working up a backing track.
joe zawinul's mercy mercy mercy

bar 19 has a 6min going to a 5 (Gm - F in the original key of Bb)
4/4 time
i need the beat 1 chord to hold a dotted quarter and the second to hit for an eighth on the and of 2.
repeat same for beats 3 & 4


Can't remember how to do it, or if it can be done.
I tried pushes but no joy

Thanks.

Please describe exactly how you tried pushes. This should be possible.

What bar in the song is this?

Don't worry about the duration of the first chord. For the second chord, go to beat three and enter an eighth-note-value push of a single carat preceding the chord. The one at the end of the bar will require pushing the chord on beat one of the next bar.

Tip: In BIAB, you are limited to four chords per measure. If this is insufficient, you can do a workaround by lengthening the values of everything by two, placing what would have been in one bar into two. Then you adjust the style and tempo accordingly. It doesn't always work, and it may look funny in notation, but it can often sound right.

As stated in the original post bar 19 of the tune.
Key of Bb


I don't seem to be able to clip a jpeg and include here what I have in the arrangement.
i have attached the files of the clips to the post that might help


the best working push i have made so far is
Gmin,Gmin ^F,^GM | ^F,Gm Gm7..bd

The first push lands the F ok but the return to the Gm is wrong. The rest is pretty bad save the hold at the end of 20.

Bar 19 in the leadsheet calls for dotted quarter, eighth, dotted quarter, eighth. That is the sound i'm after.
Its only one bar but its front and center with horns in it.

Just don't seem to be able to get there

The problem is that if you push the chord in beat 3 (so it plays at 2 1/2),you then can't play the next chord right on beat 3. I think that's where the problem lies.

This will hopefully one day be solved if they ever implement 1/8 note resolution for the chord grid.

The only other thing I can think of is to use one of Bob Norton's expanded styles (which are MIDI only).

THEORETICALLY, you could achieve that by expanding the duration of chords, doubling the tempo and using half-time realtracks.

Instead of writing this:

|Gm F Gm F |Gm / / / | (Tempo 80)

You could write this:
|Gm / / F | |Gm / / F | Gm / / / | / / / / | (Tempo 160, with half-time realtracks)

But unfortunately, I've just tried and it doesn't work, because a bug on the program. BIAB simply ignores chords on beats 2 & 4 if using half time realtracks (it keeps playing over Gm)

You can test the problem by yourself by downloading this example:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E-AhKnB1-tnWITef7YJFttmiBC7FlviQ/view?usp=sharing

jford hit the nail on the head

1/8 note resolution would solve the problem.

reckon i just have to figure out how to make this portion of the arrangement tolerable.

or i could just go fishing.

1/8 note resolution wouldn't be neccesary if half-time realtracks actually worked, as stated above.

You could think about reporting the bug and wait to be fixed, but yes,I would go fishing instead.

here's the final version save a little tweak to the ending.
not the greatest feel at bar 19 but it will have to do.

Right, as John said, you can't have a chord on BOTH a push and the following beat.

Don't rule out the expanded length solution. You have to try a bunch of styles.

I'll probably just leave it as it is for now

As a recovering software developer of 30+ years I try not to work near the edges of any software.
I may accomplish the task at hand, but often at great time/effort and likely some brittleness.

Truthfully, It seems I'm often piqued by the nature of the hack itself, rather than the results.
But that's just me.

BIAB gets me 95% of what I need with relative ease. And I haven't nearly begun to tap its capabilities.
Its a remarkable software project that has provided me benefit for a couple of decades now.

So tomorrow, we're going mahi fishing.

I created EXPANDED styles for that exact problem. As noted, they are MIDI styles (you can do so much more with MIDI than you can with audio).

The EXPANDED style turns two cells in the BiaB matrix into one measure. The result is you can have a chord on every eighth note (or as many as you like) and the eighth not preceding another chord on the next beat.

Since two cells are one measure instead of the default one, you need to double the tempo to make it work. This also gives you an increase of resolution from 120ppq to 240 ppq (pulses per quarter note).

This would solve your problem.

To hear some EXPANDED style demos, go to:
http://www.nortonmusic.com/styledemo.html

Notes

This song has come up a number of times. I have a solution that was given to me a couple years ago that works.

Here's the actual post. I'm playing it in the key of "A".

Hi Frank,

You can do this by modifying the bar settings to double the tempo for those measures as follows.

For the bar containing the F#m you need to press the F5 key to get the bar settings dialog and then set the "% change in tempo" box to 100%. Then in that bar and the following bar type the following chords as shown:

bar 1:
F#m...<enter key>,E
bar 2:
F#m...<enter key>,E

That gives you the F#m on beat 1 and the E on beat 4 (now 2-1/2). Finally in the following bar restore the tempo to normal by typing -50 in the "% change in tempo" box and typing F#m on beat 1.

I am using the RB_EDDIE style for this song btw.

I hope this makes sense. If you still have problems I could email you the version I have if you send me a private message.

Ed