Did you know about RealTracks Medleys? They are special groups of RealTracks that play in sequence. This tutorial shows you how to make your own medleys with the RealTracks feature in Band-in-a-Box: youtu.be/xzJBMmyCzoU

When it comes to Medleys, we don't stop there! With a previous release of Version 2008, we added a feature to Band-in-a-Box called the Medley Maker. This feature is great tool if you are wanting to make a medley of various songs you've created with Band-in-a-Box!

Inside the Medley Maker, which is accessed through the Song Form [AABA] button (the one with the pencil), simply select the songs that you want, and Band-in-a-Box will make the medley for you. A medley is not simply joining songs together - a good medley uses a "transition" area between songs to introduce the new style, key, and tempo. The Medley Maker automatically creates a nice transition area for you, writing in chords that would smoothly transition to the next song, style, key, and tempo!

The 2008 New Features Video is available here: youtu.be/fiwtv2hPhuY

The medley seems to be still limited to 255 total bars. Is this correct? If so it is, unfortunately, of limited use.

Tony

Indeed, Tony. That is my thinking as well.

From the help file, topic Medley Maker:
You can have multiple choruses, so if you had 3 choruses of a 250 bar medley, it would last 750 bars.

Just my opinion, but I don't see that the 255 bar item is in any way related to the Making Medleys topic being discussed.

The maximum number of 255 bars is in place for any and every song, however created. The discussion here is centered on Making Medleys.

If you need more than 255 bars for your medleys, just use multiple choruses, like the designers intended.

However, if you need more than 255 bars for any one chorus, then you could add the request (again) to the wishlist

I just don't know a song that has "one" chorus with a length that prohibits it to be used in a medley. Yes if a medley consists of ten songs each with more than 25 measures in average there might be a problem...

It really depends on the choice of tunes for the medley. But the way I see it, there is a very small chance to be stopped by the 255 bar limit. How high is the percentage that the average user with the average medley is affected? In at least 80 percent of all medleys there no problem. In at least 80 percent of the remaining 20 (16% in total) there is a creative solution to make it possible. That leaves a (calculated) maximum of 4 percent of medleys that might be affected.

Maybe somebody has a valid example where it does not work.

The 255 bar limit is a problem for me for the following reason.

I often play keyboard for gatherings, parties etc and would like a way of stringing together a couple of dozen songs so that I can play continuously for a long time with no breaks in between. e.g. I play literally dozens of songs as background music for a Xmas dinner. In theory the Jukebox does this (each song has it's own 255 limit) but it has one major flaw, that has been discussed many times. If it gets stopped in the middle of a batch of songs you cannot just restart the Jukebox where it stopped.

When I saw this thread on creating a medley I thought - great, the problem is now solved, I don't have to use the Jukebox but unfortunately the 255 limit still applies to the total medley.

Tony

Yes, I see it now. Creating a medley is limited for 255 bars, you then can repeat the medley using a number of choruses. So the same 255 bars get repeated over and over until the last iteration is reached.

That is again a topic for the wishlist. A wish that is probably hard to fulfill since it might tackle the current file structure. Just the wild guess that the number of bars is written into one (!) byte giving 256 unique states. To have more than that this status byte needs to be expanded to at least two bytes, allowing 65535 bars per song.

I'm positive that PGMusic will address this when the file structure has to be modified in one way or the other. Then there must also be a converter routine to correctly interpret and write legacy file formats.

One possible way to increase past 255 bars is to use Real Band
It has had Medley Maker since 2011 and no 255 bar limit:

It does have some issue with the 255 bar limit and BIAB RT generations. There was a seriously long discussion thread about a year ago. I'm not sure how it would apply to the Medley Maker limit.

A related hidden feature I've found using the Song Medley tool is as way to match incompatible elements within a single song project.

Because the Medley Maker can repeatedly use the same song in the Medley Maker song list and access defined measures of that single song, change tempo, change key as well as include/exclude a list of 7 song elements, and apply these to individual chorus's; Plus you can have transitions from 0-16 measures between each 'song'.

Setting the transition to -0- has no gap between the songs so BIAB plays that transition the same as if it were a Part Marker.

The Medley Maker also creates a unique SGU file to play the Medley and so it's non-destructive to the SGU file made to use repeatedly in the Medley Maker tool.

It's one heck of a powerful single song arrangement tool...

Here's a link from the Songwriter forum where I used the Medley Maker to do with 'songs' what BIAB couldn't do within a single song because BIAB played each 'song' as if it were a Part Marker.

https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=627933#Post627933