When a song has a mixture of time signatures, e.g. 4/4 and 3/4, the visual cue of a small red line is limited. Adding Section Letters is one way to provide an indicator, but a great improvement would be if Numbers were also available. Select a 3 to show where time signature changes to 3/4 and a 4 to show where it changes to 4/4, etc.
This also takes up much less room than having to turn on the additional layers to add bar change info.
Any takers?
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When changing Bar information (I presume using F5), there are many options that can be changed. Changing the time signature automatically shows the new signature. So going from 4/4 to 3/4 will (or should) be obvious. Now I always show time signature on my notation anyway, so this may only affect those who chose to not to display the information.
But it could be useful to show other changes such as tempo (slow down or speed-up) or perhaps muting of an instrument and then returning to normal. It could be used for changing instruments and so many other "bar changes".
However, it is may just amount to clutter in the long run. Something similar to a part marker might be even easier, but again could be confused with a normal marker.
Making the red box more obvious using a bold line would definitely help.
BIAB for Windows Version 2019 (643) Windows 10 (1909)
At first I didn't like the idea that a Section "Number" would cover up the actual bar number, as in your example, but when I tried adding a Section Letter I see that it does not actually cover up the bar number in the Mac version. The Section Letter appears as you've shown it but a little smaller and above the bar number.
Just of out curiosity, do the Section Letters cover the bar number in the Windows version?
Since A-Z are available as Section Letters, it makes perfect sense to include numbers 0-9 as well for whenever a user wants to indicate something with numbers rather than letters.
I am copying chords into Band-in-a-Box from a big-band score.
I wish to use Section Letters in the same way as the band arrangement I’m working from. (Section Letters are added to the chart in BiaB by right-clicking on any bar number and selection the option “Bar-Based Section Letters”.) These help me navigate through the BiaB chord chart and make sure I'm still aligned with the original big-band arrangement.
However, the particular band arrangement I’m working from uses Section Numbers (instead of Section Letters) - each new Section Number is the same as the current bar number. The section Numbers in the big-band arrangement soon reach bar numbers greater than 9 which is the maximum Section Number available in BiaB.
I can understand why the Section Letters/Number available in BiaB are constrained to a single character because of the space available in the box around the Section Letter/Number when it appears on the BiaB chart. To accommodate one or two characters, the font size would have to be dynamic to fill only the space available.
I don’t know if I’m alone is asking this but would the BiaB development team see this as a feature that would be useful for many users? That is, an option in the Bar-Based Section Letters drop-down list could be ”Use Current Bar Number” (up to 99).
I am using Band-in-a-Box 2020 (734) 64-Bit and I’m using the Windows 10 (latest update) operating system.
Would be interested to know if any others might find it useful to have Letters A-ZZ or Numbers 1-99 (or "Use Current Bar Number") as options for Bar-Based Section Letters/Numbers.
Secondly, thanks for going to reasonable detail to explain your requirement. I can see benefits, including if the user could select their own character combination, perhaps one or two characters typed in, instead of selecting from a context menu.
A very worthwhile suggestion.
+1 for me.
BIAB & RB2024 Win.(Audiophile), Sonar Platinum, Cakewalk by Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M Monitors, Pioneer Active Monitors, AKG K271 Studio H'phones
Just yesterday, I worked (in another music program) on a score that had section numbers. I normally use letters, which gives you more possible entries in one character position, but I've begun to see more scores using numbers.
For the original wish, +1.
BIAB 2024 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 6.5 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6; Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus Studio 192, Presonus Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors
Thanks for your responses, guys. Nice to feel welcome!
A few further quick points:
Using Section Numbers makes it easier to locate a section because they follow the natural sequence of bar numbers. Section Letters can be placed anywhere but they often take a little longer to locate.
In most arrangements, Section Letters don't usually go beyond, say for example, the letter L (of course, many go further). Twelve single-character Section Letters would be all that's needed in these cases. While using Section Letters follows established music arranging convention, there seems to be an emerging convention to use Section Numbers (I've seen many examples) - probably because they're easier to find.
It's not unusual for pieces to extend beyond 99 bars and now we're into triple numbers! Could be problems implementing Section Numbers in terms of the current BiaB functionality (and the space available).
We also need to bear in mind that Section Letters/Numbers don't always mark out discrete musical sections. They are sometimes used to mark parts of the music that may require rehearsal stops (not necessarily starting points for new sections).
A more fundamental question is why the current BiaB options provide Section Numbers at all if they only go up to 9. Probably for the reasons explained above. But there may be a perfectly good reason for it that I'm not seeing!
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