PG Music Home Forums User-to-User Post your own Tips and Tricks here How to import chord progressions preserving the current style/song parameters.

Just today a member of the Spanish forum told me there is some interest in a tip that I gave to him and my students recently in a local Band-in-a-Box clinic in my town (Thanks Oneil)
Well, here goes

Besides typing, normally we enter, replace, insert or append chords progressions in our songs by copy/cut and paste from the current ones in Chord Sheet.
However is not very uncommon we want/need to use a full or partial chord progression from other songs saved in our files archives, 'Style Picker' or 'Song Picker' while preserving our current song style, tempo and other parameters (by choice), to me a very interesting way to try new chords perspectives using the same style.

However there aren't many devoted alternatives beyond copying the substitute progression by typing enter, or loading the source song over, copy the progression and then reloading back the song we were working with, and finally pasting the chords from clipboard... so tangled and time consuming for our 21th century standards

The best shortcut or workaround I found is by the means of a file/import function perhaps a not well known in Band-in-a-Box: "Song Import MGU"
This interesting feature is intended for
And it is suggested in the manual as an option for "Chord Entry"

Well, we can to use it to "import" just the chords progressions from other songs.

PROCEDURE:

- Go to Band-in-a-Box File/Import menu and look for 'Import MGU Song...' click.
- In the BB File open dialog choose the song that contains the progression of chords you want to import.
- You will get to the "Import Band-in-a-Box Song" dialog where you will see on top the basic song information: Style, Key, Tempo, Form and path route.
- The first thing to do is uncheck the unwanted options under 'Include with Imported Song' (all by default). In this case uncheck all except "Chords" unless you want to include other information to import.
- Adjust the other parameters: select the bar number from which import will start, number of bars to import,
and the bar number of destination song where the source chord progression will start.
- Check your insert mode (Insert/Overwrite) choice.
- Done

TIP

Maybe it seems a lot of steps, but in my experience I find it very usable (something cool here is the possibility of copying and combining several segments of progressions taken from different songs) unless you want to check many progressions without playing them, but for the purpose we can use the 'Song Picker' little window chord sheet at bottom and eventually import your choice from the song with 'Song Import MGU'

It would be very practical if could copy and paste the Song Picker chord progressions in the current song Chord Sheet. That function has already been discussed and likely it will be included in some new patch release in 2019:

https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=510283#Post510283

While that arrives I hope this tip will be of help for you.

Merry Xmas!
Carlos
PG Music

Carlos,

I think your idea is a very creative use of a command I haven't used much ... until now! I will be using the "Import MGU" command much more often.

Thank you for sharing the idea first with your forum and now with us.

Merry Christmas and +++ Jose Feliciano Feliz Navidad Video +++

Thanks Jim, I am glad it help you. Thanks for your formidable contributions to our users community at forum.


Merry Christmas, *** Dueling Jingle Bells ***