I'm in RealBand, I'm in the Notation window, and wanting to enter lyrics. There are lyrics in the sgu I brought over from BB, but they didn't come with it. Can I fix that? I have read up on it, and i don't think there's much that helps because when I click on the notation window, and I'm at a bar with notes, and I click on lyrics it's just big letters saying End Of Lyrics and I can't type in there and I don't see Lyrics edit anywhere. It is midi track with a violin from SampleTrack 3.
Yeah, OK, so I'm in midi, at a bar with notes, and then I go to notation mode, and see notes, and make sure I'm in standard notation mode, and I can insert section text. So that's there. Is that supposed to by lyrics? In BB it's so nice to have the lyrics in the narrow box at the top of the chords.
And anyway, I need to know what the lyrics are so I can enter the notes that go with those lyrics. In BB I can do that, just put in the lyrics with the chords, and then add a midi track and I know by the lyrics how to play the melody notes that I created for my song.
See, my process was to come up with a melody. then I used the BB chord wizard to suggest chords for the melody. then I spent some time adjusting that, and then in BB I entered the lyrics, and that's important because when I do the melody I need those lyrics to tell me how long to hold notes, or how long to wait before entering the next lines of notes. this is new to me. In the past I've always just taken BB chords and sang along to a melody that I felt went along with those chords. Now I've got the other way around, with melody first, then chords.
So now I'm tying to understand if RB is better than BB for this type of process. Well, of course, I went to RB because you can add all these tracks, and I was thrilled to just enter a violin with SampleTank on a midi track, and that's a very important step, and I want to be able to do more of it. It's just that I'm losing the lyrics, and I need those lyrics not only to know about note placement, but about expression, too.
When you say, "In BB it's so nice to have the lyrics in the narrow box at the top of the chords", it makes me think that you've entered your lyrics in BIAB using Bar-Based lyrics. If this is the case, Realband doesn't yet support that type of lyric input.
To transfer lyrics from BIAB to RB, they need be note-based lyrics. For this reason, when I write my songs, I always compose the melody in BIAB and add note-based lyrics to my melody (see the image below). Saving this will create an MGU file (M = contains a melody).
This MGU then opens in RB with no problems and with the lyrics intact (see the image below).
Thank you very much, Noel. I understand and appreciate that. So I was in BIAB and had the chords and the lyrics, and then I was playing along with my keyboard, and got frustrated. I could play along, but when it came to actually recording the midi, and the thru track and I suddenly realized that in RealBand you can just add all the midi tracks you want and then add any ol' synth you wanted (sforzando, Aria player, SampleTank) and put an instrument on the track, so I went over to RB and then ran into the lyrics problem. But I will follow you and work with it.
Yep, what Noel said. RealBand responds to note based lyrics, not bar based lyrics. What I normally do is rather than enter syllables note-by-note in RealBand (or even BIAB for that matter) is to create the melody line and lyrics in my go-to notation program (Noteworthy Composer), export to MIDI, and then import from the MIDI file.
I like Noteworthy Composer for lyrics, because you don't have to enter them note by note as you do in many other notation programs (and as you have to do in RealBand or BIAB).
You just open the notation editor and type in the lyrics (with dashes where you want syllable breaks) and underlines when you need to skip non-tied notes. Quick and easy. Sometimes, I'll actually just copy/paste from a lyrics site, then edit it to add the dashes for syllable breaks. Much quicker than moving note-by-note and typing in syllables.
But that's just my work flow. I'm sure others have different ways of accomplishing it.
John
Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 2x2TB, 1x4TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 2x1.5TB, 2x2TB, 1x4TB SATA
All that being said, I'm pretty sure you can also do the following.
Just enter any note for each place there's a lyric syllable (using either a MIDI keyboard or even your computer keyboard) by tapping out the rhythm of the melody; don't worry about the notes. Doesn't matter the note, you just want the melody rhythm. Then you can enter the lyrics in RealBand to each note. Then delete the melody, and the lyrics should stay as properly timed MIDI events.
John
Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 2x2TB, 1x4TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 2x1.5TB, 2x2TB, 1x4TB SATA
thanks Noel and John. I just did enter the melody and lyrics in BIAB and brought them over to RB, and that worked well (relatively speaking, at least it worked, as a first time). For me that also produces a useable lead sheet. But I will look into Noteworthy Composer, too.
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