Greetings all,

We have written a song in straight country 4 @ 85 BPM but listening to the words I can hear a different arrangement

What we now want to do is have the song in a 2/4 shuffling train beat with brushes and acoustic slap bass which will change to a 4/4 country rock feel still with the acoustic bass for the solo, then back to the original 2/4 before again changing to 4/4 for the final chorus and playout to drive it home.

I am thinking of an On The Road Again by Willie feel but my writing partner is thinking more of a Waylon Good Hearted Woman feel.

Either will work but we don't know how to get there.

Any and all help / advice will be greatly appreciated

Greetings in return suthol,

The easiest way to find styles that may help you reach your goals is to use the song title filter in the StylePicker. If the song title is in the song database the StylePicker will sort styles from styles that closely match the song to styles that don't match the song.

The next step is to see if you have the styles and instruments in the version of Band-in-a-Box you have.

Assuming you find styles and instruments you like I would create one song based part first. Export the song as a stereo audio mix.

Create the second song. Import the first audio file onto the audio track.

Use the medley feature or F5 bar settings to switch between the tracks of song two and the audio file of song 1.

Thanks for the prompt reply Jim, I'll add some info that I should have put in at the start

I am running BIAB 2021 Ultra on a Win 64 platform and my DAW is Reaper.

I tend to do things the hard way just because :-)

When we build a song in BIAB I generally export the drum track as a midi file so I can break the kit up into it's separate pieces, kick, snare, toms, cymbals etc all on their own separate tracks in my DAW, the rest of the instruments are exported from Realband into the DAW once again on separate tracks.

I do sometimes export one of the other instruments as a midi and change from maybe finger picked guitar to a viola / cello or perhaps keys, I have also exported a piano part as midi and broken it into left and right hand to accentuate or remove what I don't need in the mix.

This gets us the band we want playing what we want without having to do all the midi stuff long hand or employ a bunch of session guys.

I was hoping to be able to swap time sigs and styles in the same manner as we can by clicking on a bar to change the colour from clear -> blue -> green etc.

I'll keep diving in to see what I can find and keep coming back for more.

This is a couple we put together
https://julierichards.bandcamp.com/releases
https://nevertoolate2.bandcamp.com/track/fun-in-covid

Everything in Band-in-a-Box is ultimately based on either 4/4 or 3/4 time. You can search for and find styles that emulate other time signatures like 12/8 or 6/8 but underneath it all it's still either 3/4 or 4/4.

You can change beats to the bar or style at any bar through the F5 Bar Settings window.

It seems your image displays how to change Key signature, though the Beats per Bar is just above that

Corrected. Thanks for noticing that Bob. I thought suthol said swap key signatures.

Thanks guys, gives me something to try and hopefully come up a winner