PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows ACW question

So i know the newer ACW was introduced in 2018. Back then you could still access the older version. Now the button for the old one calls up the new one. Here is the issue i see the new one does a great job on rather simple stuff, but it no longer has the tap to set bars feature so when you go to get the bars working in time or tempo to the song you have to rely on the AI to give the correct response by lining up bar lines with rather unclear transients. Very tedious at best. Being able to tap out the tempo was super effective.
Oh where is the question. Here is it. Is there still a way to do this or can it be brought back somehow as a button in the new ACW.

I'm not confident I fully understand your issue but can say it's still possible to tap and set the bars.
One also must accurately set bar one.
Set bar one and then count and tap the - L- key at each bar as the song plays. Purple lines are displayed when manually entering bars.

Hey Rob,

I wrestled with the exact same issue a couple months ago, as the old ACW was absolutely brilliant and had dozens of parameters and fine tuning functions that made it a million times more accurate once you "tuned it in." For a couple of years of so after the new one was introduced, I was still able to access the Legacy version, but even when I managed to locate and launch the utility (AudioChordWizard_bb under bb > AudioChordWizard) I could not get it to load a file :-(

I would be absolutely thrilled if they brought that back!

Thanks DB. I would be happy with the newer one if I had a clue how it works. And felt positive about the results

Charlie I tried the tap the “L” thing and it worked for about 20 bars then started over at the beginning bar. I tried four time on two different wave files. It would start and start over. I thought it may be learning going forward but the rest of the track was not done. I can analyze the track but it gets it slightly wrong and requires hour of frustration that yield unsatisfactory results. So far this is a bust.

Fortunately I can do this work in RB with better results.

How the audio file gets into BIAB makes a difference with BIAB settings and what the ACW will analyze.

Importing audio files do not adjust the number of bars of the Chord Sheet to match the length of the audio file. If audio file is 20 bars then that's all the bars that will be analyzed by the ACW even if there are more bars to the length of the imported audio file. Scroll to the end of the WAV form in the Audio Edit Window will show how many bars to set the Chord Sheet to.

The default number of Chord Sheet bars is 32 (unless you've changed the default in preferences) The number of bars of the Chord Sheet is what will be analyzed by the ACW regardless the length of the imported audio file is imported and by not adjusting the Chord Sheet bars will give the results similar to your post of the ACW ending early. When you import an audio file, you must check the audio file length and manually adjust the bars of the Chord Sheet to the audio file length plus ending bars. In the new ACW, the Chord sheet, Mixer and Audio Edit Window are integrated with each other.

File | Open audio and
File | Open audio with chords and
Open (F3)

Opening audio files with any of these commands does adjust the number of bars of the Chord Sheet to match the length of the audio file displayed in the Audio Edit Window. If audio file is 80 bars then that's the bars that will be analyzed by the ACW.

Thanks for the information. This to me is a bad workflow. The system should be able to see that the audio is longer than the 32 bars and remind you or just analyze it. Just another example of a really cool feature that is not really completely thought out. When you import an audio file the whole file is visible in the Audio Edit window. If it intends to only do 32 bars then the 32 bars should be highlighted, or the rest of the bars greyed out. Anything so the customer knows what the issue actually is.

The important thing you are missing is how the audio file gets into BIAB makes a difference.

BIAB knows the difference between the length of the audio file and the Chord sheet and it does display the appropriate bars.

BIAB will either open a file or import a file. You open an audio file for a new BIAB project started based on that audio file. You import an audio file for the audio to add to your existing BIAB project.

BIAB displays the number of bars based on how the audio file gets into the BIAB project. If a project is opened with an audio file, the audio determines the number of bars. If audio is imported, the BIAB project has determined the number of bars.

Charlie,

I was just typing up something similar but your explanation is much better than what I had.

For what it's worth, my understanding of BIAB and RB is that anytime "import" is mentioned, it means "add to the currently opened project". For this reason, the existing project controls the outcome. On the other hand, whenever "open" is used, it means "create a new project based on what I'm loading in" thus whatever is opened controls the outcome.

--Noel

Just to be clear import or open the functionality is poor. Bar number issue aside it is sketchy as how one aligns the bars.

Indeed... I was just wrestling with getting it to work for a recent song. I had issues with the tempo of the import being changed drastically. The ACW should be re-coded so that it will import the audio and not change the tempo. It should also have a much easier way to set the first bar and beat of the song. The current window is absolutely confusing.

I've tried to use it simply by dragging the audio in, and hoping it lines up....and then just going measure by measure typing in the chords manually as that was actually easier, faster, and more accurate than trying to get the ACW to do it's job like one would expect it to do.

Well, while we are piling on, I have also had bad experiences with ACW. Fact is there are better options available on the market today.

Well, I'm bailing on this discussion. It's the same level of understanding and misunderstanding it was seven months ago in a previous ACW discussion.

<< The ACW should be re-coded so that it will import the audio and not change the tempo.>>

The new ACW was re-coded and replaced the old ACW specifically to import or load audio synchronized to the BIAB chord sheet and populate the Chord Sheet with chords and change the tempo and chords for accuracy in real time. The new ACW is integrated with BIAB's Audio Edit Window, the Mixer and the Chord Sheet. (The old ACW was an external program. - see screen shots)

How pre-recorded audio is chosen how it's loaded into a BIAB project is similar to if you're wanting Brent Mason to play a solo to your song or if you want Carol Kaye to develop a bass line for you to develop your song idea around.

Not to get off the subject, but "if you want Carol Kaye to develop a bass line for you to develop your song idea around.", well, that would be a winner, no question about that. There are few better

Sorry about the minor derailment, Carol is a legend. Now, back to the main program...

For anyone who is interested in understanding BIAB's ACW (Audio Chord Wizard), I encourage you to have a look at PG Music's 2020 New-Features video (from timestamp 25:06).


PG Music have included a tutorial file in "bb\documentation\Tutorials\Tutorial - BB2018". I found it very valuable to open "Shenandoah" in BIAB (using "Open Special | Open Audio) and to follow along, step-by-step, with the video tutorial in the 2020 new-features video. I'm presently running a pre-release version of build 1112 and ACW worked easily and flawlessly for me as described in the video.

--Noel

P.S. When working with ACW, I always disable the style (right-click in the Style window and uncheck "Style enabled"). I also prefer to use the multi-window display that shows the chordsheet and the audio file.)

EDIT: Cerio has pointed out to me that the ability to disable the style is not working at the moment. I have reported this PG Music. In the meantime, soloing the track on which "Shenandoah" is loaded works fine and does the job.

Some users may not be familiar with how to access the import audio or open audio commands from the menu bar. The audio import command has two menu bar locations while there are two open audio menu commands.

The two menu bar import audio into an existing song project command locations are: (1) File > Import > Import Audio (WAV, WMA, MP3, WMV) and (2) Audio > Import Audio (WAV, WMA, MP3, WMV).
Both locations bring up the same Import Audio dialog window where the user can select the audio mixer receiving track, choose if the incoming audio replaces or merges with any existing track audio and what chorus, bar, beat and tick to place the beginning of the incoming audio. The screenshot blue highlight shows the Import Audio dialog window notice that "No tempo is detected".

The two different open audio commands are: (1) File > Open Special > Open Audio (WAV, WMA, MP3, WMV) and (2) File > Open Special > Open Audio with Chords (WAV, WMA, MP3, WMV, CDA).
(1) When Open Audio (WAV, WMA, MP3, WMV) is used you can playback the audio file at normal, 1/2, 1/4 or 1/8th speed. Open Audio (WAV, WMA, MP3, WMV) has the pc keyboard shortcut of: S S 10 Enter.
(2) Open Audio with Chords (WAV, WMA, MP3, WMV, CDA). attempts to figure out chords and bar lines. Open Audio with Chords (WAV, WMA, MP3, WMV, CDA) has the pc keyboard shortcut of: S S 14 Enter.

This.

Jim, Noel, Charlie, while I appreciate where you are coming from, pointing out the very videos we have all watched and the manual re have all read does not help with the issues here. Let's be real. It does PGM no good what's so ever to defend a functionality that does not work up to expectations. They deserve better. Many of us work hard every year to Learn and use the newer features. Some are dead on beautiful and we acknowledge that. Some are near misses and PGM needs to know what we are experiencing out here. Sometime bugs and workflow issues that are not apparent to them are found in the field. Respectfully you guys are great members of the forum, and huge contributors, but defending features that still need more work is counter productive.

We are not bring this up to bash PGM we are big fans we are discussing it to point out ways to make the program better. The ACW is a near miss, it is difficult to use and causes frustrations. DR./LT. Dan it right there are better options out there. Maybe that is the right tool for now, but I hope PGM take a closer look at their tool at some point and refines it again.

So thanks again for trying to help, but it is not help I am looking for. It is refinement I am hoping for. It looks like I am not the only one who sees the limitations to this tool. yes in the video it worked great, but not every song it that easy. I tried setting the first 2 bars as per instruction. When I tried moving marker to realign it kept throwing other areas off badly and I had to dump it and start over three times before giving up.

Rob, my thoughts exactly, but you said it so much better than I could. So I have nothing to add.

Well said! Agree 100%!

Hi Rob.

My apologies. When I read your opening post where you said...

...I took it at face value and in my mind, I heard your post as a genuine request for help. Then in your most recent post, you said...

From this, I can only guess that there were some other reasons behind your initial post that I was unaware of, and you weren’t really seeking help. Rest assured that I'll keep this mind next time I read a post of yours and interpret it as seeking assistance.

With the added benefit of hindsight, I now see that I misread the signs throughout your comments in this thread. When I read what I thought was your lack of knowledge about “L” to tap out timing when in manual mode, and then later when I read about an apparent confusion between ‘importing’ something into BIAB and ‘opening’ it, I thought I would find something to help clarify those aspects of the program and ACW. I found myself wondering if maybe your knowledge needed a refresher in the same way that I need to refresh my own understanding of BIAB from time to time.

Now when I read...

...I see that I was wrong, and I am sorry for stating the obvious. Maybe some others who read this thread will find my post useful.

I didn’t mention it before, but your comment about only being able to tap out around 20 bars before the program returned you to the start made me wonder if maybe you were running automatic marking (adding bars) as well as automatic analysis (adding chords) while you were setting things manually. I’ve never done this because working manually and automatically simultaneously seemed like a recipe for disaster to me.

For anyone reading this post who might find it useful information, the way I use ACW is given below. This a straightforward process that works easily and flawlessly for me in BIAB 2024 (1112).

• 1) I load the audio using “File | Open Special | Open Audio” and solo the track that contains the audio. (I don’t use ‘Open audio with chords.)
  
  2) I select the view that allows me to see both the audio waveform and the chordsheet.
  
  3) Next, I double-check that ‘Auto marking’ and ‘Auto analysis’ are not selected.
  
  4) I set the first bar by positioning the cursor and tapping “L”.
  
  5) I then start playback and tap L to set the first 10 or so bars to create a solid foundation for BIAB to interpret the average tempo information. (In the documentation and the videos, PG Music usually set 4 bars. I like to be a little more thorough because the way I see it, the better I prepare audio for BIAB, the better my ultimate results.)
  
  6) I manually adjust the barlines that I’ve tapped in so that they are as accurate as possible.
  
  7) After that, I activate “Auto marking” and let BIAB do it’s work.
  
  8) Then I play through the song to check that the bars are reasonably well aligned. I adjust any that are not. I’ve found that if the first 10 bars are well-timed, I only have to make an adjustment here and there for most audio unless there are areas of free/ad-lib tempo in the audio file.
  
  9) When I’m satisfied with the barlines, I activate “Analyze” to determine the chords. I usually have the chord-type set to “No preset” but occasionally I use ‘Diatonic Triads’.

EDIT
I have just tried the above process using the audio for the opening theme from the Chinese drama, "The Untamed" (see the video clip below). This sounds like it's mostly based around a pentatonic scale to me. There was a 2/4 bar (bar 5) and a 1/4 bar (bar 32) in amongst the 4/4 bars, some ad-lib regions, and a couple of key changes. Everything went well for me. An image of the chordsheet (including tempo map) I created is attached. Even though they are analysed for chords on the chordsheet, bars 18 – 25 are an orchestral interlude for which I did not bother creating an accurate section. (This is the first attached file below.)

You'll probably notice that I settled on a tempo of 45 bpm. This happened because I mistakenly ended up counting "4" and tapping the barlines in across what was really two bars. The tempo should be 90 bpm. Fortunately, that problem is easily solved in BIAB simply by: (a) deleting the tempo map; (b) using "Edit | Song Form | Expand duration of chords by 2"; (c) setting the tempo to 90 bpm. (This is the second attached file below.)


Regards,
--Noel

P.S. As others have already pointed out, there are issues with some aspects of ACW in builds 1111 and 1112 of BIAB 2024. PG Music are aware of these.

Here's another video tutorial how to use the ACW. Although Mr. Henry's tutorial is more than 35 minutes and specific to extrapolate the chords from an audio file of a popular song, the first 16 minutes clearly demonstrate how to the get -L-'s exactly right on the WAV form.

This video was posted 3 years ago and has more than 37,000 views with 178 positive comments. Read the video's comments please. I didn't see a single request to re-code the ACW, eliminate the integration of the tempo map to the Chord Sheet or to refine the ACW. It earned a B- grade from Mr. Henry.

How I use Audio Chord Wizard

Charlie, thanks i will watch it and see what i get. I am not suggesting a full recode, but there is some shaky results from time ti time. 37,000 watches and 178 positive comments is less than a half percent. I have been using the ACW for many years i have gotten a few positive results but more often than not it is frustrating. I have used it in BiaB and RB. There are others here who have experienced the same thing. i have used tempo mapping in at least three different DAWs as well. You and anyone else can post all the positive from others you can find. I am willing to learn more. What i am telling PGM is that it has some peculiar behavior at times. I am not the only one who has noticed that moving Bar lines in ACW works but often it battles you as it constantly causes other lines to move off their position. I did a project in Mixbuss and used their tempo mapping. It was simple and didn't have as many cool tools as BiaB but it did work and seemed to be learning as it went. In the end the results were pretty good. I am trying to get PGM to take a look at improving the tool one more time. I can't understand why there is so much resistance to improvement.

Charlie i went and listened to Henry's video and I get what he was trying to do, but in reality, his bar lines were dreadfully off in the video. I know he was trying to get a basic overview but to say the tempo was right on and explain that the intro was different than the rest of the song when the difference was that he never synced the bars to the proper tempo. The last time he played the song before moving on to the chord analysis he kept saying Boom for each bar and in the video, you could plainly see that the lines were nowhere near the downbeat of the track. I would imagine that if he did try to line it up the video would have taken hours! Why because the lining up process would fight you till you were exhausted.

What happens is that when you start lining them up after doing the auto marking it seems to be going well but as you progress down the song it begins to get harder and one move messes up another. soon you have a varied tempo. So, you use the equalize tempo button and now they are all off again or at least some of them, so you fight with it and fight with it and at some point, after about two or three hours you throw your hands up and quit!

Bottom line is it works sort of, but it could use a bit of attention. The ACW is an incredible tool, but like a lot of tools in BiaB it is not fully polished.

Good morning Rob. I hate the tutorial wasn't much of a benefit to you. I didn't get your point about the views and positive comments percentage value. The intent of mentioning those numbers was with as much positive feedback that others got from the video, there might be some value in the video for you. I agree the ACW is an incredible and valuable tool and wish you the best getting your struggles worked out.

Barlow thanks for the video it did help to a degree. I learned two things. 1. You can get the job done, and 2. It still needs some refinement. From many other’s comments it is clear this is not just my struggle. The tools are there but they can be very frustrating.

In Henry’s video it is so crystal clear that his bar line after about the first half dozen are no where near the down beat. He keeps saying “boom” for every bar but they are not a boom they are way off. Yes he can walk thru the hours of time and effort needed to make them all line up. But he admits that is too much for a short video. I have texted this tool quite extensively for three days now after having used it in the past and yes I got fairly decent results after three painful hours. It shouldn’t be that hard! As you line stuff up things you already did go out of alignment. Back and forth until you almost give up and decide that it is as good as it will get.

Here is what I found out after a lot of hard work. If you want to use it to map a popular song the you can get it fairly close but at some point you are going to dump the wave file and run with the created .sgu to get a song bed for that song so yes that is possible. If you want to add a wave file to so g your i for a wrestle of a life time. I also watched the video PGM put out of the Shenandoah song they got reasonable results but it is in reality harder than that video makes it out to be. I watched a video of doing the same thing In Harrison Mixbus they have a simple process with very targeted tools. Simple but effective.



The reference to the positive reviews was to point out that 178 positive reviews from 37,000 views is a very small sample set of people’s opinions.

Again thanks for your time.

You're most probably correct, but it's worth remembering with videos like these that the process of making the video can cause some apparent skewing and other effects.

I dont think that's the problem in this case, I think Rob is speaking about this


Audio and video are synced, but bars on the ACW are clearly not correctly positioned on the down beat.

I've found similar results using the ACW in some cases. An example here:
https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=817371#Post817371

Audio Edit/ACW is a very good tool however there are some quirks.

OP:s comment on things moving around among already edited bars is likely to be a lack of understanding of the relation between User and Auto generated bar lines.

Working with alignment of non consistent tempo is a fairly quick operation.
Start out like Henry C does with some bar lines and have it autogenerate the remainder of the song.
What Henry doesn't do is to adjust when it gradually goes out of sync. So it just question of checking e.g. every 8 bars and move to the appropriate position and the bar lines to left will adjust accordingly. Continue and the song should be ok in a couple of minutes if it's a fairly consistent recording. Will take a bit more time if it's very sloppy time wise.

I'm pretty sure everybody here knows the difference between user and automatically added bars in ACW, that's definitely not the problem.

The problem is that in some cases, user / auto generated bars gets completely out of sync, please, see the video here as an example:
https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=817371#Post817371

Another example:
https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=21978&filename=ACW%20Out%20of%20Sync.gif

Other users have reported similar issues before. Additionally, other users have reported issues when importing audio that I suspect might be related:
https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=815796#Post815796

I did it just like Henry did I always add the first 6 bars or so then ad auto marking. Then begin to try to align the rest of the bars.

Look I admit that the ACW has some good results. However it still can be rather shaky. I’m not new to this process I have used ACW since inception. Beta tested it through the last few upgrades. It is both better and not better. Even the chord detection depends upon the value of the wave file. The more complicated the less effective it is. I tried a live Wave file this morning from a friend and it struggled to detect the chords. The problem was the bad quality of the wave.

The bar detection works and gets you close but it does not just line up like some say. As cerio’s link and Henry’s video clearly shows. Henry admitted that it can be hours of work.

Henry was showing how to create a BiaB file for a popular song. The best method for this is line up a few bars, auto mark it get it close as possible and then move on to the chords detection and then dump the wave file and work with what you have. For that it is fine.

Next I go to a good simple internet chord file for the song and fix the over complicated chords that were detected. Oh but Rob, it does a great job detecting chords you say. Yes but it sometimes adds to those chords from the tangle of instruments in the song.

End results are still super useful.