Howdy Ian,

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Is there a means in Composer of telling it AT THE OUTSET to apply the swing eighths convention ? (I've just run a search for 'swing eighths' in the pdf Guide, and found nothing.)
If it were possible to input within the convention, AND hear it right without further fiddling, one significant strand of this whole issue would vanish. <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

You can use the Index in Help/Users Guide to find all indexed instances of "swing" topics and choose from them there. Just type in "swing" and it'll take you to all the "swing" topics. The first entry "swing rhythm/editing notation for" shows you how to enter swing rhythms up front so you won't have to rely on BIAB to do it for you.


For follow-up sake (and in case my pointer above doesn't make the problem vanish ;) ), the "change" you may be alluding to in your previous posts is perhaps the way you've asked Composer to transcribe your BIAB-exported MIDI files. Changing any of the transcription options will change how the notation looks (you can try this "live" using Format/Retranscribe and changing various options each time) but does not change the underlying MIDI data. So yes, if you've exported a MIDI file, then been working on other files and "turning knobs" as it were on the transcription options, then next time you open that previously exported .mid file, it just might look different. That's one reason that saving files as .not is so nice - the NoteSoft (.not) filetype "remembers" how the notation looked when you closed the file, so it's the same next time you open the file. Transcription options are irrelevant when re-opening a .not file. With a .mid file however, the transcription process has to happen "fresh", and so the notation (depending on the transcription options) may look different each time you open that same .mid file.

As Mark points out, if you don't touch the MIDI file in BIAB, and you don't touch the Transcription options in Composer, then you should see the same notation in the re-opened file as you saw when you first had the file open.

However, I suspect that the answer to the observed change in the transcribed notation of the .mid files (at least partially) lies in the "processing" that is going on. You mentioned some posts above:

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The melody I have input to Composer at the computer, so at this stage it should be pretty precise, even wooden. If it is swing (as it usually is) I enter it in straight time at this stage (see next stage). I export it to a midi file.

Then I go to Biab. I import the melody directly into Biab from the midi file, and Biab will interpret it as 'swung' if I ask it to. I add chords (often asking Biab's opinion on that) and choose a style from Biab's vast range, and usually develop a 3, 4 or 5 chorus arrangement. I can save all that both as a Biab file and as a midi.

Now I want to go back to Composer. <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

The experiment that Mark mentioned was to take the initial file, open it in BIAB, but NOT TOUCH IT. Thus when reopened, the file won't have changed. However, if I'm understanding the steps above correctly, the file IS being changed (it's being "swung") by BIAB, which accounts (at least in part) why it looks different the next time. Again the other "culprit" is Setup/Transcription options.

This discussion has been most instructive to me as we explore how folks are interacting with the software, and how we can improve the presentation of the software features (the general user interface, or GUI). Even if I'm not always jumping in and talking, I'm always listening

ttfn,
Sherry