cptnbss@yahoo.com> wrote:
> How to put a melody in the biab, I figured the chords now I am just having
> trouble finding out how to add a melody to it, and also changing the number
> of time one does repeats in a song also.
> Kirk
>
> Kirk,
Any number of people have written excellent tutorials to answer this
question, and we should really put the links together in a FAQ.
My attempt to answer the question in Yahoo group message 23220 back in
August 2005 was put into the file area by a kind soul at the time. I
haven't checked it out in recent years to make sure that everything I said
and/or warned about is still valid - I'm pretty sure some buttons have moved
around on the screen - but I'll cut and paste what I said at the time here:
It should get you started...
--------------------------
The simplest way to enter a melody line seems to be by playing it,
either on an attached midi instrument or on the bottom two rows of the
keyboard. If you are going to use the keyboard, then probably you want to
make sure the Wizard option is checked. The Wizard option is listed in the
high middle of the screen, between "LoopSec" and "Embellisher" just below
the "Memo" button. To set up to record, from the top row you click "Melody",
then "Edit Melody Track", then "Record Melody". A dialog box will pop up
that does things like let you start your recording from a specified bar or
from the end - if you don't want to record from the start. It helps to have
the correct number of bars set before you start recording (more on that
later). When you are set to go you click on the record button and it gives
you a two bar count-in with the ticks. If you are entering from the
keyboard, it is best to enter the chords after you enter the melody. Until
the melody is entered let the first and only chord match your key. Then the
two bottom rows are mapped mostly to notes in your selected key. It will
take a little practice to determine which keys on the keyboard are mapped to
which notes, but you can watch the piano keyboard at the top of the screen
as you hit notes and that helps to see which keyboard key goes with which
piano key. Spend a little time fooling around and don't worry that it's
recording because it won't save it until you tell it to.
After the last bar is recorded, the box comes back and gives you a choice of
trying again or keeping the take or of giving up. If you decide to keep the
recording take, you can also specify some additional features (such as the
fact that you want the 1st chorus of the recorded melody mapped to the
entire song).
If you are a reasonably skilled musician, this way of entering the melody
let's you capture nuances in the timing that normal music notation won't. If
you are not a reasonably skilled musician, getting the timing right can take
on nightmarish qualities.
This way of entering the melody line really doesn't work well for me as I'm
not a performer. I'm really a math/computer geek, not a musician, so I'm
using generative grammars to create melody lines and am entering the melody
from a text file created by my software. But if you were entering the melody
from sheet music, the problem would be similar.
Again, you probably want to start by making sure that you have the correct
number of bars in your chorus. It is better to err on the side of too many
bars than too few, as extra bars can be deleted easily, but adding bars and
then moving the existing melody around may be messy at times. To insert bars
click on "Edit" in the top row, and then click on "Insert Bar(s)". A dialog
box pops up that ascertains how many bars you want to add or, if you want to
reconsider, there is a "Cancel" button. Now, here is the joker. The bars are
added before your current cursor position down in the chords window. The
odds are that your cursor was sitting at the beginning of the chorus when
you did the insert and in that case the new bars are inserted BEFORE THE
CHORUS. This is probably not what you want. So click on the second bar of
the chorus and then add any extra bars you need. (Incidentally, leaving the
cursor on the second half of the first bar of the chorus and adding bars
seems to push the first half of the first bar before the chorus, so when
adding bars you will want to go to at least the second full bar of the
chorus). Deleting Bars is fairly clean. You position your cursor at the
point where you want to start deleting bars and then click on "Edit" and
"Delete Bar(s)." Tell it how many to delete and you are done.
OK. We have the number of bars set right. Now trust me and put the cursor on
the second bar and add one extra bar. There is a reason for it. Now we click
on "Window" on the top row and then click on "Notation (or chords) Window".
On the bottom it switches from the chords to a display where our melody will
go. As you may have noticed from the information on the Window menu, you
could accomplish the same thing by typing a Control-W. In fact if you will
do Control-W several times in a row, you will see that it toggles back and
forth between the chord display and the melody display. (If you don't want
to use the keyboard there is also a clickable button with a single
eighth-note that does the same thing. Look for the second button down from
the Soloist button.) Set it to the melody notation window and take a look.
Any chords you have set are printed along the top of the upper (treble clef)
staff. The bars are numbered. Along the top of the window are a variety of
buttons, some labeled with "words" such as "Print," "Opt" and "LoopScn,"
some with single letters or symbols, and some with icons. These buttons do
different things. There are two different buttons labeled with the letter
"S". But if you look at the sequence of letters it is easy to see the
sequence "B D P G S M S" refers to Bass, Drums, Piano, Guitar, Strings,
Melody, and Soloist. The order is the same as the options spelled out at the
top of the screen in the second line except that the order of Drums and
Piano is inexplicably switched. Someone in their interface design team needs
to be beaten severely with a wet noodle. Now if you click on, let's say, the
P, then the window switches to the Piano notation window, and so forth. So
make sure you click the M so that you are in the Melody notation window.
With the Melody notation window open, click on "Notation" in the top row.
The drop-down menu will start off with the option "Notation/edit/note roll
mode" and indicates you can accomplish the same thing by typing
Control-Alt-N. That's one too many fingers for my taste. As the slashes on
the menu indicate, there are three options to toggle through and going up
top and moving the mouse between "Notation" and "Notation/edit/note roll
mode" repeatedly is not my idea of an efficient interface. Fortunately,
there is a reasonable option. Click on "Notation" again so that the
drop-down menu goes away and look down at the line of buttons on the top of
the Melody notation window. The third one on the left is labeled "N" and if
you repeatedly click it, you will see it toggles through our three options.
The first option, which is what we have seen to this point, has our staff
and the first few bars (which are numbered). When we use the N-toggle once,
we are in edit mode and we see each bar filled with groups of four vertical
dotted lines (each group representing a beat). There will be either three or
four of these groups of dotted lines in each bar, depending on whether we
are in 3/4 or 4/4 time (which is determined by the Style that is selected).
We N-toggle once again and we are in what they call Staff roll mode. We
still have the vertical dotted lines, but now they are evenly spaced, the
first of each four (the beginning of the beat) is filled in to form a light
solid line, and the very first one can't be seen because it's overlapped by
the dark vertical line showing the start of the bar.
Staff roll mode is still a mode in which you can edit. Whether you chose to
edit in Notation edit mode or Staff roll mode probably depends on how
comfortable you are with musical notation. They are really very similar, the
main difference being that in the Notation edit mode you are seeing the
timing indicated in regular music notation with quarter note, half notes,
sixteenth notes, etc., while in Staff roll mode the notes are all identical
looking and there is a horizontal blue bar that extends to the right showing
the duration of the note. When we start entering notes you should toggle
through occasionally to see the difference. I personally prefer Notation
edit mode, but your choice is your choice.
I'm not familiar with the melody you mentioned, so for purposes of
illustration I'm going to take us through entering part of the following
melody in the octave starting at middle C – "E D C D | E E E2 | D D D2 | E A
A2" where each note is a quarter note except for the half notes that are
indicated with a 2. But I'll be digressing to deal with rests, eighth notes,
wrong notes, simultaneous notes etc. We start by Control-W toggling back to
chord mode and setting our key to C and our initial Chord to C. We also
verify that we aren't using a waltz style with three beats to a measure.
Then a control-W takes us back to the Melody Notation view.
Now, in one of the two edit modes we are going to position our cursor over
the E above middle C position on the first vertical line of the 1a (or 1b or
1) bar. Remember that if you are in Staff roll mode the first line is
actually the solid line at the beginning of the bar, but if you are in
notation edit mode the first line is the first dotted line in the bar.
Click. Voila, you have entered your first note. It probably doesn't look
exactly like you expected. The timing extends through the first bar and into
the second. It's ok. As we enter other notes or rests the note will
automatically shorten in duration to fit.
What if there is some other problem with the note? Maybe we missed E above
middle-C. Maybe we changed our mind and didn't want the note until the
middle of the measure. For whatever reason, we want to get rid of the note.
An "Edit" "Undo" will work if we undo immediately, but not if we have done
something else in the meantime. Position the cursor over the note we entered
and right click. A box pops up with a lot of information. This box will let
us change the velocity (loudness) of the note and also its duration, but for
now we are interested in the button that says "Delete". Click on the delete
button. Instantly our note is gone. This is a good feature. There are other
ways to make corrections than deleting bad stuff and entering good stuff,
but that's a basic technique, which will always work. Occasionally the notes
will get so crowded that Biab can't tell from the right click which note you
want to delete (or otherwise edit). In that case it will give you a short
menu of the possibilities and let you pick the note you want to deal with.
Now that we can delete mistakes, we can start to enter our melody again.
But we are going to do something that might save us a lot of aggravation. We
are going to enter a rest in the first bar and then start the melody in the
second bar. It has been my experience that occasionally, on rare occasions,
for unknown reasons (but probably because I did something wrong) that first
bar will be pushed back before the chorus, so that if the chorus repeats it
restarts at what should be the second bar, and what should be the first bar
gets pushed back into the introduction. It's as if I had started the melody
in the Lead-In bar. Now I don't think that's what happened, but I can't
prove it. In any case, if the bar with the rest gets pushed back into the
introduction there is no harm done. If we don't need the first bar with the
rest, it's easy enough to delete that bar. On the other hand, if the first
bar of the melody gets pushed out of the chorus, we don't have to throw up
our hands and start over entering the melody, but recovering is still a
pain. For that reason, I recommend entering that leading rest while planning
on deleting the bar later.
At the top of the Notation window, between the two groups of buttons, there
are four check boxes labeled "Note" "Rest" "Mono" and "Clean". I recommend
always leaving the "Clean" box checked. The "Note" box will be checked
unless you have already checked "Rest". When you check "Rest" the "Note" box
will clear and when you then check "Note" the "Rest" box will clear. (Try
it) Checking the Mono box forces there to be only one melodic note going at
a time. It may save some input errors in editing a melody, but I don't see a
whole lot of point to it and it is easy to delete multiple notes sounding at
the same time if they aren't supposed to be there. I recommend leaving the
Mono box unchecked as a general rule.
We want to enter a rest in bar 1. We click on the "Rest" check box and then
click somewhere inside a staff area of bar 1. In Staff roll mode we won't
see a difference because Staff roll mode only shows notes and their
durations. In Notation edit mode we may see the rest extended into Bar 2. We
may see the rest extended backwards into the Lead-In bar. The rest may
appear in just bar 1. We don't care. As long as we have a rest in Bar 1 we
proceed just the same.
Now as our rest has been entered, you will notice that the "Rest" box is now
unchecked and "Note" is checked again. Usually this is a good thing because
we aren't entering multiple rests in a row. If we were, we would have to
check the "Rest" box each time.
We aren't entering another rest, so instead we will go the first position of
the second bar and enter our E note again. Then we go to the first position
of the second group of lines (the beginning of this second beat is a dotted
line itself in the Notation edit mode and a light solid line in the Staff
roll mode. We click and enter the D note. If we have done this correctly our
initial E note now gets a beat to itself. In Notation edit mode it will have
become a quarter note and in the Staff roll mode the first blue line will
extend to the end of the first beat.
Now it's time to enter the C note at the beginning of the third beat. But
let's intentionally make a huge mistake and enter the G above middle C
instead. We could delete it and enter the note correctly, but instead let's
drag it into position. We place our cursor in the middle of the circular
part of the note and start dragging it down (holding the left click as the
mouse moves down). If we go too far down past middle C and then release the
mouse-click then it won't work. Remember that middle C is just a little
lower than the D note. You may have to drag it almost there and then make a
second or third drag to get it in exactly the right position. As we bring it
down, we can hear the changing tones. These tones are particularly useful
when we are trying to end up on the sharp or flat of a note as we won't see
a flat or sharp indicator (or a natural indicator if there has already been
a flat or sharp of that note) until after we finish dragging. As a result we
may have to drag it to just about the note we want, look at the note we
actually have and then fine tune it with subsequent short drags paying
attention to the changing tones. Play with dragging notes up and down a
little while. Sometimes our mouse may not be exactly in the right position
when we start dragging and we will wind up with a new note after dragging.
No big deal. We just delete the old note.
Dragging a note up and down is not the only option. We can also drag our C
note forward and backwards in time. Let's drag our C note over to the third
vertical line in the second beat. Notice how the D note has contracted to
become an eighth note which takes up half a beat. (Yes, if we had dragged
the C note to the second vertical line the D note would have become a 16th
note). We drag the C note back to the beginning of the fourth beat and the D
note should expand to become a half note which takes up two beats. Notice I
said "should expand". If we toggle through our modes we see that Regular
Notation and Notation edit mode are showing us a half note for D as
expected. On the other hand Staff roll mode is still only showing D as
taking up a half beat. Which is right? Unfortunately, Staff roll mode is
showing the way that Biab will play it and Notation mode IS FRIGGIN LYING TO
US! We drag the C note back to the beginning of the third beat and while the
C note is ok, the D note is still taking up only a half beat (no matter what
Notation mode says). Now that we know this is a problem created when we move
notes forward in time, what do we do about it? There are several options. We
could go over to Piano roll mode (which we haven't talked about yet) and fix
it there. We could right click on the D note and alter the note duration.
That will work, but it's been my experience that sometimes Staff roll mode
will ignore a change you make this way even though Biab will play it right,
and that sometimes you can wind up with a mess where you have two
overlapping notes with two different durations. You could also right click
the note and delete it and then reenter the D note. This too will work, but
I actually recommend something different. Click the "Rest" box and then
holding the mouse absolutely still, slowly click twice in the middle of the
D note. The first click should replace the D note with a rest and unclick
the "Rest" box while the second click replaces the rest with a D note of the
correct duration. With practice this gets to be pretty easy. Our general
rule is that when we drag a note forward in time we refresh the prior note
with a "rest" and two clicks. What happens if the prior note is actually two
or more notes sounding simultaneously? I'm going to pretend I didn't hear
that question.
(But notice that the rest will replace all of the simultaneous notes and
they can be put back in separately).
OK. We can drag a note up and down through different tones. We can drag a
note forward and backwards in time. Can we drag a note diagonally so that it
becomes a different note at a different time? Try and see.
Eventually we will get tired of dragging the poor note around and will
return it to the middle C position at the beginning of the third beat. If
needed, we will refresh the prior D note to get its timing correct. We
confidently enter a new D note at the beginning of the fourth beat and the
first bar of our melody (currently the second bar of the chorus) is
finished. Unfortunately the last D note is still extending into the next
bar. By this point, we are sure that as we add more notes to the next bar
the problem will go away. But suppose this was the last bar of our melody,
not the first, and we weren't going to add any more notes. What would we do
then? The obvious answer is to put a rest at the beginning of the next bar.
Let's try it. Click the "Rest" box and then click on the beginning of the
first beat of the next bar. Our melody bar is now exactly as we wanted it.
Is the rest going to interfere with entering notes in the next bar?
Absolutely not.
With renewed confidence we notice that the next bar will consist of three E
notes that get entered on the beginning of the first, second and third
beats. We make three clicks and any drags that are needed if our clicks are
off and we are set. The next measure calls for three D notes that come in on
the first, second and third beats. Let's enter them the same way. But now
something occurs to me. The notes we have entered in the first two bars of
our melody go fine with a C chord, but this new bar would go better with
something like a G chord. To remind me to stick in a G chord later, I decide
to place a G note that will last for this entire bar. Now in fact, if I were
concerned about this, I would scribble something down or more likely
control-W over to the chord window and put a G chord in that bar. But for
the sake of exposition, let's assume I'm stupid. (No nasty comments please).
We make sure the "Mono" box to the right of the "Rest" box is unclicked and
then we go to the bar that contains our three D notes and click on G at the
beginning of the first beat. But instead of giving us a G note that lasts
through the entire bar, we get a G note that only lasts as long as the first
D note does. Would it have helped if we entered the G note first? Not
really. The second D note we entered would have cut it back to the same
duration. So what do we do?
We look for the Piano Roll button. If you remember the button with the
eighth note that could be used instead of Control-W, find it and then look
at the second button to the right. It has a logo that looks like a trash can
dumped on its side, but is probably supposed to represent a piano roll.
Clicking the Trashcan and clicking the eighth note will take you back and
forth between the Piano Roll window and the Notation window.
In the Piano Roll window there is a row of options across the top and the
remainder of the window is divided into a top and bottom section. The bottom
section can show several different things, but its default seems to be to
show note velocities (loudness). The upper part of the window has a piano
keyboard at left and a roll with a graphic notation of the notes and their
durations stretching out from the keyboard to the right. Each note is
represented by a gray rectangle. The bars are numbered across the top. There
is a slider at the bottom of the window that can be used to move you the
vicinity of any desired bar. The number of keys that you can see at one time
is limited, but there is a slider at the far right, opposite the piano
keyboard that will take you up and down a vastly extended keyboard. Play
with both sliders until you are comfortable with them. Then let's find that
troublesome G note.
We locate the third bar of our melody. As we move our cursor around inside
the piano roll we notice that the cursor changes shape at different places.
When we move the cursor over the leading edge (closest to the piano
keyboard) of a note the cursor becomes a double left-right arrow kind of
like this. <---> When we are in the middle of the note we get an up-down
arrow. When we move to the end of the note we get a right pointing arrow.
---> Naturally, this means something. When the up-down arrow is showing, we
can drag the note up and down, changing what note it is. When the left-right
arrow is showing we can drag the note forward and backwards in time.
Finally, when the right arrow is showing we can drag the right hand end of
the note and change its duration. Let's take the right hand end of the G
note and drag it to the right until it stops at about the same time as the
third D note of the bar does, just a little before the end of the bar.
That's it. Problem solved. We can click the eighth note to go back to the
notation window and click through the three modes. The Notation modes are
still showing it wrong (big surprise) but the Staff roll edit mode shows the
timing correctly.
It's possible to do a lot of things in Piano roll mode. If I discover that I
need to enter part of the melody where a beat is divided into three or five
parts, then I enter it in notation mode as best I can even if it's wrong and
then I fix it up in Piano roll mode. "Why," you may ask, "would we not do
everything in piano roll mode?" If you want to learn to do everything in
Piano roll mode, it sounds fine to me. Don't let me discourage you at all. I
don't for three reasons:
1. Piano roll mode does what I tell it whether I should do it that way or
not. For example, you may have noticed that there is a small delay between
when one note stops and the next starts. I might not have known to do that
and Piano roll mode would have obligingly run the notes together. Or I may
have known a gap was needed, but have no idea how big to make it. Suppose I
come to a point in the melody where I'm rapidly alternating back and forth
between two notes, do I leave the same or a different gap between notes?
I've seen some musical instruments and styles where successive notes
overlap. Unless I'm going in patching things up to match a certain style I
don't want to worry about that kind of thing, I just want to get the melody
entered. Piano roll mode makes me make too many decisions while I'm just
entering the melody in.
2. If I'm entering something in Piano roll mode from sheet music, I can make
sloppy errors, particularly if I'm tired and never notice it. In Notation
edit mode what I enter should visually look like the sheet of music I'm
entering from. Due to the klutziness of Notation mode, it may not actually
look the same, but where it looks different, I want to know why.
3. Piano roll mode gives me a limited view, while looking at the staffs lets
me see notes a fair amount above the treble clef staff and a fair amount
below the bass clef staff. The part of the Piano roll window devoted to the
displaying the notes can be enlarged slightly, but it's far too easy for
stuff to be happening off the screen that I've not noticed or have
forgotten. If I'm trying to coordinate what's happening in the bass with
other stuff, I just can't do it. I can't get the big picture in Piano roll
mode.
At this point you should be able to enter the rest of our melody. Or more
importantly, you should be able to enter yours. Don't forget to delete that
first empty measure we put in for safety once you're through and have tested
the melody out by playing it. As I said at the beginning, other people may
have better advice. Giving the peculiarities, we may be able to understand
why the Biab help files don't include a tutorial on entering melodies, but
it's harder to understand why a FAQ here doesn't address the subject. If
anyone wants to start a Frequently Asked Question file, this email can be
considered a starting point.
- Clif Davis
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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