PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Beginners Forum Adding a bar of 1/4

Hey y'all!

I'm messing around with Bluegrass in the Backw00ds and having trouble getting the five Dm Shots.

Using style: _BLUGRM8.STYBluegrss 8ths-260 Mando

I currently have this song set up at 260 BPM 4/4 time Sig (have also tried it in 2/4). I've configured the five shots as two bars of 4/4 and one bar of 1/4. My song repeats three times and the first and third time through BAIB plays five shots but there is still an extra beat in the bar of 1/4 so there is an unwanted gap in the song. Strangely, in only the second repeat BAIB plays only 4 shots and omits the bar of 1/4 entirely.

In order to get the bar of 1/4 I am using this path: Right click on the bar/Bar Settings/# of beats this bar = 1/OK.

Also finding that the black cursor gets out of sync as soon as the bar of 1/4 is played the first time and then gets more out of sync with each repeat.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

Stefan

Stefan, good detail, thanks.

I would consider freezing all tracks on your song and sending it to support@pgmusic.com, and definitely reference this thread in your email. Also, give them as much detail as possible about your setup, configuration, version, build, updates, computer spec's etc

It may be a cut common time issue, and it might be related to how BiaB handles 'B' substyles in the second chorus.

Please report back on your findings from PG Music.

Thanks!

Sounds like you're looking for 5/4 time signature.

Might work for that one bar: thanks Ill try it

Stefan, you want one quarter note per shot, i.e. 5 beats, right?
Or are you trying to play quintuplets, 5 quarter notes in the space of 4 beats.
If it is for 5 beats you might want to try a 3/4 followed by a 2/4 time signature in place of the 4/4 - 1/4.

Although it probably is available but I have never heard a 5/4 measure in bluegrass. But then again I don't listen to a lot of bluegrass.

Hi & Thanks! Ive tried a few variations of that but for some reason the machine seems to have trouble repeating the shots consistently. If you check out the song “Bluegrass in the BackW00ds youll hear hear that its basically that 5th extra shot that I'm trying to make happen. Actually, it’s not even that fifth shot as much as it is getting the band to come back in on what would be the sixth shot and that has to be the one

If I were ripping along at 260 and had an extra beat thrown in, I wouldn’t be happy. But I take it this is not 5 notes over 4 beats as Mario asked. I never attempted what you are doing so I agree with Audiotrack: freeze the song and send it to Support. But can you post the song MGU so we can try it (a link to the song on Dropbox for example).

You and me both. We're definitely working from the same page

No its five notes over five beats then your back into beat 1 of the head of the tune. Fiddle players love this kind of thing! Theres a whole genre of fiddle
Tunes out there that add and subtract a beat in seemingly random places!

As their bass player it MAKES MY HEAD EXPLODE!!!! Lol! I just ask WHY!?!?? WHY!?!? Do we really need to do this!!??? Unfortunately they are in charge of the melody!

OK, that part is settled. Thanks.

Just curious, is the tempo really 260 bpm? In bluegrass, I would have expected it to be cut time and half that tempo. Your version of BIAB supports that feature which was added (I think) two years ago. Is there sheet music for this song?

Matt: It's the same BIAB problem we (Bluegrassers) have been having for a number of years. The is a thread about this problem back in November 2020 brought up by bobcflatpicker. Even you chimed in on this.

Can't find the message number but you can search the forum for " Peter Gannon, Will the problem with 8th notes being treated as 16th notes in BIAB in bluegrass style"

Bluegrass players play 8th notes, usually 8 to a measure. Most of the Bluegrass styles sounded 16 8th notes per measure and that threw most of us off. Peter finally came up with 8th note based bluegrass styles.

Mr. Gannon's response at the end:

We have about 15 Even 8 based styles in the bluegrass category, and over 100 even 16ths. Converting an ev 16 to ev 8 is easy (just set the tracks to half time), likely takes 10 minutes per style. Including picking the styles and adding memos names etc. probably 30 minutes per style. So it would take someone a few days.

We will do that! Thanks for the ideas, and the enjoyable discussion.

=====================================================

Matt: Try this.

Make up a simple song of
G - C 1st measure
G - D 2nd measure
G - C 3rd measure
G, D, - G 4th measure

Use style _BG_BAND.STY. That is a typical bluegrass style. song using a 1-4-5 progression.

Play it at 130 bpm and now you have a typical bluegrass song at 130 BPM. You will see it plays 2 chords per cell in Chord Sheet view.

Now pick _BG_BAN8.STY. That is one of the 8th note based styles the Peter made for us.

Notice it sounds like crap.

Now go into Edit-Songform-Expand (durations of chords by 2) and you will see the chords lay nicely in the Chord Sheet. It now plays exactly like the song made using _BG_BAND.STY ------ BUT it now plays 1 chord per cell and the tempo is indeed up at 260.

Banj O’Lover has it set to 260 because of the 8th note based style.

The existing song at 260 BPM also be played using any one of the 16th note based bluegrass styles as long as the Song Form was reduced back the was it was with the first style we used.

You could do this all day, going back and forth between 16th and 8th note versions and never see any difference in the way the song was being played.

To answer your question on speed, in the real world, no the would not and could not be played at 260 BPM in a bluegrass jam session.

Here is the sheet music for the song.



Banj O’Lover - If it were me doing the song, I would try using style _BLUGRSM

I've had trouble making these 8th note based styles work when trying to modify measures. In the sheet music, the timing is changed to 2/4 time for the last shot and then goes back to 4/4 time.

Aubry Haynie did this version which is the way Kenny Baker plays.

Thanks Joseph Land. Of course I remember this, because it may be the only thing I share musically with friend Bob Flatpicker. Samba also has the same issue. Bob and I convinced PG Music to accommodate cut time for these songs. I provided some original Brazilian composer's versions showing how samba should be notated around quarter = 100, not 200. Things are good for me after the change. I have pretty good technique and I am reassured that bluegrass players are not quite playing at twice my speed.

So if I understand your point now, PG Music promised to update those 115 or so styles, and you are saying it did not get done for the style Banj O Lover is using?

+++ HERE +++ is a link to bobflatpicker's 2020 thread. The linked thread includes a link to bobflatpicker's original request in 2010.

As the two links explain, the change request has more to do with how a song file looks when it is printed than how the song plays.

That's a good point. I was always able to get what I wanted to sound, but it looked wrong. No one wants to read a blinding stream of sixteenth notes when eighth notes at the right tempo is what the original composers wrote.

Yeah regarding the 260bpm again: this is all semantics really if I’m playing at 130 bpm a series of “notes” should be played half as fast as if I were playing at 260bpm. Im finding that some of the solo or backup track options for Bluegrass or anything with a “2 feel” for that matter are basically cut in half time wise and some are not. So It’s hit and miss as to whether they will play at “normal”, “double” or “half” speed. So yeah it would be nice if that was made more clear and I could choose ANY track for the tempo I’m working on and have it fit properly.