Sometimes I work on different songs in different BIAB executables and it would be great to be able to copy the selected bars from one instance to another.

This has been discussed on the wishlist before; agree 100% that this should be implemented.

+1

(from jford, the other John F.)

Yes, a worthy long-time request.

+1

+1

Another vote of support.
+1

+1.

+1

+1

Yup, +1 here!

+1 here also...

Another +1

+1

What does working “in different BIAB executables” mean? What might be an example?

I open Band-in-a-Box and load song "A". Then I open a second instance of Band-in-a-Box and start creating a new song, "B". I copy the first eight bars of song "A" and want to paste the chords into the first eight bars of song "B".

As it presently stands, you can not copy and paste any data between two instances of Band-in-a-Box. Copy and paste between two open programs is a fundamental Windows feature that Band-in-a-Box does not support.

J Larry, Jim gave the typical use we would expect for that feature.

Another possible use, yet to be tested, is to copy a song that has become corrupted, and see if the copy works correctly. Granted, corrupt songs are rare, but I’m interested to see if this will be an easy method to rescue such a song.

At the moment you can only copy audio from one instance to another using the Audio Edit window, you can copy & paste overwriting the existing audio section or Merge, this works good for creating the drum section you need by copying the drum hits at the end of the RealDrum file.
Maybe you can have "Scrap" like RealBand, this can save any copied section to file then loaded back at anytime.

Scrap Buffer

When you Copy or Cut a section of the song, the data is placed in a temporary storage area known as the scrap buffer. This is where data is held when you Copy and Paste. When the Undo feature is used it puts the scrap back into its original location. You can also save the scrap to use at another time.

To do this, use the normal procedure to Copy or Cut a section of the song. Then go to File | Scrap | Save Scrap. This opens the Save Scrap dialog. Save the section of scrap with a descriptive name as a RealBand .SEQ file. When you want to use the scrap, go to File | Scrap | Load Scrap to reload the saved .SEQ file into the scrap buffer.


File - Scrap - Save Scrap

This command works just like the File - Save As command, but saves the contents of the Scrap Buffer to a .MID or .SEQ file. This is useful for exporting part of your work.

Note: Audio tracks will be saved to scrap if saved as a .SEQ file. However, if you use the Load Scrap command to load the file back into scrap, the track types must be set to audio or the scrap won’t be pasted into the song. In other words, if you saved a .SEQ file and track 1, 3, and 5 are audio tracks, you must set tracks 1, 3, and 5 to audio before loading the scrap.


File - Scrap - Load Scrap

This command works the same way as the File - Open command, except that the .MID or .SEQ file is loaded into the Scrap Buffer. You may then Paste the contents of the scrap buffer anywhere within the song. This is useful for importing a file into the current song.

While the recommended way of importing audio is by importing from .WAV files, you can use the Load Scrap command to load a group of audio tracks into the scrap buffer, so that you can paste them into the current song. If the audio file format of the .SEQ file doesn’t match the file format of the current song, the tracks in the file you’re loading will be converted to match the audio file format of the current song.

Note: If loading a .SEQ file with both MIDI and audio tracks, it is probably a good idea to make sure that both files have the track types match each other in order to ensure that all the data will be Audio tracks will be saved to scrap if saved as pasted into the song when you use the Edit | Paste command.

If the existing song contains some blank tracks, then RealBand will automatically set the track types to the correct track type. This won’t be done until you use the Edit | Paste command if the scrap buffer contains data, and also if the corresponding tracks in the project are blank but aren’t already set to the correct track type .

Then there's the rest of the story. If there was a copy feature that permitted data to be copied between multiple open instances of Band-in-a-Box what data should a user reasonably expect to be copied? Once you consider the possibilities you'll better recognize the difficulty. There is chords, midi, audio, bar settings, tempo, style, RealTracks instruments, midi patches, inserts, key signature and on and on with anything else you could possibly imagine.

+1 but you can actually do this via workaround if you simply create a copy of the BIAB app in the same folder.

then you can launch two instances of the same app and ( i think... ) cut and paste between them.

Nochai, You are correct that you can have multiple instances of BiaB open at a time. You don't even have to make a copy of the BiaB app. However, you do have to make a change in the program preferences. Press Ctrl + E or select Options > Preferences to open the preferences window then enable the "Allow multiple instances of Band-in-a-Box to be running" selection.

But, you are not able to copy and paste between instances.

Wow, good thinking and really good question, Jim.

My answer would be anything I type and enter for chords or MIDI. This would include:

1. the chordsheet with pushes, holds and shots.
2. Any MIDI I entered for the Melody or Soloist
3. Bar settings

It would NOT include the things that could be set (perhaps differently) in the new file:

1. Tempo
2. Style
3. Key signature
4. Mixer settings including Volume, pan etc., MIDI patches, and RealTracks/Drums selected

Another way to think about it is to use word processing as an example. Suppose I have text I want to copy. I highlight the text and paste it into another program. A plain ASCII text file will go over with no formatting. In the new program, I set the font and work on formatting.

The main point is to avoid loss, or retyping, of things you originally typed in. Adjusting how it is treated can be done in the second program.

But ... What if I copy bars 5 through 8 and in instance 1, bar 5 there is a midi patch change from grand piano to bright piano, should the patch change carryover from instance 1 to instance 2? After all, that is a change I made using the bar settings window.

Yes, good point and I intentionally did not yet address every issue you asked about above. “Bar settings” includes a tremendous amount of stuff.

I think less is more here. My suggestion would be to start with the minimum features I mentioned, even just #1 and 2. Then we would quickly discover what else we forgot to include, and debate how important it is to include that.

Maybe such a copy function could also simply alert the user of certain events that are not copied. It doesn't have to copy everything, but an informative alert would be a way to acknowledge what has not been included.

Band-in-a-Box supports copying within a song, checkout page 186 of the Band-in-a-Box for Windows manual for a description of how copy/paste currently works, essentially copy/paste is highlight, Ctrl + C to copy and Ctrl + V to paste. The only thing lacking is for copy/paste to work during multiple instances of the program. I think I have a workable solution!

The current default is a user is limited to having one instance of Band-in-a-Box open, a user has to go into preferences (Ctrl + E or Options > Preferences) to enable the option of enabling more than one instance open at a time. Enabling the open multiple instances should add one step to how to use the copy/paste feature. The steps become highlight bars in one instance of Band-in-a-Box, Ctrl + C opens a window with check boxes to select what data will be copied the cursor is moved to a different bar in any open instance of Band-in-a-Box and Ctrl + V pastes the selected data. The key ideas are what data is available for selection does not change and the data selection window is not relevant and is not used unless the multiple instances option in preferences is selected.