PG Music Home Forums FAQ and Knowledge Base Band-in-a-Box for Windows FAQ 34. How can I combine multiple Band-in-a-Box songs to make a medley?

34. How can I combine multiple Band-in-a-Box^® songs to make a medley, or copy and paste part of one song into another?

In Band-in-a-Box^® 2008 and higher, you can do this using the Medley Maker feature (File menu | Medley Maker). Note that Band-in-a-Box^® can optionally create transition bars between your songs to make it smoother.

Band-in-a-Box^® 2007 and earlier do not have a single feature that will make a medley automatically, however it could be done in a number of steps. You need to copy the chords separately from the melody, solo, and lyrics.

You can copy the chords from one song to another by simply highlighting the chords in one song, selecting Edit | Copy, then opening the other song and selecting Edit | Paste. Adjust the number of bars per chorus accordingly in the destination song.

There are two ways you could copy the melody/solo/lyrics from one song to another. Say that "song 1" is the file you are copying from, and "song 2" is the file you are copying to (the destination file) and you want to copy the melody:

First Method - Copy and paste notation into song 2. This doesn't copy lyrics

1. In Song 1, open the Notation Window (Melody track), and toggle into editable notation mode by pressing the [N] button.
2. Find the start of the section that you want to copy and highlight a small region (it doesn't matter how much) starting at that location.
3. Hold down the shift key on your keyboard, and click on the end of the section that you want to copy. This will highlight the section (Note: in Band-in-a-Box^® 2004 and earlier you need to click and drag to highlight a region of the Notation Window).
4. Go to Edit | Copy, make sure that the settings in the Copy dialog are correct, and press OK.
5. Load Song 2, open the notation window, and position yourself at the location you want to start pasting at.
6. Go to Edit | Paste, make sure the settings in the Paste dialog are correct, and press OK.

Second Method - Save as MIDI file and import into song 2. This does copy lyrics.

1. Open Song 1.
2. Determine how many bars from the start of the song the part is that you want to copy. If you have "Include 2 bar lead-in in MIDI file" checked in the Opt. | Preferences | MIDI File Options dialog, add 2 bars to account for the lead-in.
3. Take note of how many bars you want to copy.
4. Mute all tracks except for the Melody track. To do this, right-click on Bass, Piano, Drums, Strings, and Soloist in the instrument panel.
5. Click the .MID button to save the song as a MIDI file. Save it to the clipboard.
6. Open Song 2 and determine how many bars from the start of the song you want to paste the section.
7. Go to Melody | Edit Melody Track | Import Melody from clipboard. In the 'Import MIDI file - options' dialog, pay particular attention to the following settings:

   -# bars to offset from start of MIDI file: The number of bars from the start of the song that you found in step 2.
   -How many bars to import?: This is the number you found in step 3.
   -# blank bars to insert at beginning: This is the number of bars you found in Step 6 plus 2 bars if there is a lead-in.
   -'Merge with Existing Data on track': This should be checked unless you want to erase/overwrite any existing notation in the melody track of Song 2.

8. Press OK.

The other thing you may need to do is set up the part of your destination song that came from song 1 with the same style, patches, tempo, etc., as you had in song 1. The Edit | Settings for current bar (F5) dialog will be useful for this.

I can't get any of this to work. I would like to insert 32 measures from one song in the middle of another song. I inserted 32 empty bars into song 2, copied chords for the section I want from song 1, back to song 2 and tried to paste at the right spot. Nothing happens. I could enter the chords manually, but would like to copy the melody. Tried the "First Method" from this post for copying melody, and again nothing happens. ???

Bill,

Do you have two instances of Band-in-a-Box open? Band-in-a-Box will not let you copy between multiple open instances of the program. Unlike the majority of Windows program Band-in-a-Box does not use the Windows clipboard for copy and paste.

Try using only one open instance of the Band-in-a-Box program. Open the program, load song # 1, copy, load song # 2, paste.

Ah, so THAT'S the trick! Thanks for the info. Seems a little tedious, but if that's how it works.

Bill,

Unlike the majority of Window programs Band-in-a-Box does not write or read to the Windows registry so Windows can't use the clipboard to keep track of data moving between programs.