band in a Box - How do I arrange a full song?

**FatJeff** · 09-09-2010, 08:56 AM

Hi All,

I've been using BiAB 2010.5 for a while now, and I'm pretty comfortable with the day-to-day stuff I usually do (loading songs, songlists, changing tempos, changing instruments, etc.). It's good for when I already have a BiAB-format song queued up to play along with. But say I want to enter my own song - either one I've written myself, or one that nobody's yet put into BiAB format. How do I do typical things that make the arrangement into a full song? Things like:

- have arbitrarily long intros with different percussion/instrumentation/feel/tempo than the rest of the song
- have a head that only plays for the first and last repeats
- have an outro vamp section
- change from swing to latin feel in different sections

These aren't unusual things to ask for when composing a jazz song.

I'd like to learn this on my own, but I still think the BiAB user interface is a complete disaster, and I find it very difficult to learn new things in the program. The "help" is of Windows-95 vintage and is a complete mess - a collection of help topics that apply to ancient versions of the program (there are actually sections in the help files that talk about the current version being 2004).

Thanks for any tips.

**fep** · 09-09-2010, 09:19 AM

Hi Jeff,

I have 2008.5, maybe it's done the same way.?

"- have arbitrarily long intros with different percussion/instrumentation/feel/tempo than the rest of the song"

It won't be arbitrary but you can have a long intro that is a specific number of bars. Set the number of bars in the intro by clicking the 1st number box to the right of the tempo box.

To change instrumentation... Do you know of entering a chord like this 'C.d' that will play only drums until the next chord is entered; C.dp, will play only drums and piano etc. (it's at page 63 of the 2008.5 user's guide).

A second way to change instrumentation and/or to change feel and/or tempo... Click the 'S' to the right of the song title to go to 'Song Settings'. Then click the second tab to go to Bar settings. Work with that screen.

"- have a head that only plays for the first and last repeats"

That's under the 'Melody' drop down window, select 'Mute Melody during middle choruses'

"- have an outro vamp section"

Use the 'Tag' function in the 'Song Settings' window.

"- change from swing to latin feel in different sections"

Use the 'Style changes at current bar' in the 'Bar Settings' window.

**FatJeff** · 09-09-2010, 09:44 AM

Awesome! Thanks for the tips - I'll play with these tonight. :-)

**oilywrag** · 09-09-2010, 09:45 AM

Hi Jeff,Write out the song in full,just as you want it played.move the highlight cell to the 1st bar of ach new part,press "p" on the keyboard or repeatedly press to scroll through the substyle menu. "a" verse "b" b sec / middle choruses, "c" the intro,"d" break or interlude || double lines are drawn on chord sheet the bar before a part marker.
Open the multi styles box and you want the 2nd option for a specific song only,you can have up to 24 substyles per style.Choose the style for song then add the user defined styles to the correct part marker.This should go some way towards helping. If you have the book then it is all in chapter 6 pg 68.

If you have any more questions ask

Cheers Tom

**FatJeff** · 09-15-2010, 09:55 AM

OK, another question. I've been playing with inserting my own melodies, and I'm scratching my head on how to do triplets. For example, in the following snippet, how would I implement the triplet quarter notes? BiaB's whole grid-based interface is counter-intuitive to me.

**oilywrag** · 09-15-2010, 10:37 AM

Hi Jeff you ask some questions(haha).Enter "editable Notation mode"If you are using a swing style then the grid should be in triplets,what you want is the "Beat Resolution"menu where you can manually sort out what you want.
Hope this points you in the right direction,when can we hear the results??

Cheers Tom

**FatJeff** · 09-15-2010, 10:50 AM

Originally Posted by oilywrag

Hi Jeff you ask some questions(haha).Enter "editable Notation mode"If you are using a swing style then the grid should be in triplets,what you want is the "Beat Resolution"menu where you can manually sort out what you want.
Hope this points you in the right direction,when can we hear the results??

Cheers Tom

Well, maybe the problem here is that this is not a swing style. This is a latin (bossa) tune, so the eighth notes are played straight. But as you can see from the snippet above, I also want some triplet quarter notes in there. The melody moves in and out of a straight feel to a triplet feel, but I can't seem to make BiAB play it that way.

Sibelius has absolutely no problem dealing with this type of situation, at least notationally, and I've input the melody into Sibelius and it plays back properly. Unfortunately, Sibelius doesn't have the same capability of easily generating an arrangement based strictly on the chords; I would have to input all the parts individually, and that's a lot of work. So what I have now is a BiAB file that plays the harmony, and a Sibelius file that plays the melody. But what I have done is make up a lead sheet, and I'll be taking that to my jazz combo rehearsal next week, so I'll see how it "really sounds" then!

If you're interested in hearing an mp3 of the BiAB version, I can post a link.

**oilywrag** · 09-15-2010, 12:52 PM

Why dont you save the sibelius file as a midi file.then open the main BiaB song in realband import the sibleius midi file as an extra track to the project and you can play around to your hearts content.
What you have to remember is BiaB cant do everything,what is does it does very well,that is why most people use it to lay down the basics of a song then use something else to put the finished song together.If you have any more questions jeff just ask.Hope this gives you a few more ideas.

Cheers Tom

**FatJeff** · 09-15-2010, 02:16 PM

Thanks Tom, I'll give that a try.

**fep** · 09-15-2010, 09:06 PM

Jeff,

When you're on the notation screen there's a little black verticle line right above the note your working on and right above the notation page. Right click on that and it will let you set 'resolution for this beat'.

For quarter note triplets set it to three and enter a note on every other resolution.

Manually entering melodies is a pain in the ass with BIAB. I haven't tried importing a midi file as Tom suggests, but if that works well that would be the way to go.

I'm going to give it a try next time I'm entering a melody.

**FatJeff** · 09-15-2010, 11:41 PM

PITA doesn't even begin to describe this process. This is going to be very time consuming, because I have to individually change every note that I want to be a triplet into the "3" resolution instead of the default "4". And Jesus H. Christ, how is anybody supposed to see that tiny black line on a dark brown background? The "look and feel" designer of this program ought to be drawn and quartered. And then shot, and then fed to dogs.

I'm in a foul mood right now. :-(

**oilywrag** · 09-16-2010, 07:42 AM

Calm down Jeff,create the basic song in BiaB write your melody in sibelius,save as a midi file.Open your song in real band then import your melody as a midi file.save as a wav file then open "Audacity"(freeware) import as raw data,add this and that then export as an Mp3.No need to get all worked up.

Cheers Tom

**FatJeff** · 09-16-2010, 09:48 AM

Originally Posted by oilywrag

Calm down Jeff,create the basic song in BiaB write your melody in sibelius,save as a midi file.Open your song in real band then import your melody as a midi file.save as a wav file then open "Audacity"(freeware) import as raw data,add this and that then export as an Mp3.No need to get all worked up.

Cheers Tom

I tried that last night...some success, but for some weird reason, when I import the melody file into RealBand, it is off the beat by 1/16th note (late). I couldn't figure out how to move the whole melody in time relative to the other parts.

**oilywrag** · 09-16-2010, 10:12 AM

Jeff,
You could try using piano roll select the area that you wish to move(in your case the whole track)and drag it the 16th note you require.Or you could do the reverse and make the rest of the songcome inline with the melody.It would depend if you want any lead in bars before the start of the song.

Cheers tom

**drobniuch** · 09-16-2010, 02:14 PM

hi I know it's off top but could you please write how to turn off/on durring the playback the: bass; piano; drumm.
e.g. 4 chords piano bass drumm and 4 chords only drumm etc.

and Thank You for answering on my post

**oilywrag** · 09-16-2010, 03:33 PM

Hi Drobniuch,Third line down from the top of the screen.Should read as follows

Drop Combo Bass Piano Drums Guitar Strings Melody Soloist Etc

Right click on the one you want to mute and a drop down menu will give you 8 options select the one you want and Left click on it.A check mark will now appear to let you know what you have done.Drobniuch hope that sorts it out and if you have any more questions ask.

Cheers Tom

**FatJeff** · 12-15-2010, 10:20 PM

Originally Posted by oilywrag

Jeff,
You could try using piano roll select the area that you wish to move(in your case the whole track)and drag it the 16th note you require.Or you could do the reverse and make the rest of the songcome inline with the melody.It would depend if you want any lead in bars before the start of the song.

Cheers tom

Hi Tom,

None of that stuff worked for me, but I found on another forum a different way to do things that works weel for me, so I thought I would post it here for others' reference:

1. write the right chords in the right form in band in a box.
2. write the melody in the right key in sibelius.
3. export a midifile from sibelius
4. In band in a box go to the melody menu - edit melody track - import melody from midifile
5. a box appears to look for the midifile at your computer - open it
6. another box opens and you'll have to choose which channel to import, if you only have a melody it usually is channel 1. Choose how many bars to offset from start midifile, choose how many bars to import and how many blank bars there should be from the beginning, include earlier notes if there are any. There are some more options you will see. Klik ok after choosing all you want.
7. it will say how many notes (events) it has imported
8. check if the melody is in the right place, if not you can go to melody - edit melody track - again and choose for option - kill entire melody - to erase it and try again by changing the amount of bars from offset or amount blank bars if you didn't enter it right at first.

**peterk1** · 12-17-2010, 09:53 PM

Hi Jeff,

Don't know if this is going to help at all, but the first thing I do when I do when I'm preparing to use a BBox file for recording a full tune seriously is explode the whole arrangement so there's no more repeats. This lets you fine tune each little part of the tune to change drum fills, insert intros, endings, holes where the whole band stops and the melody is playing on air for a measure or two.

I rehearse using the basic simplified arrangement where things are looping for a set number of choruses, but once I know how long I want the tune to be and where I want to put in any special effects, I blow it up and then go in with a microscope within Band In A Box and start tweaking the bar settings and the measure settings. You can do quite a bit with that.

Check out Lullabye Of The Leaves and You'd be So Nice To Come Home To on my soundclick. Both those tunes have custom intros , endings and places in the middle of the tune where the band stops and then comes back in again. I did a little bit of wav editing on the drums, but no MIDI editing anywhere.

SoundClick artist: Peter Kossits - page with MP3 music downloads

**FatJeff** · 12-17-2010, 10:03 PM

Good tips, thanks Peter. I listened to your tunes...nice! I assume that's you both on the alto and the guitar?

**peterk1** · 12-17-2010, 10:24 PM

Glad to help.

BiB can be a bit frustrating for stuff like this - lots of trial and error is required to tame the artificial band. Another not really obvious thing I like to do is introduce small tempo changes here and there. It's barely noticeable but it does keep things sounding more real.

Yup that's me me on sax (tenor on one tune and alto on the other). Started playing guitar again a couple of years ago just to back myself up on my sax playing, but I got hooked and have barely touched my saxes in years!

**fep** · 12-18-2010, 10:24 AM

Do you guys use RealBand?

That may be the way to create/record your own tunes. Seems to be BIAB combined with a digital audio workstation.

I haven't tried it yet as I just upgraded BIAB and got RealBand with it...

**peterk1** · 12-18-2010, 10:39 AM

Haven't tried the latest version with RealBand, but on older versions of Band In A Box (2006+) there's a button that moves your arrangement (MIDI and WAV files) into Power Tracks and labels all of the tracks for you. I have a feeling the RealBand thing is just that feature streamlined a little bit.

It just saves you a little bit of manual file copying and loading. It's pretty easy to export all the individual instrument files from Band In A box into whatever program you'll be recording your live instruments with.

**FatJeff** · 12-18-2010, 01:28 PM

Originally Posted by fep

Do you guys use RealBand?

That may be the way to create/record your own tunes. Seems to be BIAB combined with a digital audio workstation.

I haven't tried it yet as I just upgraded BIAB and got RealBand with it...

I've got RB but I haven't really used it much. I have Sonar 6 which I think pretty much trumps RB in the DAW category. Of course, I don't even really know how to use either...