25. How do I display 'Swing' notation (triplets) and 'Even feel' notation (sixteenths) in the same song? How do I enter quarter note triplets?

You can toggle between Swing and Even feel notation by enabling/disabling 'Triplet Resolution' in the Notation Window Options dialog. Alternatively, you can change the resolution for any beat individually by doing the following:

  1. In the Notation Window, activate 'editable notation mode' by pressing the [N] button once. You should see groups of vertical dashed lines.
  2. Right-click on the time indicator line above the beat that you want to change. This will bring up the Beat Resolution dialog. The time indicator line is the narrow horizontal space above the lyric entry area; it contains a little black cursor that shows the current position of your song.
  3. In the Beat Resolution dialog, set the number of beats to 3 if you are in an even feel style and want triplets, or 4 if you are in a triplet style and want sixteenths.

Assuming that you are in triplet resolution, you can insert an eighth note triplet by placing notes on three consecutive dashed lines. For quarter note triplets, place a note on every second dashed line. Note that while your music will always play the way you input it, you may not always be able to get triplets to display exactly how you want. This a limitation of the Band-in-a-Box® notation display.

If you find that a quarter note triplet you have entered does not display with the proper triplet notation (ie 3 quarter notes with a '3' over top of them), note that:

  • In the Notation Window Options dialog, the "Tick Offset" setting can be used to adjust how the notes are displayed. Try setting this to zero; this may allow your triplet to be displayed properly.

  • Quarter note triplet display will not work as well if you are using an even feel style and are changing an individual beat to triplet feel. It works better if the overall feel of the style is a triplet feel.

  • Quarter note triplets will never display properly if they span beats 2 and 3 in any measure.


Alyssa - PG Music