats. Next to the tempo designation on the screen, you will see those three numbers: 1 - 32 - 3. Just click on the "3" and change it to "1" and your song will only play one time through.

I don't know of a way to change that default, but it only takes a second to change the number. Likewise, you would probably have to change the 2nd number, as well, to correspond to the length of your song, so it isn't too difficult to do.

Also, note if you have an intro, say 8 bars, then you would have the first box say 9. This can be very useful if the first part of the song is not just a simple intro but a completely different part from the rest. You could have the chorus start at bar 51 if you wanted to and use the first 50 bars as an extended section as opposed to just an intro. The chorus starting at bar 51 could be say 40 bars long so box 1 would be 51, box 2 would be 40, have the choruses repeat as many times as you wanted as indicated in box 3. Then you still have 1st, 2nd endings within the choruses and a tag or coda for the end. Biab is very flexible once you learn it. This means you could create an opus with a long first section with an intro as part of it, multiple repeats in the middle using choruses and 1st/2nd endings and a third section could be an extended 30-40 bar tag or coda going to a final ending. With all of this plus some creative thinking on your part you can create pretty much any song form you need in Biab.
This is an extreme example, some people working with something that complex would not use any choruses or repeats, just do the whole thing as one long aong. This is referred to as "unfolding" the song. The only thing is there's a hard coded 255 bar limit. If you really need more bars than that, then you move it into Real Band.

Bob

Chris or Deanna, don't forget, there is also a Loop checkbox to the right of the song name. It is checked (on) by default, and you may want to uncheck it.

Thank you for quick response. We looked in the manual but just couldn't find what we needed to know quickly enough. It's probably there somewhere.

Brand new to all this PC software thing, I had the same question making me crazy for the last couple days. Great to the point answers with some extra bonus points in the other replies as well, great to have a place to go and listen to folks that have done it and know. Thank you to everyone.
J-J

Welcome to the forums, J-J.

If something isn't making sense to you and you want answers, don't hesitate to ask. There are a lot of people here who will jump in and try to solve the issue.

All the best,
Noel

The latest version of BIAB seems to have a default of 5 choruses, not 3. I almost always practice a song 3, maybe 4 times.

I know I can change the number of times thru manually, but I have literally 1000's of bb songs from previous versions and it is a pain in the neck to have to change the number of choruses for every song I have made, and then save the changes.

Does anyone know ho to change the default settings?

Can you advise what the latest version that you are using is?
(I have never seen a default of anything other than 3 choruses, that's why I'm interested to know the version you are using.)

As a workaround, you could create a song with the parameters you want and save it as a template. Even better, if you know how, make that song read-only.

Then, each time you want to create a new song, open the template and Save As to give it a new name when you save it.

Have you set the option to force all songs to have a set number of choruses?

Have a look at the menu Play->Looping->Force loaded songs to # choruses.

This seems to be 5 by default.

HTH

Andy

Good call, Andy. If looping is on, then this is probably the reason the 5 choruses was mentioned. I never have looping on.

Hi Andy,

Thanks for passing on that. I have never once stumbled across this feature regarding looping before.

That's today's BIAB lesson!

Thanks again,
Noel

• one of my songs: Summer Moon

I haven't seen it mentioned yet, so not sure if this helps (but it drove me nuts years ago)

On the main screen is a Choruses option. It defaults to 3.
This may be how you made it go away before and don't recall now.
Change the number for Choruses.
In the below image I right-clicked the number 3 .. in 2018 and previous versions this option may have appeared differently.

Wow, something that Noel didn't know

Just to clarify slightly. Normally the number of choruses for a song is set by the menu option rharv has described. The menu option I mentioned lets you override this setting for all songs as they are loaded. By default it sets the number of choruses to 5, but you can change that.

Then there is a separate "loop" tick box. This loops the whole song, intro, number of choruses, tag etc. until you tell it to stop.

You don't need this loop to be on for the first menu option to take effect, in case that is what you thought videotrack was suggesting.

Regards

Andy

Yes, rare, indeed

Not that rare, Andy and Trev!

It is highly unlikely that a week will go by where I don't pick up something that I don't know about BIAB from someone on these forums BIAB is such an incredible piece of software with immense possibilities and capabilities lurking under the hood... I'm still enjoying learning after 13 years! (And except for the times I've been in hospital, I've used it for at least a couple of hours pretty much every day during those 13 years.)