I would love to see BIAB have a "simple mode" where you don't have to uncheck 75 boxes to not have thing loop, fake, coda, run through three times.... Check "Simple Mode" and program measure 1 to measure XXX and be done with it with no concern about what BIAB calls a verse, a chorus, a melody... any of that. Just a simple spreadsheet type interface where I can type in 120 measures of the chord progression I want, start it, and then have it stop on the 120th bar. I want ZERO repeats but you can't make it be ZERO. Just 1, 2 or 3. To get around this I have to constantly put in 8 empty bars at the end so I can get back to the computer from the keyboard or guitar (or sometimes an isolation room when I record sax) to stop the thing before it goes back to the first measure.

I imagine there may be some FAQ about it, but I have to be honest, you need to be 6 layers into the proper BIAB terminology before those FAQs help. A push, a shot, this that the other... My schooling was that a note that comes in early is an "anticipated" note. "Anticipated" is not in the FAQ. "Syncopation". "Fermata". "Caesura". And is often the case, a lot of people learn terms that are regional, colloquial, etc.... If 4 musicians are talking, and one says "pause", over says "break", another says "rest", another says "caesura", which one is right, and do they all mean the same thing? I still don't know the slang used in some of the posts. When someone says "shot", what is that? A rimshot? What shot? A "push"? Is that an anticipated note? How about a "pull", since you are actually pulling the beat forward, not pushing it back?

Simple mode.

+1 on the standard terminology, although I am sure that current BIAB usage is so ingrained that any change will be vigorously resisted by both PG and users. Given that, a glossary (dictionary, actually, since new terms are being defined) would be very nice.

I have also long requested/argued for a comprehensive index in both printed and online version of the manual, with said entries in the online version being hyperlinks instead of simple text. As it stands I need a printed manual so I can pencil in all the things that aren't included in the index.

Here's to musical excellence with BIAB!

Richard

Choose number of bars (change later if u want) type chords make it 1 repeat and un-check loop box beside the song title box . It will stop at the end . Is that what you needed ?

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Choose number of bars (change later if u want) type chords make it 1 repeat and un-check loop box beside the song title box. It will stop at the end . Is that what you needed ?

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That is part of it Tommy, but it goes a little deeper. When using the solo generator, you get prompted for melody, chorus, how many choruses... well, okay, my logic says to me "If I am programming from head to toe as one composition and have in no way designated to BIAB what is an intro, what is verse 1, what is bridge 1, what is chorus 1, what is half verse 2, what is bridge 2, what is chorus 2, what is solo, what is chorus 3 - they are all just measures".... how does BIAB know that? So often when I try to create a solo, using "custom" option I tell it where the solo starts, how many bars, uncheck "delete previous solo", and uncheck "okay to solo for one extra bar", yet the solo continues through the whole remainder of the piece and I have to be sitting there to mute it when it is supposed to finish. Then you get into "real tracks".... Real tracks? They are ALL "real". None of them are imagined....

The last song I worked on yesterday was a great example. I went in and set up the solo. Not only did BIAB play a solo where I told it not to, it randomly changed the instrument I had selected to be the solo instrument. Somehow I ended up with a banjo when I selected a distorted guitar.

I understand completely that the people who have been using this for a decade know this stuff in their sleep, and everyone here who belongs to that fraternity has been VERY helpful from day 1! I can't even start to tell you how much I appreciated all the direction and guidance I have gotten. I am just looking for some simplification on some of the terms that have become part of normal BIAB conversation. As I put in a previous post, a "shot", a "push"? I am 100% sure I know what they are trying to say after years of studying music in high school and then college, but I don't grasp what the TERM means as it is used here. Push seems to be more accurately defined as "PULL" as I see it, since you are "pulling" a note ahead of a beat, what I always called "an anticipated beat". And there is the rub. That may not even be what "push" means.

Look in the eyes of people who do not know computers when you try to explain that the hard drive is NOT the memory. The typical novice user thinks that because the hard drive "remembers" things, that the hard drive is the memory in their computer. I can't tell you how many calls I get because "my memory is all used up". I can tell you it is so many that I don't even bother trying to explain hard drive storage vs RAM memory any more. I know what they MEAN even though we don't communicate the term correctly. And that was the gist of the "simple mode" request. The old KISS method. Your post cleared up how to set up the skeleton of the song. I would like to be able to tell BIAB NO repeats. I don't want anything repeated. If the song runs through measure 1-36 4 times, I program the measures 4 times. That's the computer geek (anal?) side of my brain working. Logical, ordinal, place for everything - everything in it's place mentality.

Someone said they are going to buy me the now famous t-shirt that reads "I have CDO. It's the same as OCD but the letters are in order - like they are supposed to be."