Hi everyone,
Sorry for this newbie question. I wish to mute the Strings part of my song from the start of bar 1 through to the end of bar 32. I know the long way to do it, bar by bar, e.g.
--select bar 1,
--go to Chord Options,
--for Rest Type, select Rest Only,
--of the "All except" radio button choices, select Bass, Drums, Piano and Guitar (that is, all except the Strings).
-- repeat for bars 2-32.
That last step is what gets me -- seems awfully repetitive. Is there not a quicker way to specify the bar range over which this instrument will be mute?
There is. At measure 1, press F5 and Mute that instrument. Then go to where it is to sound, press F5, and select Back to Normal.
Another option is to look at the "Copy Rests" command. You just set the first bar to mute the strings (Bb.bdpg -> rest all except bass, drums, piano, guitar), then select "Edit, Copy Rests". Then in "Copy Rests from Bar #" enter 1; Num Bars to Copy enter 32; Copy to Bar # enter 1. That will set bars 1-32 to mute the strings, but preserve the chord progression.
Both this and Matt's method accomplish the same thing. The difference is that you will see on the chord grid exactly what you are trying to do, as opposed to opening the file six months down the road and wondering why the strings don't play for the first 32 bars.
Multiple ways to accomplish the same thing in BIAB.
Yes, I use the copy method mentioned by John as well. This became available several years ago, maybe 10?, and is a real time saver. Something else much newer, maybe a year, is that you can see in the Memo a listing of all the Bar Settings changes. This takes some of the mystery that John mentioned away when you load a song and are not sure what you had done in it.