I've just upgraded from an older Band-in-a-Box version and was interested to see ABC import and export as a feature. I've been using that format for years to generate MIDI files and lead sheets for songs.

My problem is that I don't understand how this implementation is supposed to work. Most of the files I try to import give me a rather dire warning:

"List index (-1) out of bounds.

Press OK to ignore and risk data corruption.
Press Abort to kill the program."

Those that don't give a warning also have no visible result that I can see.

I even tried the simple sequence of exporting an ABC file from the program, using File->New, then importing the file with no modifications. Nothing obvious happened (empty grid except for one C chord)...which makes me think, maybe I don't know what should happen.

Can you please attach a file that you get that error message with? You can just give the file a .txt extension and attach it using the File Manager.

Here are two ABC files. CTM.txt is one of the ones that produced the error message. Pegasus.txt is the one that was created by Band-in-a-Box, but silently did nothing when loaded into a new Band-in-a-Box song.

Thank you for sending those files.

For Pegasus:
It looks like Band-in-a-Box does not write 3/4 time signature correctly sometimes. You can work around this by editing the file, and changing the M: header to:
M:3/4

For CMT:
Band-in-a-Box does not support importing multiple verses like this file has. If you remove the multiple lyric lines then the error does not occur and the file can be imported, though not with the structure that you might expect... We'll add it to our list to look into these issues further.

Changing 3/0 to 3/4 doesn't make any difference for me. Attempting to import the file through Open Special or with drag & drop still leaves me with a blank workspace and no message to say what failed.

That doesn't matter much, though, since Pegasus was only created because I figured the easiest thing for Band-in-a-Box to read would be a file it wrote and thought that would be a good starting point for debugging.

Practically, I have to treat the feature as significantly worse than useless if it requires me to destroy the utility of existing files on the chance that it might import them...and then need more work to restore the structure.

One more experiment shows me that MuseScore does a reasonable job of importing ABC and will then write MusicXML, which Band-in-a-Box can read. If I feel I need to use my existing files, I'll see if that workflow suits me...at least until I hear of bug fixes.

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Thanks for trying to help. ABC import was never going to be a critical factor in my use of the program. It was more a case of seeing something that could have been a pleasant bonus.

One more discovery: On my failed attempt to open Pegasus, I note that the program created a number of files in its data directory, including one that seems to be a conversion to some intermediate form.

Maybe it explains why the workspace wasn't updated. Is there anything that can be done with this kind of file?

Thanks, there is definitely a problem with ABC import that we need to look into.