biab song layout

PG Music Forums Chorus verses bridge

from mac

* Pays to lay your song idea out as AAB or whatever format first.

*Take a good look at that layout for repetitions of the AB patterns, they are sometimes not starting with the first one but usually will repeat.

*Find those repeating sections, for those are your choruses.
*You can place an A or a B or an A and a B or a B and an A by itself to play through before those choruses start.

*Tags are, well, tags. They can be as long as you need them to be, sometimes even copying part or all of an A or B section to them, too.

*Most folks are looking to make BIAB do what they would like it to do rather than what it is supposed to do. This is only a matter in how you perceive the sections of a song.

Yep, any second year music comp major can tell you that BIAB is already set up to lay songs out correctly and that you can do most any song structure with it as it ships right now.

Even a C section, by changing styles. But I'd like to see some styles support for three subparts someday. --Mac --------------------

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an AABAB song with a tag on the last B.

Two blocks of the A followed by one block of the B.

Set the chorus in BIAB to repeat at the first bar of the second A such that only the last of the three, the AB is the repeated chorus.

Repeat it once.

Place tag at end of chorus B. First A section will look like a long Intro, then the "chorus" starts, repeats twice and then goes to Tag ending. --Mac


ABBA is done very easily in BIAB by


laying out the A part, then

lay out one B part, then

lay out the A part afterwards again, usually by the cut 'n paste method. Then

invoke the BIAB Chorus to begin at the first bar of that single B part, giving it two repeats.

This, of course, will only yield a "one time through" for the song.

If you want to go through the song more than once in a single performance, then lay it out as the "One Long Song" and use the BIAB chorus repeats to repeat the entire thing as many times as needed. --Mac