Okay then! "Shot" equals "stab" or "hit".

Someday I would like to play devil's advocate with the people who claim "With Band In A Box you can be writing songs in minutes without any knowledge of music!!"

Really?

Them: Just open the chord sheet and enter your chords!

Me: What's a chord?

Them: You know, the chords from the key you are in.

Me: What's a key?

Them: You know, A or E, or G

Me: How about L or P? Can I write my song in the key of P?

Them: Well, there's no key of P.

Me: Oh. What are there? I know A, E and G from your message.

Them: Keys are named in every letter from A to G.

Me: Oh. Ok. So I can put in A, then B, then C, then D.....

Them: Well, no, you need to follow a progression.

Me: What's a progression?

Them: It's the pattern of how the keys follow each other in a song.

Me: Doesn't the software do that?

Them: No. You have to enter the key names.

Me: But you said I didn't need to know music.

And so on. I can play dumb with the best of them. (Don't say it.....!)

And that is the "implied knowledge" factor here. To make songwriting sound so easy is to really belittle every songwriter out there. You need an idea, some modicum of fluency with English to write the lyrics, and basic music knowledge to enter the chords. And then shall we move on to styles?

Them: Then you can pick your style.

Me: What's a style?

And on and on we continue with a musical theory version of Who's On First. I mean, I am about 4 CDs worth of music into this software, and that doesn't count the stuff I started and just threw away because they were garbage, and I have never used BIAB. Having never looked at it I can only guess, but it seems like BIAB is the Bunny Slope and RB is the Black Diamond slope. For those who don't know what that metaphor means, the bunny slope is the ski slope that is all but flat. The black diamond signs mean it's the hardest slope on the mountain, for experts only. It's just my personality but I will usually pick the harder path first. When I played video games I always started on expert mode. The only time I was on skis I went right to the hardest slope. And I didn't ski more than about 15 feet. The rest was tumbling down the mountain. Which is the perfect metaphor for my fist year or so with Real Band.

But back to bidness, yes, people who speak with implied knowledge are hard to understand. I once saw someone here explain how a major chord is 1-3-5. Okay, back to the dumb guy character?

"What's a 1?"
"It's the root."
"What's a root?"

Last edited by eddie1261; 02/25/19 06:34 AM.
I am using the new 1040XTRAEZ form this year. It has just 2 lines.

1. How much did you make in 2023?
2. Send it to us.