It would be very handy to have a counter added to BIAB so that it is easier to see how long a song is, and at what point in the song certain sections are arrived at. I am often trying to keep my songs under a certain length, and I'm sure some users are using BIAB for 30 second commercial spots or creating other music for some specific minimum or maximum length of time.

Having a counter somewhere on the interface would be helpful, like here for example:




And if you don't want to add it to the interface, perhaps it could be a window similar to the "Big Lyrics" that shows chords and lyrics wherever you want to see them on your display. If there was a similar resizeable window for a counter, then users who want one could put it wherever they want on their display:




Personally, I would prefer the first example so that it is small but always available at a glance by simple looking at the GUI.

I'm sure that some kind of counter is already available for users of RealBand, but for those of us who could benefit from having it right in BIAB, this would be a nifty addition.

Yes, this has been requested and would be helpful. +1

Just checking, are you aware of the information at the very top of the screen after a song has been regenerated?

Also, while it's not what you asked, BIAB does have the ability to generate a song of specified length. You could do that to get a length and tempo, then modify it with your own composition.

Yes, as Matt mentioned, there is a song total time listed on the form caption (I believe that it includes count-in time) - see attachment.

There's also an idea for a progress bar on this post of a GUI concept. The intention is to see at a glance the overall progress of the song - important for live playing. Give it a +1 (or feel free to give it several) if you like it.

+1 for your ideas.

I had not actually figured that out yet, thanks!

Until a possible counter is added, half of my wish has been granted now that I can see the song length at a glance. I know I'm going to be checking that out all the time from now on.




I just read through that thread and watched your concept video again. Nice work and lots of great ideas for sure. I will add a response to it a little later.

Be aware that the song length you can see in the upper zone of the page is NOT the duration of the song because :

1 - it DOES include the two count-in bars
2 - if you have tempo changes in the song, they are taken in account to calculate the actual duration of the song.

These two items are in the BB wishlist since many years.

Plus, there are options in the Render dialog to add seconds of silence to the beginning and/or end of the song.

Thanks for suggestions

I would still like to see a counter added to the interface, perhaps at the right side of the Progress Bar.

I OFTEN find myself wishing I could find out exactly how far I am into the song in minutes and seconds, because section lengths and the position of the solo section are important for me to gauge in relation to the song length.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gu2yhnocy8ymxp7/Big_Clock.zip?dl=1

Load into a midi plugin slot.
It just lacks a bar offset option for the 2 bar count-in.

http://thepiz.org/pizmidi/Big%20Clock.zip
the piz site is offline at the moment but it will be back.
It has a lot of options.

Host Timeline as bars/beats/ticks, hours/minutes/seconds/frames, or samples.
Recording Time (only works if host informs plugins of recording state).
Stopwatch, with automatable controls.
Plugin Time - total time since the plugin was loaded.
Actual Time - "Real Life" time of day.

Use it if your host's counter is the wrong color, or isn't big enough. Bigger is better. Sample-accurate up to one hundred billion hours at 44100 Hz.

Can also set up "cues" to display at selected times.

You got me excited, Pipeline, but unfortunately this Big Clock is for Windows only and there doesn't seem to be a Mac version... but something like this would be perfectly fine if PGMusic would bundle a version that is built-in to BIAB and can be opened in a separate window like this with the click of an icon or a menu selection. I have 2 displays so I would be quite happy to put the Clock on my second display.

PGMusic, please help to make this available for all users!

Yea, sorry I just noticed you had Mac OS X at the bottom after I posted.
Been looking for a Mac version and vst wrappers.

Hello Pipeline, BRILLIANT find! And if we start voting again .. zedd's first picture looks great, hate those big windows, far too many around.

I just want to ask, is there a reason for not implementing a clock?
For most of us, I assume being able to keep track of how long their songs are is a sure must.
It's quite easy to get carried away with this awesome software. the first song I did, I was well impressed until I moved it to Cubase and noticed it was over 16 minutes long 😱, I managed to edit it down to 11 minutes in Cubase. Yep, Biab, needs a clock.

You have it :

Oh, wow, I never noticed that, thank's

<< BIAB for 30 second commercial spots or creating other music for some specific minimum or maximum length of time. >>

BIAB does have the feature to generate any SGU/MGU file to a specific length using the Generate SoundTrack option.

The selection is located in Melody\Generate SoundTrack

Peter replied: "Thanks for suggestions".
So I guess it's still being considered.

There's another here: Big Clock for Biab Win

Almost 8 years later, and I still really want this request to be fulfilled!

A Big Clock (or much preferably a Little Clock window) that opens and stays open would solve the problem and I would be more than happy.

But building it into the GUI similar to as shown in my original post, would be even better:
>>>>> Original Concept Image of BIAB 2016 with Counter built into the GUI <<<<<

(I'm not sure why the images in my original post (or here) are not being displayed in this forum. For 8 years I have had the images available in the same location so that they wouldn't disappear from these forum posts, but apparently the forum now only shows images that have local addresses or are somehow added as attachments? Not sure what changed, but the link to my concept image is above.)


Hopefully this topic being back at the top of the wish list might help to make it happen eventually.

I don't understand why this wasn't added years ago. It's such a simple thing and it is so useful while working on a song.

Thank's Charlie, this will also come in very handy

Here is my mockup image for BIAB time.

Looks good to me, even though I don't use that version of the GUI.

As long as it is added somewhere in the GUIs, I will be very pleased. It can't really be that difficult to accomplish...

+1 for time

+1 for Vincente mockup+location, but I would prefer time with 1:10 of a second resolution: 1:15:08

This is a great idea, +1

Why can't they just copy the RB Big Clock code ???? I think I remember now saying that 10 years ago

Absolutely. The code is already written.