Version 2007 for Windows © Copyright PG Music Inc.1989-2007. All rights reserved.
PG Music Inc. License Agreement CAREFULLY READ THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS BEFORE COMPLETING THE INSTALLATION OF THIS SOFTWARE. USAGE OF THE SOFTWARE INDICATES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS. LICENSE A. The program may only be used on a single machine. B. You may transfer the program and license to another party if the other party agrees to accept the terms of this Agreement.
Table of Contents PG MUSIC INC. LICENSE AGREEMENT.............................................................................................................2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................................3 CHAPTER 1: WELCOME TO BAND-IN-A-BOX!.................................................................................................6 WHAT IS BAND-IN-A-BOX? ..................................
CHANGING VOLUME, PANNING, REVERB, CHORUS, BANK .....................................................................................118 EDIT FUNCTIONS ....................................................................................................................................................119 APPLYING STYLES ..................................................................................................................................................128 REALDRUMS STYLES ..........................
MIDI FILE CHORD INTERPRETATION WIZARD .......................................................................................................326 PRACTICE WINDOW ................................................................................................................................................332 EAR TRAINING TUTOR ............................................................................................................................................333 EAR TRAINING GAMES .....................
Chapter 1: Welcome to Band-in-a-Box! Congratulations on your purchase of Band-in-a-Box, the favorite of musicians, students, and songwriters everywhere. Get ready to have fun! What is Band-in-a-Box? Band-in-a-Box is an intelligent automatic accompaniment program for your multimedia computer. You can hear and play along to many song ideas and go from “nothing” to “something” in a very short period of time with Band-in-a-Box as your “on demand” backup band.
Installing Band-in-a-Box for Windows ® Minimum System Requirements - Windows® 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista. 128MB of RAM. Digital audio features require a Pentium-class system. 120 MB available hard drive space for Pro version, 3 GB for MegaPAK including RealDrums. PC sound card or external MIDI device (synthesizer, sound module, etc.). Installing the Program Use any of the following three methods to install the program files into the Band-in-a-Box directory.
If the driver that was selected is not the best choice, simply make an alternate selection from the MIDI Driver Setup dialog. Select a MIDI Output Driver to use for MIDI sound playback and optionally a MIDI Input Driver if you are using an external MIDI controller keyboard or guitar. If the setup is panned to mono, the program offers to change it to stereo. Perhaps the easiest way to configure Band-in-a-Box is to press the [Run Driver Wizard..] button in the Opt. | MIDI driver setup window.
DirectX Instrument Synthesizer (DXi plug-in) Support Software synthesizers allow Band-in-a-Box to play high quality sounds directly through your computer sound card, without requiring any external MIDI hardware. Most new software synthesizers are released as “DXi plug-ins,” so they will work in a standard way with many programs. Connecting Band-in-a-Box to the software synth as a plug-in provides several advantages over the previous method of connecting as a MIDI driver.
VST/VSTi Additional Panel Controls VST is necessarily different from DirectX/DXi, and some extra controls are available for VST plug-ins. DirectX/DXi plug-ins save their presets to the Windows Registry and only one setting is “alive” at a time. VST/VSTi plug-ins save their presets to disk files. VST/VSTi plug-ins contain a bank of presets in memory. You can switch between presets while editing, and each edited preset is remembered in the current bank.
VST/VSTi plug-ins are not required to have a fancy graphic control panel. There are many “faceless” VST plug-ins which have many adjustable parameters, but no fancy control panel. When you open such a plug-in, the control panel will look like the above example. Band-in-a-Box presents one “generic” slider for each adjustable parameter in the plug-in. Parameter Name: Simply the name of each adjustable parameter.
Alternate Patch Maps You can choose the patch map (instrument list) that matches your synthesizer keyboard or sound module. Original equipment sound cards or integrated sound chips are General MIDI (GM) compatible. We have made preset drum/patch files for many synthesizers and sound cards including the Roland VSC and VSC DXi. If your synth is not listed you should use the General MIDI Instrument Misc. patch kit (default).
To reset the default MME driver settings click on [Get from soundcard…] and Bandin-a-Box will analyze the sound card and enter the correct audio settings. If your computer has ASIO capability you can use these drivers instead of the default MME drivers. ASIO Audio/Software Synth Drivers By using an ASIO audio driver, software synths like the Roland VSC (DXi or VSC) will play with almost no latency (delay is only 5-10ms).
1) If you haven’t used ASIO drivers, but Band-in-a-Box detected them, and you answered “Yes” when Bandin-a-Box asked if you want to use an ASIO driver. 2) If, within the Audio Settings, you change the “Audio Driver Type” from MME to ASIO. 3) If the ‘Audio Driver Type’ is already set to ASIO, but you later press the [Audio Drivers…] button in the Audio Settings. The Select one ASIO Driver list box lets you select an ASIO driver to use. You can only select one ASIO driver at a time.
Note: If your ASIO driver’s control panel lets you select the buffer size in MS, then you don’t have to pay much attention to the part of discussion below about converting samples to MS. Converting Samples to MS: For example, suppose the driver’s sample rate is 48K. A 48K sampling rate means that it is playing at 48,000 samples per second. If the buffer size were 48000 samples, then the latency would be 1 second, or 1000ms (which is very large and slow, and usually not allowed in ASIO).
Chapter 2: QuickStart Creating music with Band-in-a-Box is as easy as 1-2-3! In this chapter, you’ll see how easy it is to get started with Band-in-a-Box. Step 1 – Typing in the Chords There are numerous ways of entering chords into Band-in-a-Box. We’ll discuss five fast ways of entering chords: 1. Using the computer keyboard. 2. Playing directly on a MIDI controller keyboard. 3. Using the Chord Builder feature. 4. Importing chords from a MIDI file. 5. Loading an Existing Band-in-a-Box format song.
Enter Chords Using a MIDI Controller Keyboard If you have a MIDI controller keyboard, you can use it to enter chords into Band-in-a-Box. Play a chord on your MIDI keyboard, and then type Ctrl+Enter. The chord will be entered into the chordsheet at the current highlight cell position. Another method allows you to choose alternate chords.
Loading an existing Band-in-a-Box format Song Press the Open Song button. The first time you use this button, Band-in-a-Box will offer to build a Song list for you. We’ve included many demonstration songs; they are listed in the song list. You could also load a pre-existing song by using the File | Open menu item, or by typing [F3], which will launch the Windows file dialog. Songs usually load a “Style,” which we’ll learn about in the next section.
Method 2: You can use the StylePicker window to select your style. Select the button above the chordsheet, or type Ctrl+F9 on your computer. This window shows styles listed by Category and by Styles Set number. Select a Set or genre from the left pane, and choose the specific style on the right pane. There are Memos and examples for each of the Styles. In addition to the selection categories, styles can be filtered by “feel” and “tempo.” They can also be selected by the number of the styles set.
Method 3: Styles that you’ve used previously show up in the Favorite Styles dialog. Choose this with the [F] button next to the [Style] button in the song title window, from the Styles menu, or type Shift+F9 on your computer keyboard. You can choose to save a Favorites set for use later. You can also load a set of favorite styles in this manner. Method 4: In the Styles menu, you can choose from among the 24 “built-in” styles.
Locate the framing buttons. There are three of them, one each for Beginning of Chorus, End of Chorus, and Number of Choruses. In the example above, the chorus starts at bar 1, ends on bar 32, and is going to play 3 times. Setting the Key In the example above the key is set to C. However, you can set this to any key. In our first view of the chordsheet the Blues song was in the key of E. If you do change the key, Band-in-a-Box will offer to transpose the chordsheet for you.
Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2007 Band-in-a-Box 2007 Plus! We’ve got a great new release of Band-in-a-Box, with many new features and enhancements since 2007. We now have Band-in-a-Box 2007 Plus (version # 2007.5) We’ve improved the Real Drums, AudioChordWizard, added Remix features to allow you to add BB styles to existing MP3 files, and much more! We’ve also made 5 new RealDrums sets for Band-in-a-Box, with authentic Nashville, Rock and Jazz styles.
- - - Tempo checking for chosen RealDrums styles. If you choose a RealDrums style, and the tempo is outof-recommended-range for the style, BB will inform you of that – you can still use the style of course. RealDrums styles that get chosen automatically by Band-in-a-Box will always be compatible with your song. RealDrums styles can now have 2 separate feels, with different push amounts, and custom fills for transitioning between substyles (see above).
These are not “samples,” but are full recordings, lasting from 1 to 8 bars at a time, playing along in perfect sync with the other Band-in-a-Box tracks. For example, choose a brushes style, and you will now hear lush Jazz brushes. The results are dramatically better than MIDI. They sound like a real drummer, because they are recordings of a real drummer. Adding a real instrument to the mix makes all of the Band-in-a-Box parts sound more authentic.
Once you have the chords-from-MP3 inside Band-in-a-Box, you can auto-sync the file with Band-in-a-Box, so you can hear the original MP3 playing in sync with the bar lines in Band-in-a-Box.
Or use the feature interactively by displaying a menu of possible chord progressions for a portion of the melody, and audition them to choose the best one using the “Bar Reharmonist.” This allows you to hear some new chord progressions for existing melodies, or new progressions for tunes without chords.
Chord “Breaks” This feature is great for practicing tempo control. Select the # of bars, and Band-in-a-Box will play for, say 4 bars (selectable), and then will rest all instruments for the next 4 bars. During the silence, you keep playing (comping, drums, melody, etc.), trying to stay in tempo. Drummers can mute the drum part. When the band comes back in after the 4 bars, you’ll get instant feedback on how well you have maintained the tempo, if the band comes in time with you or not.
A new Audio Offset feature allows you to synchronize any point of the audio file with bar 1 of the Band-in-a-Box song. This is useful after importing an audio file into Band-in-a-Box that you want to sync with a song – just rightclick on the Audio window to set Bar 1. The Audio Settings dialog is now also accessible from the MIDI Driver Setup dialog or Audio menu.
Automatic Memo-Generation The Song Memo has been enhanced, with a “summary” checkbox. If selected, you’ll see an additional window that automatically displays a full summary of the song (title/tempo/patches used in the song) as well as other special features, such as substyle patch changes or harmonies. This saves much of the work previously required to manually type in this information to the memo.
Soloist Enhancements Melody Influenced Solos When musicians solo for a song, the solo is typically influenced by the melody as well as the chords. Now Band-in-a-Box can also allow the melody to influence the type of solo generated by its Soloist feature. The result is a much better solo generated for the song. A strength (%) setting allows you to control how much the solo will be influenced by the melody.
StylePicker now auto-rebuilds when new styles have been added. Notation Enhancements Lyric entry now has convenient buttons to enter line breaks or paragraph breaks. Guitar chord diagrams are improved. Polyphonic (chord) notation spacing is improved. There is now a filter for the Event List Editor, allowing you to, for example, quickly spot all patch changes. Hot key support is added to delete or insert notes directly in the Event List.
Fakesheet Endings Fakesheets can now optionally include the 2-bar song ending. Auto Piano Hand-Splitting The Piano part now displays on both clefs, using intelligent hand-splitting routines that dynamically change the split point. This happens automatically. You can also manually split a piano part on a Melody or Soloist track using the intelligent hand-splitting routines.
The left/right hands display in red/blue on the Big Piano, and on bass/treble clefs on the notation. Import a piano MIDI file to the Melody track to get a split-hands display and printout! Enhanced DXi Features Lower latency settings for VSC DXi are now possible, and they are typically auto-set to approximately 100ms on newer PC’s. Looping during playback is now seamless while using DXi/VSTi softsynths. Recorded melodies now automatically adjust for any latency.
MIDI Latency Calibration. For software synths with latency, there is now a [Latency Adjust] button to open a Soft Synth Latency Adjust dialog that allows you to accurately set your softsynth’s latency by listening to 2 tones a fifth apart. The MS GS Wavetable synth (included in Windows XP) is now auto-set to correct latency (about 120ms). New Chord Entry and Editing Features The Edit menu Nudge Chords/Melody feature allows moving a range of chords by any number of bars and beats.
The Edit | Fold routine converts a song with a single large chorus to multiple smaller choruses, with optional tag ending. Edit | Search/Replace Chords will search and replace chords, including support for asterisks (*) as wildcards. Also a “simplify Jazz chords” option will simplify chords like C13#11#5 to simply C9. Deletion of chords over a range of bars can be done by selecting the range and pressing DELETE, and no confirmation dialog is required for chord delete.
Jukebox option added to stop the Jukebox when set is completed. Yellow “Fly-By Help Hints” have been expanded throughout the program to provide more information and tips. Loading “song demo” on Style menu, or click on the name of the style on the main screen, and the menu that displays will include the option to “Load Song Demo” for the current style.
QuickStart Tutorial for the Version 2007 New Features The full descriptions of the new features in Version 2007 of Band-in-a-Box are provided elsewhere. This tutorial is a QuickStart tour of the new features in Band-in-a-Box 2007. Note: It is assumed that you are somewhat familiar with the previous release of Band-in-a-Box. Explore Band-in-a-Box Version 2007 First, we’ll take a quick tour of the new features in Band-in-a-Box. Then we’ll do an in depth tutorial for the main new features.
The Window menu has items for the new Reharmonist, SoundTrack, and Practice windows. Let’s explore the RealDrums. Learn how to make your own RealDrums styles in the Help file Tutorial: Making RealDrums Styles. Here’s an introduction to using the ones you already have. Here are 3 key points to insure that you get proper sound with RealDrums styles. 1. Choosing the correct MIDI/DXi driver to use with real drums, 2. Syncing, and 3. Volume mixing.
4. 5. Other software synth (non-DXi/VSTi). If you know the latency of the other synths, then they could be used. Most good synths are DXi/VSTi these days, the non-DXi/VSTi are usually not as good. See the latency setting tips in item #5. Roland VSC (non-DXi version). We wouldn't recommend this combination, mainly because the DXi/VSC combination is so much better (perfect sync, direct render).
- Open up the RealDrums Settings dialog. Try turning off the RealDrums by de- selecting Enable RealDrums. You can do this even while the song is playing. When you do, you will then hear the MIDI drums – this is a good A/B comparison test to hear the differences. Making Your Own Real Drum Styles from Scratch Note: This is an advanced feature, for people familiar with recording live drums, making WAV files, and TXT files.
As well as the chords of the song, the Audio Chord Wizard also figures out, - the tempo of the file, - bar lines throughout the song, - fine tuning detection (e.g. 5 cents sharp from A440), Using the Audio Chord Wizard To open your audio file in the Audio Chord Wizard you can click on its toolbar button or use the File menu command to Open Audio w/Chords. Use the Launch Audio Chord Wizard command if you already have a file with audio loaded in Band-in-a-Box.
Play the file that you have generated. Notice the “Bossa” style of chord progression, with 2-5 progressions, and other typical Bossa chords like a G7 for 2 bars in the key of F. Now let’s use the Reharmonist in an “interactive mode” where it gives us choices of various chord progressions at each bar. Let’s see if we can interactively improve on the chord progression, according to our own tastes. The first 2 bars generated originally are: Make sure that the currently highlighted cell is bar 1.
Let’s try out some other new features of Band-in-a-Box 2007. Batch Mode Rendering Of Audio Files Let’s make WAV files for every one of the Style demos in the c:\bb\Styles01 folder (or whatever folder you want). There are over 20 songs here. Note: For this feature to work, you must use a DXi driver, like the Roland VSC DXi, usually included with Band-in-a-Box. Set the folder to c:\bb\styles01 (or whatever folder you are using). Set the suffix to something like “_Demo,” so that the files like MySong.
In the Manage Folders submenu, choose Add Practice Folder and then select “C:\bb\Styles0” or whatever folder that you want to make a practice folder. It will then show up on the menu when you press the Folder button, and when you press the [Songs] button you will see a pop-up menu of the songs in that folder. This lets you load in songs much faster than navigating a File | Open dialog. Note that this is used for folders with less than 200 songs, the menu limit for a single screen.
Chapter 4: The Main Screen Main Screen Overview The main screen gives direct access to the major features and program settings of Band-in-a-Box for ease and convenience during a session. There are five different areas on the main screen. 1→ 2→ 3→ 4→ 5→ The main screen of Band-in-a-Box with a new, blank song. 1. The Status Bar is used to show program running status messages and path names of the currently loaded song. 2.
Display Options Go to Opt. | Preferences or click on the [Pref] button to open the Preferences dialog. Then click on the [Display] button to open the Display Options dialog where you can select a toolbar mode, show or hide the on-screen piano, pick a song title font and set options for the chordsheet display including the number of rows to display for the main chordsheet, the font to use, and the font size too. This allows you to read the chordsheet window from “across the room.
Status Bar The name of the open song is identified in the status bar at the top of the screen. The full file name and path name are shown, as well as audio track information if present, the length of the song in minutes and seconds, and the current position of the highlight cell. Other “running status” messages such as Soloist Generation and Song Generation display in the status bar.
On the top row, guitar (green), melody (red), and soloist (pink) are displayed. On the bottom row, bass (brown), piano (blue), and strings (grey) are displayed. Instruments and Parts: Part Settings: The Bass/Drum/Piano/Guitar/Strings/Melody/Soloist and Thru buttons refer to instrument parts. The parts in use for the current song and style are shown in yellow. Parts that are not used are in white. When RealDrums are available the Drums label is shown in green. The names of muted parts display in red.
Pressing the [F] button produces a list of your favorites; the 50 most recently loaded harmonies. The [T] button is for Thru/Soloist harmony. Either your live part or the Soloist will be harmonized in real time - in this case using George Shearing Quintet type harmony (piano, vibes and guitar). Pressing the [F] button produces a list of your favorites; the 50 most recently loaded harmonies. Pressing the Shift+F11 keys toggles the Thru harmony on and off.
Transport Controls These buttons are like the transport controls on a CD player or a media player. [Play] button generates a new arrangement and plays the song. [Loop] plays the selected (highlighted) section of the chordsheet in a loop. [Replay] plays the song from the beginning without creating a new arrangement. [Stop] button stops the song or the Jukebox from playing. [Pause] button pauses the song during playback.
The Folder button allows you to change song and style folders or directories from within the program. Use the Favorite Folders button to select a folder from previously used folders. Shift-click on this button to choose any folder. The guitar button launches a guitar fretboard window that displays guitar notes as music is playing. This button allows you to enter repeats, 1st and 2nd endings, DS al coda, DC al coda and more. The AutoFind feature enters them automatically.
The Reharmonist creates a chord progression based only on the melody. It can also reharmonize existing chord progressions. This button opens the Notation window, where you can enter chords and lyrics, edit notation, and view MIDI notation. The Lead Sheet notation is a full-screen notation window with optional Fake Sheet mode that shows 1st and 2nd endings, repeats, and codas. Launches the Piano Roll window for editing the Melody or Soloist tracks in a piano roll format, including graphic controller editing.
The SB button opens the Sound Blaster control panel, but only if you use a Sound Blaster card. Sound fonts are loaded in the control panel. This button toggles the chord display among standard (CMaj7), Roman Numeral (Imaj7), Nashville (1Maj7), and Solfeggio (DoMaj7). This runs the stand-alone Title Generator program, which will generate and print 50 new song titles at a time.
Tempo Control The current tempo displays in the Title window, with controls for easy tempo settings and adjustments. Click the mouse on the spin control arrows to raise or lower the tempo in by 5 bpm (beats per minute) at a time. Use a right mouse click on the tempo arrows to change the tempo by 1 bpm at a time. Tap the [=] key on the number row of your computer keyboard for 4 beats to set the tempo and start the playback immediately at that tempo.
Loop Section Settings The loop button launches the Loop Section Settings dialog, allowing you to set a range of bars to loop in Band-in-a-Box. The LoopSec/LoopScn checkbox turns the Loop Section on/off. When it shows LoopSec a selected range of bars repeats in an endless loop. LoopScn indicates a screen of notation is looping. Chordsheet Area Chords, rests, shots, holds, and part markers are entered in the Chordsheet.
Shortcut Chords: If you enter a lot of songs, you'll appreciate these shortcut keys. - J = Maj7 - H = m7b5 (H stands for Half diminished) - D = dim - S = Sus Example: To type CMaj7, just type CJ (it will be entered as CMaj7) Add your own chord shortcuts. You can make your own shortcuts text file and name it \bb\shortcut.txt. This allows you to add new chord shortcuts. (Note that this file doesn't ship with Band-in-a-Box or it would overwrite your file.
Chapter 5: Guided Tour of Band-in-a-Box With Band-in-a-Box you can arrange, record, save, and print your own song ideas. Just type in the chords to any song; choose a style and press [Play] to hear the “band” play a full arrangement. Then record a Melody - either MIDI or live audio – or have Band-in-a-Box write an original Melody for you.
From then on, the SongPicker opens when the button is pressed and songs can be selected by title from the alphabetical list. Songs can be sorted by any of the column headings, like Song Title, File Name, Style, Tempo, etc., by clicking the mouse on the heading at the top of the column. Either a plus (+) or minus (-) sign will appear beside the selected column heading. A plus sign indicates that the column is sorted in ascending order; a minus sign indicates that it is sorted in descending order.
Band-in-a-Box SongPicker window. Check “Play when chosen” to automatically play the selected song. Once you’ve loaded a song you’ll see the chords on-screen in the chordsheet so you can follow the chord changes and play along with the band. There are right mouse menu options on the Chordsheet, such as “Play from Bar/Chorus #.
Chordsheet Options You can set up the chordsheet with your own preferences. Go to Opt. | Preferences or choose the [Pref] toolbar button to open the Preferences, and click on the [Display] button to open the Display Options. In the Chordsheet area of the Display Options you can pick a chordsheet font and the number of rows to display, or set an option to automatically adjust the number of rows to display. Transpose Chordsheet option The “Transpose” option is also found in the Display Options dialog.
Now, when you play notes on the MIDI keyboard (during playback), they will get remapped to chord tones. C/E/G/Bb notes played on a THRU keyboard will be mapped to chord tones, and D/F/A/B will be passing tones. This scale - C D E F G A Bb B - is considered the “Bebop” scale, useful for playing over dominant 7th chords. Change the Style Try different styles by clicking on the [Style] button to choose from a list of the styles available in the StylePicker window.
The Band-in-a-Box Synth window controls instrument settings. Solo an Instrument Part While listening to Band-in-a-Box, you can easily solo (isolate) a certain part by holding the Control key and mouse clicking (left or right) on the instrument at the top of the screen. For example, if you want to hear only the Piano part, Control-Click on the Piano part. If you want to use hot keys for this, you can press Alt+2 (Mute-All) and then Alt+4 (Unmute Piano).
Looping of a section of the song is enabled by the “LoopSec” checkbox or with the keystroke NUMPAD 1. Open up the Loop Section Settings dialog by clicking the Loop button, or pressing NUMPAD 2. The Loop settings dialog will then display. The Conductor Window As the song is playing, many “single key” hot keys are available to control the playback and looping of the song.
The Embellisher is only active while the music is playing; the recorded Melody track isn’t affected. There is an option for the Embellisher to only humanize the timing of the music if the timing was “stiff” to begin with. This allows the Embellisher to leave the timing of human input melodies alone, and humanize only the ones that were entered in step-time. You can save/load your own presets for the Embellisher. Press the Export button to save the data as an .EMB file.
This button opens the Harmony Maker, where you can customize Harmonists. You can search for a harmony by a keyword (i.e. typing in the first few letters of a harmony name) in either the Harmonies or Favorite Harmonies dialog. This button is to turn off any notes that are stuck on. (There shouldn’t be any.) Enter the number of the harmony you want to go to and press [Go To #]. Pressing either the [Fav] or the [F] button produces a list the 50 most recently loaded harmonies.
Note: Once the track is converted you should set the harmony to “None” or you will hear harmonies being applied to the harmony notes, i.e., “harmony-on-a-harmony.” Live Harmonies While Band-In-A-Box Is Stopped Normally, the Live Harmony feature is not active when Band-in-a-Box is stopped. But you can in fact use the Live Harmony even while a song is not playing. You need only to open the Harmony | Real Time MIDI Harmonies menu item.
When this dialog (shown above) is open, you can play a chord in the Left hand (below the split point set in the dialog), and the chord you play is and displayed in the dialog. Then, the notes that you play in the right hand will get harmonized according to this left-hand chord. If you set the Only Harmonize if Left hand chord held down you'll be able to control what notes get harmonized by holding down the chord when you want a note to be harmonized.
There is a dedicated function to vary the start times of notes on the Melody or Soloist tracks, with options for what notes to affect (harmony, chords, and amount of variance). Choose menu item Soloist | Edit Soloist Track | Utilities | Loosen Start Times.
3) Have the Soloist play a solo according to your accompaniment and arrangement (along with the other members of your Band-in-a-Box, of course!) 4) Trade 4’s in a call-response fashion with the Soloist (you solo for 4 bars, Band-in-a-Box solos for 4 bars, etc.) 5) Concentrate separately on different aspects of your playing with assistance from the “Wizard.
Standard Notation Window Band-in-a-Box Standard Notation window. The Standard Notation window can be used for notation display and the entry of chords and lyrics. Just type a chord name and it will be inserted at the current time line location (the black vertical stripe just under the tool bar.) Click on the instrument buttons to see the notation for the different parts: Bass, Drums, Piano, Guitar, Strings, and the Melody [M], or the Soloist [S]. Press the [Opt.
Band-in-a-Box Editable Notation window. This is the screen for step-entry of a melody or for editing existing parts. There are checkboxes for different note entry modes. The Note or Rest checkboxes determine whether a note or a rest will be inserted when the mouse is clicked. When the Mono checkbox is selected, the notation is entered as monophonic (one note only). This is useful for melodies that only have one note playing at a time.
Staff Roll Notation Mode Click on the Staff Roll Notation button to go to Staff Roll Notation mode. Band-in-a-Box Staff Roll Notation window. In addition to the editing features of the Editable Notation mode, in Staff Roll mode the velocity (vertical line) and duration (horizontal line) of notes can be edited with the mouse. Piano Roll Window You can edit your tracks using the “Piano Roll” window, similar to the type found in many sequencer programs.
Select the Track - Bass, Drums, Piano, Guitar, Strings, Melody, or Solo. It is most practical to edit the Melody and Solo tracks. The other tracks for the accompaniment are rewritten every time Band-in-a-Box rebuilds the song (every time you click the [Play] button). So if you edit a “backing track,” be sure to save as a MIDI file before rebuilding the song, or your edits will be lost. Keyboard Pitch Panel 1. 2. 3. 4. Click on a single note of the keyboard to select all notes of the clicked pitch.
Graphic Event Panel Graphically display and edit non-note MIDI events. This panel only shows MIDI events specified in the Chan, View/Edit, and Controller Type controls. Zero-value events are drawn as small hollow squares, to make them easy to identify. When graphically inserting controller and pitch bend events the event density is adjustable from one event per 1 tick up to one event per 30 ticks.
View/Insert Channel If a track contains multiple channels, “All” will display MIDI events on all channels. Otherwise, select the channel that you need to see. If “All” is selected, new MIDI events are inserted on the Band-in-a-Box track's assigned channel. Except for perhaps multi-channel Guitar tracks, Band-in-a-Box plays all track events on the assigned track channel. Therefore, in almost all cases, the channel of track events does not matter.
Click or drag in the Chords Ruler to set the Insertion Point (useful if you wish to use the menu Edit/Paste (Ctrl+V) to paste into the Piano Roll). If a song is playing, a Chords Ruler click will stop playback. Double-click the Chords Ruler to start playback at the indicated bar. You can also set the Insertion Point and then tap Ctrl+G to start playback at the desired location. Notes can be selected with the Note Ruler.
Two graphic event mouse editing modes for editing graphic events: 1. Add Mode Add/subtract the same amount to all selected events. 2. Scale Mode Scale the selected events. Select one or more Graphic Events, and move the mouse over one of the events. Shift-drag vertically, and the events are scaled in a proportional fashion. Large-value events are scaled more than small-value events. This keeps the same shape of a gesture, but makes the gesture bigger or smaller.
Select All Note Events (Of Current Channel): (right-click the Graphic Event Panel or Graphic Event Ruler) If the “Chan” combo box is set to All, this item will select ALL GRAPHIC EVENTS of the CURRENT VIEW/EDIT TYPE on ALL CHANNELS. Otherwise, ALL GRAPHIC EVENTS of the CURRENT VIEW/EDIT TYPE are selected which match the CURRENT MIDI CHANNEL. For instance, you could select all channel 4 modulation events, then Delete, to easily remove all of those events from the track.
Re-Channel All Events to the Track Channel (Ch = xx) Re-channel all notes and graphic events (the entire track) to the MIDI Output channel assigned for this track. Sometimes this can come in handy to bring some “sanity” into Piano Roll editing. For instance, though the default Melody output channel might be channel 4, meaning that Band-in-a-Box transmits any events in the Melody track on channel 4. The actual events in the Melody track might be channel 1, or a mixture of several channels.
Lead Sheet Notation Window The Lead Sheet Notation window displays a full page of notation with lots of options such as a selectable number of staves per page, clefs to show, font size, margins, scroll-ahead notation, and lyrics. You can set it to a big font size and read the notation from across the room. Since the notation scrolls ahead, you can read ahead without waiting for a page turn.
bottom. For example, clicking on [M], and then on [P] and [B] with the Ctrl key held down would display and print the multi-stave staff system shown. Multiple tracks can also be printed like a score. Band-in-a-Box Lead Sheet Notation window displaying multiple parts. Multiple lines of Lyrics on Fake Sheet. If your song has 1st and 2nd endings or multiple verses of lyrics, multi-line lyrics can be displayed, so you’ll see all verses on the same fake sheet.
Open the Lead Sheet window and select the [Memo] button to launch the Lead Sheet Memo. Select any available font type, size, and style. Type text or copy and paste from other programs. The memo appears on the Lead Sheet and printout after the last line of notation. Lead Sheet Printing Click on the [Print] button to print your song as sheet music. There are print options for “# of copies to print” and “print specific page #.
The notation can also be copied as a bitmap to the Windows clipboard and then pasted into any application. This is done by clicking on the [Clipbd] button in the Print Preview screen. To print a specific page, press the [OK -Preview/Graphics] and [Print Page] buttons. Full-page view of Band-in-a-Box MultiTrack notation.
Multi-Channel Notation (Sequencer Mode) Normally you would want a single part on the Melody and Soloist tracks. But, since MIDI information can have separate channels, it is possible to store 16 separate parts on each of the Melody and Soloist parts. When one of these tracks has been set to “Multi (16)-Channel” we refer to this as sequencer mode.
Channel 3: Acoustic Piano (this is the patch name found on the track). 842 There are 842 events in the track; usually every note is an event. We have customized the piano track so that it can be heard (play=true), but not seen in notation (Show=false). There is a small button at the right of the track line that allows you to delete/ rechannel or merge the channel with another channel. You can also change the patch (instrument) for that track by using the instrument patch combo box.
Notice the various areas of the Guitar Window. - The top title bar states the key of the song is Cm, the Melody track is the track displayed, and the guitar is at the 8th position. - The fretboard is displayed with the highest notes of the guitar at the top, and the open position of the guitar on the left. - There are names for the open strings displayed on the left (E B G D A E). - There are fret positions marked at the bottom of the fretboard.
Guitar Fretboard To see the guitar neck displayed in DADGAD, choose Melody | Track Type | Guitar – DADGAD Tuning. When you open up the Guitar window and choose the Melody track, you’ll see the DADGAD tuning.
Any melody will now display in the chosen tuning. Similarly, you can set the Soloist track to an alternate guitar tuning with the Soloist | Track Type menu. The Guitar track (or Piano, Strings) is controlled by the style, and will only reflect the type of tuning stored in the style. Load in some alternate tuning styles included in Styles Set #44 – Requested 4 to see the chording on the guitar track in alternate tunings.
The examples above are for DADGAD tuning, but apply similarly to all 11 alternate tunings included. Some of the tunings are “Nashville High Strung.” These tuning have the lowest 3 strings tuned up an octave, to achieve a close sound. So a DADGAD High Strung tuning would have the lowest 3 strings “DAD” tuned up an octave. Listen to some style examples that use this tuning. One of the tutors uses 3 note Jazz voicings to simulate the famous BigBand chord guitar comping styles.
- The default settings for this feature can be customized by pressing the [Settings…] button. The Big Piano window displays a single track on the piano. The piano can be resized by dragging the bottom of the window to enlarge it vertically. The key of the song is displayed at the top. The range of the piano is set automatically (based on the actual notes in the track) to show the largest possible piano). The notes of the scale are circled on the piano, with the note names included.
Band-in-a-Box Jukebox options dialog. In the main screen, click on the [F] button to open the Favorite Songs list and make your own custom set lists for the Jukebox.
- Use the [Clear] button to blank the list. - Songs can be added or removed from the list with the [Insert], [Append], and [Delete] buttons. - Use the [Save Set..] button to save the list of selected songs. - The [Load Set] button loads a saved list of songs. - The [Juke..] button plays through the list of songs automatically, like a jukebox. This is a great feature for saving a list of current song projects, or for performing a live set with Band-in-a-Box accompaniment.
hear the MIDI file. When the file is saved, the extension will be MGX, allowing you to easily identify the BB songs that you have that contain entire MIDI files. Sequencer Mode There are 2 tracks in Band-in-a-Box to add your own recordings. These are the Melody and Soloist tracks. Normally you would want a single part on each of them. But, since MIDI information can have separate channels, it is possible to store 16 separate parts on each of the Melody and Soloist parts.
Choose Melodist settings in the Generate Chords and/or Melody dialog. Note: Band-in-a-Box also has a SoundTrack feature that allows you to generate music in the style you choose for any length of time you specify. Click on the SoundTrack toolbar button to launch this feature. Make Your Own Songs Now that you see how much fun it is to play music with Band-in-a-Box, you’ll be pleased to discover how easy it is to make songs of your own.
Type in the Chords The chords we will enter are F, Bb, and C7. Mouse click on the first cell in the Chordsheet and type f. The letter f will appear in the chord box. Press the Enter key to enter the chord Chord Box F on the first beat of bar one. The Enter key advances the chord cell ½ bar at a time, i.e., 2 beats in 4/4 time. Next, type the letters bb and press Enter to put a Bb chord on beat three of bar one. The highlight cell will advance to bar two, type c7 and press Enter.
Load Previous Style, Load Next Style. This function, analogous to the Load Next Song function, loads in the previous (or next) style in alphabetical order of the file name. These functions are found in the Styles menu, or with the hot keys Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F8 (or Alt+Shift+F8). “Framing” the Song A typical song contains the following three basic components: - Intro: If present, an intro is typically 4 bars long. - Chorus(es): Typically 3 or 4 choruses in a 3 minute song.
Add variations in the Edit Settings for Current Bar dialog. Record a Melody Band-in-a-Box has two built-in sequencer tracks so you can record and edit your own melodies or solos. These tracks are recorded from a MIDI keyboard (or other MIDI controller) connected to Band-in-a-Box by your MIDI driver. You can record up to 16 separate tracks on the Melody or Soloist part. Or simply load any MIDI file to the either part and edit the channels. This allows for counter-melodies or additional instrument parts.
Pressing the [Record] button will start Band-in-a-Box recording what you play on the Thru track. An audible count-in is played prior to recording. You can punch in/out, overdub, and record directly to the ending or the tag, and use the filter to choose which MIDI events are recorded. Once you have completed recording your melody, Band-in-a-Box will ask you if you would like to keep the take and if you would like to copy the recorded chorus to the whole song.
The Embellisher Memo describes the current embellishment, with statistics counting the number of embellished notes. You can save/load your own presets for the Embellisher. When you have made a custom setting in the Embellisher dialog, press the Export button to save the data as an .EMB file. When you want to recall the saved preset, press the Import button, and load in a previously made .EMB file. You can share your favorite presets with other installations of Band-in-a-Box using the EMB files.
Band-in-a-Box Big Lyrics window. Digital Audio Features There is a File | Open Audio command, to open WAV, WMA, MP3, WMV, or CD Audio files. Once opened, you can play the audio track along with a Band-in-a-Box song. Open an MP3/WAV/WMA or audio CD track, and play back at 1/2, 1/4, or 1/8 speed without affecting pitch. This is great for transcribing or analyzing audio. To play it at a slower speed, choose the desired speed on the Play | Tempo menu.
You can adjust recording levels from this dialog with the [Set Recording Properties] button. Once you have set the recording properties and tested the recording input levels, recording is easy. Simply tell Band-in-a-Box the place in the song where you want to start recording, whether or not you want to record the MIDI data along with your acoustic instrument, and press [Record].
Add Audio Harmonies You can apply a harmony to the audio part – allowing you to automatically create up to 4 part vocal harmonies from your singing. And don’t worry if your singing is not in perfect tune, Band-in-a-Box can now “fix” vocals to the correct pitch - automatically! Band-in-a-Box generates the harmonies using the world-leading TC-Helicon Vocal Technologies engine.
Add Audio Effects You can add professional audio effects like reverb, echo, and compression by choosing a plug-in from the Audio menu (Audio | Plug-in). Band-in-a-Box comes with a large selection of high quality audio effects built-in, and DirectX plug-ins are supported. The plug-ins apply audio effects or utilities such as compression to the already recorded audio part. A typical plugin dialog is shown.
The Render to Audio File dialog box permits you to save your file as a wave file (*.wav), a Windows Media Audio (*.wma) file, or other compressed audio formats supported by your system. You can direct render “MIDI only” songs into high quality wave files with the included Roland VSC DXi or any other DXi or VST softsynth you have. The MIDI parts are converted directly to audio without being rendered (recorded) in real time, usually in just a few seconds.
To burn your CD: Press the [.WAV] button to open the Render to Audio File window. Then press the [Burn to Audio CD] button. This renders the file to a stereo wave file, and then launches MiniBurn, the built-in CD burner application in Band-in-a-Box. The song just rendered will be listed in the burn list. You can add other files to the list to make up a full CD, or choose [Burn CD – No Finalize] to allow other files to be burned to the CD later. The CD will not be playable until finalized.
Chapter 6: Band-in-a-Box PowerGuide This chapter is a guide to the advanced settings in Band-in-a-Box. Any user can use these settings to quickly and easily become a Band-in-a-Box power user. Descriptive Hints The pop-up hints make it “too easy” to become a power user. They are comprehensive fly-by hints that appear when you move over an item, including hints for the dialog boxes and various windows. Go to Opt.
- You can open a song without typing the extension. For example, to open the song MySong.MGU you just have to type MySong, without MGU. The Font Selection button lets you pick a font, size, and style for the dialog from any of the fonts installed in Windows. The Search button allows you to search for a file by its name or part of a name. The Favorite Folders button remembers the last few directories that you've used, allowing you to easily change between directories.
Similar overrides are available to see which other information gets loaded from a file, such as patches, harmonies, volume/reverb/chorus/panning/banks. For example, you can set every song to load with looping ON, and don’t load any reverb settings from songs. For example, if you want every song loaded to have looping set to on, then set “Always set loop to ON.” But if you are going out on a playing job, and don’t want any songs to loop, then set it to “Always set loop to OFF.
For example, type c6 to get the C6 chord. Note that you should never have to use the Shift key, as Band-in-a-Box will sort this out for you. - Use b for a flat, e.g. Ab7. - Use 3 for a sharp #, e.g. for F#7 type f37. - Use / for slash chords with alternate roots, e.g. C7/E (C7 w/E bass). - Use a comma to separate the ½ bar, enabling you to enter 2 chords in a cell. In the example below, we would type Ab9,G9 to get the 2 chords in the cell on beat 3 and 4 of bar 2.
This will transpose the copy a random transposition and would be useful for advanced students who are trying to master a riff or phrase in all keys. Copy 1st Chorus to whole song If set, this will apply any of the copying commands in this dialog to all choruses of the song, not just chorus #1. This button toggles between [Show More] and [Show Less], depending on whether just the basic functions or all Copy functions are displayed. Copying chords to the clipboard. Select the region to copy.
Support for other chord display types You can enter or display chords in Roman Numeral notation, Nashville notation, or Solfeggio notation. For example, the chord Gm7 in the key of F would be displayed as IIm7 in Roman Numeral Notation, 2m7 in Nashville Notation, and Rem7 in Solfeggio. These systems are very useful for learning or analyzing tunes, since they are independent of the key signature.
You can nudge chords and/or Melody/Soloist parts. A “Fold” routine converts a song with a single large chorus to multiple smaller choruses, with optional tag ending. A Search/Replace Chords feature will search and replace chords, including support for asterisks (*) as wildcards. A “simplify Jazz chords” option will simplify chords like C13#11#5 to simply C9. Repeats and Endings You can add repeats and endings so that the Lead Sheet window will display and printout using 1st /2nd endings.
Playing/Pausing/Stopping Songs Use the tool bar buttons to control the playback of your song in Band-in-a-Box. Play song Loop selection Replay song Stop playback Pause (Hold) Play from any bar You can also use the Play menu commands or keystrokes. Lead-In Counts and Metronome These settings are made in the Preferences dialog. Click on the [Count-in/Met.] button to open the Count-in and Metronome Options. The default count-in is two bars, but there is an option to shorten it to a 1 bar lead-in.
Play Selected Area as a Loop Click on the [Loop] button, Shift-click on the [Play] button, or press F10 (Play Selected Area as Loop) and the program will play a selected region, and loop the selection. For example, you can select bars 10 and 11, and then press F10, and bars 10 and 11 will play looped. To use this function, select a region on the Chordsheet. Choose Play | Play (loop) Highlighted Section (or press F10). The selected region will then play, and continues looping until STOP is pressed.
Hot keys are also available for these, look in the Play menu under the Looping submenu. Loop Keystroke Commands (useful for live performance) NUMPAD 1 Toggle looping on/off. NUMPAD 2 Open Loop Section Settings dialog. Ctrl+NUMPAD 1 Play with last chorus looped. Ctrl+NUMPAD 2 Play with middle choruses looped. Ctrl+NUMPAD 3 Play with middle and last choruses looped. Ctrl+NUMPAD 4 Jump to last chorus. Ctrl+NUMPAD 5 Jump to ending. Ctrl+NUMPAD 7 Loop Notation screen.
Additional Patches A "patch" is a MIDI instrument name. Examples of patches are Acoustic Bass, Electric Piano and Violin. Patches are used to emulate real instruments through MIDI playback. Band-in-a-Box defaults to using the standard bank of General MIDI patches used by all MIDI manufacturers, but many MIDI synthesizers and sound cards have additional patches available as alternatives to the basic GM list. These sounds are typically found on higher banks in memory.
Converting Synthesizer Patch Lists in Band-in-a-Box Band-in-a-Box can read a patch file list generated by PowerTracks Pro Audio or Cakewalk, and convert it to a .PAT file for use in Band-in-a-Box. Converting PowerTracks patch list to Band-in-a-Box .Pat files. PowerTracks stores its patch lists in a single file, called PATCHES.INI. This file contains all of the patch lists for the synths supported by PowerTracks. Band-in-a-Box stores the patch list for each synth in a separate file, with an extension of .
Converting a Cakewalk .Ins file to a Band-in-a-Box .Pat file. This is done using the same process described above for PowerTracks, except that you open the individual .INS file instead of a PATCHES.INI file. For example, if you have a Cakewalk file called “My Synth.INS” you would select this file name. You would then save that converted list to c:\bb\My Synth.PAT.
When “Drums” appears in green it indicates that RealDrums are in use and their volume level only will be set by this control. RealDrums are not affected by the other controls. MIDI drums respond to all controls. Then click on the spin control arrow keys to increase or decrease the setting. - The left mouse button increases/decreases by 5 at a time. The right mouse button increases/decreases by 1 at a time. You can also click directly on the number field to open a dialog and type the value in directly.
Pasting Chords from the Windows Clipboard Assuming you have already copied some chords to the Clipboard (see previous topic), you are then ready to paste the copied chords into another part of your chordsheet. - Move the highlight cell to the bar to begin the paste of chords. - Click on the Paste button or choose Paste from the Edit Menu. Tip: The copied section remains in the clipboard and can be used repeatedly.
“K” Quick Copy Method By simply typing “K” at a bar followed by the Enter key you can instantly copy the last 8 bars to the current position. By adding additional keys in the K command, you can customize this shortcut (e.g. typing K 12, 3 would copy from bar 3 for 12 bars to current position.) The current position is advanced to the bar beyond the copy. This speeds up song entry! For example, if you're entering a song that has a repeating section of chords for 8 bars.
With a single press of a button you can auto-generate a 2, 4, or 8 bar intro for any song. The chords will be different each time, and you can keep trying as often as you like until you get the progression that you want. The intro generated will be an intelligent chord progression (i.e. appropriate for an intro) in the chosen style of music (Jazz/Pop). It can have optional pedal bass, and will “lead” correctly to the first chord of the song. The duration of the intro can be set to 2, 4, or 8 bars.
When you have created your repeats and endings, either manually or automatically, simply select the “Fake Sheet” checkbox on the Chordsheet or Lead Sheet window. Band-in-a-Box will hide the repeated bars and display the fake sheet using 1st and 2nd endings. Reduce (durations of chords by ½) cuts chord durations by 50% (e.g., 4beats>>2beats, 2beats>>1beat, etc.). Expand (durations of chords by 2) doubles the durations of chords (e.g., 1beat>>2beats, 2beats>>4beats, etc.).
To transpose part of a song, simply highlight the area you wish to transpose and select Transpose From.. To.. in the submenu. When you have confirmed the starting bar and the number of bars you wish to transpose, click on the “Transpose to Key” area and select the destination key. Song Memo… A Song Memo of up to 2000 characters may be added. When a song has a memo associated with it the label on the Memo button (located to the right of the song title) is pink.
Edit Dialogs Chord Settings If you can’t remember the various keystrokes to put in rests and pushes, you can use the Chord Options dialog box instead. To get to the Chord Options dialog box press the [C7] button, click with the right mouse button onto the chordsheet, or use the keystrokes Alt+F5. You can launch the Preview, Chord Builder, or Chord Substitution functions from this window. You can enter pedal bass with any chord.
Settings for Current Bar The number of beats per bar, tempo changes, patch, style, and harmony changes can be made by selecting the Settings For Current Bar option on the Edit menu or by pressing F5 after you have selected a bar to edit. Number of Beats this Bar The initial time signature of the song is determined by the style (e.g., Jazz =4/4, Waltz =3/4). In some songs you will want to change the time signature, for example, you might want a single bar of 2/4, or 8 bars of 3/4 time.
Style/Tempo/Patch/Harmony Changes Insert changes of styles, tempo, patches, and harmonies (melody and soloist) at any bar (and any beat of any bar) in the song with the Edit Settings for Current Bar dialog, which opens with the [F5] key. For example, click on the [.STY] button to choose the new style from the StylePicker window. Style, tempo, patch, and harmony (Melody and Soloist) changes will be recorded on your song worksheet indicated by a small red square around the bar that will be affected.
Options and Utilities These settings are found in the Opt. menu and the Opt. | Utilities submenu. Language Selection This item in the Opt. menu allows you to change language from English to another language for display. If there are other languages supported by your version of Band-in-a-Box, then they will display in this dialog box. The new language will be displayed the next time Band-in-a-Box is launched. Edit Chord Shortcuts file (shortcut.txt) Add your own chord shortcuts.
The StylePicker window allows easy selection of styles by category or from a complete list of all styles. For example, you can select Jazz styles and see a list of all of your Jazz styles. Then you can select any style to see its full title, description, and examples of songs appropriate to the style. The current style of the song is listed at the top of the window; in this case it is the Jazz Swing style (ZZJAZZ.STY). This is referred to as the Prototype Style.
- “sw” indicates that the style is in a Swing feel vs. “EV” for Even feel. The “8” indicates that the style is an 8th note feel (vs. 16th note feel). 160 is the tempo for this style. Jazz Swing Style is the full name of the style. SD #0 indicates that the style is found on Styles Disk #0, one of the original 24 Band-in-a-Box styles. Styles that are similar to the prototype are indicated with an asterisk (*).
The category here is called “My Styles,” you can change the name using the yellow “Category Name” area. For this example, change the name to “Favorite Jazz.” Let’s add a Style to the list. Press the [Add New Style] button. A style has been added, called NONAME.STY. You now need to fill in all of the information in the colored fields to supply the information for the style you have added. Note: For this example, we’ll add a Jazz style called NEWONE.STY. This style is included in the C:\bb folder.
4. We now enter settings to tell Band-in-a-Box what Soloist it should use when making improvisations using this NEWONE.STY. For this, we need to know the genre of the style (Jazz, Country, and Pop etc.), whether it is in an even or shuffle feel, and whether a soloist should be playing primarily 8th or 16th notes. From the drop down combo box that appears, for this Jazz Swing style (newone.sty), we should choose “Jazz Swing Triplet feel 8th notes.
You will then see a rebuilt style list, and your category “My Styles” and your new style “NEWONE.STY” will appear in that category. Technical notes: Information about styles you make yourself is stored in a file called A_USER.LS3. This is a text file, but it is better to edit it using the StylePicker editor. You can make other .LS3 files using the StylePicker editor, using the [Save As] and [Open] buttons. You can also erase an .LS3 file from disk. Third party added styles are also stored in .LS3 files.
File Rules: - Any line beginning with a semicolon “;” is a comment - Lines beginning with ~ indicate a new category like jazz, country, pop - Lines beginning with @ are a description of a style in the format @a\b^c*d - where a = style file name e.g. zzjazzsw.sty (max. 8 chars + .sty ) - b= Long Style Name e.g. Jazz Swing Style (max. 32 chars) - c= Style memo - d= Examples of songs that can be played in this style - c and d combined can be a maximum of 255 characters, e.g.
How Do RealDrums Work? There are several ways to hear RealDrums with new or existing Band-in-a-Box songs. We provide many styles that already have RealDrums. These styles can be identified by the style name beginning with a minus sign. For example “-ZZJAZZ.STY” is a version of the ZZJAZZ.STY that uses RealDrums. Styles (.STY) can have RealDrums (e.g. “–ZZJAZZ.STY”). This setting is found in the StyleMaker’s Misc. Style Settings dialog.
RealDrums “Compatible song/style finder.” In the RealDrums Settings dialog, there are now buttons that will, for a chosen RealDrums style, enable you to (1) play the RealDrums demo song, (2) show a menu of BB styles that would work with the Real Drum style and (3) play a song demo of various BB styles that work with the Real Drum style. INSTALL button. When this is pressed, WAV files will be created from any RealDrums styles that are still WMA files.
3. Press the [Choose] button below the Substitution box and select the replacement style (alias). If you have made a mistake and wish to change your style selection, press the [Clear] button. When you have successfully made an alias, you will notice that there will be a small arrow in the Styles box on the main screen indicating that you have an alias loaded. You can Export and Import alias files to share with your friends by clicking the [Import..
- - Shots can specify certain instruments play a “shot,” where the chord is played and then a rest follows. For example the song “Rock Around The Clock” has a shot on beat 1 followed by a rest for 2 bars. The duration of “shots” is 60 ticks per beat. Held chords specify that certain instruments hold a chord sustained for a certain number of bars.
Pushes “Pushes” (also called anticipations) are chords that are played before the beat. For example, in Jazz Swing, the piano player often “pushes” a chord change by playing the chord an eighth note before the beat. To execute a “push,” you can use either keystrokes or open the Chord options dialog box by right mouse clicking on a given chord. To use keystrokes : Type the caret symbol [^] before the chord. The caret symbol is located above the numeral 6 on your computer keyboard.
Song Settings Dialog The [S] button on the main screen will bring up the Song Settings dialog. The keystrokes Ctrl+N key or the Edit | Settings (for This Song)… menu command also brings up this window. Here, you can choose from various song settings such as chorus embellishments, tag jumps, and endings, to make your song interesting and varied. These are additional song settings that are saved with the song.
Allow Pedal Bass in Middle Choruses This determines whether Pedal Bass effect will be allowed in middle choruses. Allow Embellishment of Chords The Jazz styles include embellishment of chords. This means that if you type a C7 chord, the piano part may play a C13 or a C7b9. This makes the arrangement sound more authentic, as this is a common practice in Jazz playing.
Allow Any Slides If you want the slides to occur, then set this to YES. Humanize Slides If set to YES, the slides will be humanized to slide the track a different amount for each note. The amount varies from 0 ticks (none) to the slide setting for the instrument. - Press the [Default] button to fill the tracks with default slide values. - Press the [Zeros] button to 'zero-out' the slide values for all tracks. - Press the [Update] button to affect your changes and hear the result instantly.
1. Choose File | Save with Patches and Harmony (Alt+F2). 2. Choose the patch and other settings that you want to embed. 3. Press the [Save] button to save the song to disk. Saving MIDI and Karaoke Files Your Band-in-a-Box songs can be saved as Type 0 and Type 1 MIDI files as well as Karaoke files and General MIDI lyrics. Click on the [.MID] button to launch the dialog. Select the type of MIDI file you want to save in the dropdown “MIDI File type” combo box.
By default, Band-in-a-Box writes Type 1 multiple track Standard MIDI Files. You can also save Type 0 MIDI files, they have all of the parts on a single track and are used by many hardware modules and other devices that play MIDI files because they are simpler to play (since they only have 1 track). Karaoke files (.KAR) are a special type of sing-along MIDI file with text events for the lyrics and a specific order for the tracks.
Include 2 bar lead-in in MIDI file If you don't want to create a MIDI file containing the first 2 bars of the 1—2—1-2-3-4 count-in you can select this option. If there is a Melody pickup, then the 2 bar lead-in will remain in the file. Write Lyrics in General MIDI format The GM specification has agreed upon specific requirements for writing lyrics in MIDI files, which are supported, so that lyrics that you save in Band-in-a-Box should show up identically in other MIDI programs.
For example, you could select Chorus #2 if that is the chorus that you want. The resultant MIDI file will be made from the selected range. Alternatively, without selecting a range on the chordsheet, you can make a MIDI file for a partial range by pressing the MIDI file button, and then the “Set Range” button. Batch convert a folder of songs to MIDI files.
Save Options [File on Disk] saves a MIDI file to your hard drive or floppy disk. You can then load the MIDI file into your sequencer for further editing. [Clipboard] copies the MIDI file to the Windows Clipboard as a Standard MIDI File. This feature allows clipboard enabled programs to Edit | Paste the Band-in-a-Box MIDI file directly into the program. For example, you can clipboard-paste Band-in-a-Box MIDI data to PowerTracks Pro Audio, CakeWalk, Musicator, etc.
The Jukebox The Jukebox will load and play an entire subdirectory (folder) of songs. Songs play continuously, one after the other. The Jukebox will continue to play while you move to other Windows programs, providing continuous background music. Click the [Juke] button to open the Options for Juke Box dialog. Jukebox Options Only Play song with melodies: If set to YES, the program plays only songs with melodies, that is, songs with an .MG? file extension.
Generate Solos: Set this option to “On” to permit the Soloist to play a Solo over all the songs selected for Jukebox Playback. 1. Change to this directory by loading/opening a song from the c:\bb\solodemo directory. 2. Instead of playing the song you have loaded, press the [Juke] button. 3. Ensure that the Generate Solos checkbox is set to “Yes.” 4. Select [PLAY JUKE BOX]. The Soloist Select Dialog will pop up with a suggestion to use a Soloist for the first song in the Jukebox list. This is normal.
MIDI Normalize If performing a live set, or at a jam session, it helps to have the volume of all of the songs be similar. Now, with a MIDI Normalize feature, you can level the volumes to a setting in the program options. For example, you can set all volumes to be 70 and the program will make each song play within those levels. This is done in the Preferences [Arrange] tab.
enable this by selecting the checkbox “Enable control by MIDI keyboard.” When this setting is enabled, any MIDI input will be interpreted as a hot key for the Conductor, and you won’t hear MIDI thru. If you’d like the ability to switch your MIDI keyboard between Conductor mode and regular playing mode, you can do this using the lowest “A-natural” MIDI note on your keyboard. This is A1 on an 88-note keyboard.
C5(60) This is a control character for THRU patches. When C5 is held down, pressing MIDI notes 61/62 decrease/increase the THRU patch by one, and 63-72 change THRU patches to Favorite patches.
- Section 4 :Middle Chorus (i.e. start of chorus #2) Section 5: Last Chorus Section 6: Ending Sections 7-10 are user definable. To do this, type in any bar # using the bar/chorus format (e.g. 21/2 would be bar 21, chorus 2). If you prefer to enter custom values for the section numbers, you can do this if you check the “custom” checkbox, and then type in up to 10 bar numbers for each section. The section numbers are saved with the song.
- Loop the middle chorus (press S, which is Loop Section). Jump to the end of the song (press 6). Pause the song (Backspace). Go back 1 chorus (Ctrl a). Go ahead 1 chorus (Shift A). At the end of the current chorus, go back 1 section, press Y then Ctrl S. Note: Pressing the Y sets the mode to do the action at the end of the current chorus These actions can also be done with the MIDI keyboard. See the MIDI keyboard mapping diagram for details. Example using the MIDI keyboard.
Chapter 7: Notation and Printing Band-in-a-Box offers a variety of notation and printing features, both for viewing parts on-screen as they play and for printing them as sheet music. To view the notation, open the Notation window by pressing the notation button on the main screen. Close the Notation window by pressing the notation button again. Band-in-a-Box Notation screen displaying the melody track in Standard Notation mode.
Note / Rest checkboxes These determine whether a Note or a Rest will be inserted when the mouse is clicked. Mono Mode When this is selected, the notation is entered as monophonic (one note only) to avoid extra notes in a single note melody line. Clean Notation The “Clean Notation Mode” cleans up the notation by eliminating display of redundant grace notes and glitches for easier reading.
- Optional display of guitar chord diagrams. As the notation plays, the notes that are sounding are highlighted in red. This helps with sight reading or following the music. You can set the notation to scroll either 1 or 2 bars ahead of the music without interfering with your view of the current notation. Handles Jazz eighth notes and triplet figures correctly.
In the Editable Notation mode you can enter, move, and edit notes and rests using standard mouse techniques – point and click, drag and drop, and right-click to open the Note Edit dialog box. Band-in-a-Box Editable Notation window. This is the screen for step-entry of a melody or for editing existing parts. Notice the grid of vertical lines, which sub-divide each beat. These lines indicate where the notes will be placed according to the resolution of the song.
Setting the Treble Clef Resolution for this beat to 5 allows a group of five notes to be placed on one beat. Tip: Although you can edit any track (e.g., Bass track), your edits to Band-in-a-Box instrument parts will be lost if you press [Play] and the song arrangement is regenerated. To save edits to accompaniment parts, save your song as a MIDI file for export. Entering Notes To insert a new note on the staff move the mouse to the location that you want.
Moving a note in time. If you want to change the start time of a note, drag the note with the left mouse button to the new location. This is a simple way to move the note. Alternatively, you could edit the note numerically with the right mouse button. Changing the pitch of a note. Similarly, you can drag the note vertically to change the note value, and release it when you're on the note you want. Hold down the Shift, Ctrl, or Alt key to have the note inserted as a sharp, flat, or natural respectively.
The Event Type list box lets you choose the event type (slur, decrescendo, etc.). The Length of Event field determines the length of a slur, crescendo, or decrescendo. The length is specified in beats and ticks. If an event is a “single-peg” event, such as a staccato or accent, then this field will cause multiple events to be inserted if the range is greater than zero (and the range spans multiple pegs).
Chord height adjustment Use this to adjust the height of a certain chord by adjusting the “Offset:” value in the Notation Event dialog. Note that a positive value moves the chord symbol lower, and vice versa. Modes Clicking on another notation mode will change to that screen while staying at the same location in the song. Editing Note Values Right click on a note. This brings up a variation of the right-click window with added commands for editing or deleting notes.
Staff Roll Notation Mode Click on the Staff Roll notation mode button to enter the Staff Roll mode. This mode is similar to the Editable Notation Mode, except that the beats begin right on the bar line. You can see the duration of the note visually represented by a horizontal blue line and the note’s velocity displayed as a vertical blue line. Tip: If you can't see these lines, press the [Opt.] button to check that “Show Note Durations, Show Velocity Lines,” and “Show Bar/Beat Lines” options are enabled.
Notation Window Options Press the [Opt.] button in a notation window to bring up the Notation Window Options dialog box: Track Type Normally you'd leave the track type set to Single Channel, but you can also set it to Multi-Channel, Guitar, or Piano. Multi (16) All MIDI channel assignments are preserved and output on playback. This would be useful for -Channel: importing an entire MIDI file, and playing it from the Melody channel using a silent style.
Snap to grid lines If the Snap To Grid Lines checkbox is checked, the inserted note will be lined up with the closest grid line. This is similar to the way a graphics or typesetting program aligns elements accurately on a page. This means that you don't have to click exactly on the beat to have the note inserted precisely on the beat. Scroll Ahead The Notation window can be set to scroll 1 or 2 bars ahead of the music without interfering with your view of the current notation.
Note Names There is an option to display note names in the center of the note head. You can display absolute note names (A, Bb etc.) or you can display numbers relative to the key or the current chord. This is helpful for learning to read music. Combined with the ability to display large font sizes, this achieves the big note look common to “EZ-2-Play” music books. Channel numbers are also displayable on the notation. When editing notes, it is often helpful to see the channel number of each note.
Jazz Chord Symbol Graphics (circles, triangles) Jazz and Pop music often use certain non-alphabetic symbols for chord types. These include a delta (triangle) for major chords, a circle for diminished, and a circle with a slash for half-diminished. Also, tensions like b9 and b13 are stacked vertically and contained in brackets. You can now select this option, and see these symbols for display/printout on the Chord Sheet, Notation, and Lead Sheet windows.
Tab When set, the Guitar and Bass parts will print tablature notation. Show fret #s on chord diagrams This will display the fret numbers for each string on the guitar chord diagrams. Load notation layout w/songs When this box is checked your Notation Option settings will be saved with the song and restored the next time you load the song. Show Key Signature If turned off, you won't have the key signature box displayed on the Notation Screen. This will save some space on the screen.
Enharmonics for passing tones are based on chords if “Use Chord Scale Enharmonics” is set to true. For example, on an F#7 chord in the key of Eb, the Ab note is part of the F#7 scale (as a G#, the 2nd of the scale), but is also part of the Eb key of the song. If you want to display based on the chord scale, setting “Use chord scale enharmonics” will display the note as a G# instead of an Ab.
Display Font Size % To select the notation font size for display, enter the Display Font Size as a percentage, either more or less than 100%. The same setting is available in the Lead Sheet window and the Print dialog. Chord Vertical Position This controls how high the chords will be written above the staff. If set to = 5 the chords will be written 5 notes above the top of the staff. If your piece contains a lot of high notes, then set the chord position to a high setting.
More button The [More..] button opens the Other Notation Options dialog. Inserted Note Defaults These settings determine the default values for notes that you enter manually. Duration % Notes are not always played for their full duration. If a whole note is inserted with a duration of 80%, the note would play for 80% of 4 beats = 3.2 beats. Velocity The loudest possible note has a velocity of 127; a velocity of 0 is silent. Channel Assign the MIDI channel of the inserted notes.
Line Thickness Settings These settings allow you to control the thickness of various line elements of the notation. For example, if you set the Bar Line width to 200%, the bar lines will be twice as wide, and easier to see. This affects display and printout. Show Popup Hint for Note Properties If this is checked the note properties pop-up will open if you hover the mouse cursor over a note in the Editable Notation window.
Scrub Mode on Notation Scrub mode allows you to move the mouse over a group of notes and hear them playing. To enable the scrub mode, press the Scrub button in the Notation window toolbar. Then hold the mouse and drag it over the notes that you want to hear. Lead Sheet Window The Lead Sheet window displays a full screen of notation with one or more parts. Other options include a selectable number of staffs per page, clefs to show, font size, margin, scroll-ahead notation, guitar chord diagrams, and lyrics.
The Lead Sheet is also useful as a kind of “Print Preview” feature, as it offers you the ability to correlate the onscreen notation to a printout. You can move around the Lead Sheet window in various ways. Cursor keys and mouse clicks will move a small blue rectangle around the screen, which lets you type in chords at that location. Double-clicking the mouse at any bar will start playback from that position.
Lead Sheet Options Dialog Pressing the [Opt.] button in the Lead Sheet window or the [Leadsheet] button in the Preferences dialog launches the Lead Sheet Options dialog. The settings in this dialog are applicable to the Lead Sheet window only. If you want to set options that are shared by the Lead Sheet window and the Notation window, press the [Notation Options…] button.
Fakesheet bars/line You can set a custom number of bars to display on each row of the fake sheet. For example, enter “4,6,4” in the Lead Sheet Window options and the program will use 4 bars for the first row, 6 for the second, and 4 for the rest. Fakesheet include ending bars Fakesheets can optionally include the 2-bar song ending. Restore Defaults You can reset all the Lead Sheet Options back to default settings by pressing the [Restore Defaults] button.
- Normal Solo 50% Solo Quiet Muted Harmony plays as normal. Only the selected voice will play. Selected voice is much louder than other voices. Selected Voice is much quieter than other voices. Selected Voice is muted. These settings are useful to sight-read along on harmonies, and learn to hear inner voices of a harmony. Staves Per Page The number of staves shown in the lead sheet can be set by typing in a number or using the [+] and [-] buttons.
This song has a 1st/2nd ending entered, with separate lyrics for each ending. Multiple lines of lyrics will also appear if there are lyrics in multiple verses (choruses). In the Notation Window Options, “Lyric Position” allows you to vertically position the height of the lyrics. Lead Sheet Memo You can enter a memo to add to the Lead Sheet printout. Click on the [Memo] button in the Lead Sheet to open the Lead Sheet Memo window. You can copy/paste from/to this memo.
Harmony Notation Display Harmonies can be displayed on the Lead Sheet window (or printed) with separate notation tracks for each harmony voice. View each harmony on a separate track, or view/print a single harmony voice. To examine the harmony display features, load in the song “Night_T.MGU.” The melody of this song was previously converted to a harmony using the Melody | Edit | Convert Melody to Harmony option, so this song contains a harmony on the Melody part.
Four-part harmony on four separate staves. Press the [Print] button to print out “Voice 2.” If needed, press the notation “Transpose Options” to first visually transpose the instrument to Eb for an “Alto Sax” chart. Multi-Channel Notation (Sequencer Mode) Normally you would want a single part on the Melody and Soloist tracks. But, since MIDI information can have separate channels, it is possible to store 16 separate parts on each of the Melody and Soloist parts.
Note-based Lyrics Note-based lyrics offer accurate placement of lyrics by placing a word under each note. As you enter the lyrics, the note is highlighted. Pressing the Tab or Enter key moves to the next note. Note-based lyrics are saved with the MIDI file, so you can use them in your other MIDI programs. You can enter note-based lyrics by pressing Ctrl+L keys or pressing the [L] button on the Notation toolbar. You will see [Line] and [Para] buttons.
From here, you can edit lyrics, or INSERT new lyrics or APPEND lyrics to the end of the track, or DELETE lyrics. A single lyric event can be 128 characters. The Lyrics Menu The complete list of Lyrics functions is found in the Lyrics menu. Enter Lyrics at current bar - Big Lyrics Window - Lyric Document Window - Copy Lyrics to Clipboard - Copy 1st chorus Lyrics to whole song - Erase all Lyrics - Opens the Lyric entry box at the current location of the timeline or highlight cell.
Delete Beat(s) from Lyrics Edit Lyrics as Event List - Opens the Edit Lyrics dialog with Edit, Insert, Append, and Delete functions. Line-based Lyrics opens a sub-menu with additional features. Copy Line Lyrics to Note Lyrics converts line-based lyrics to note based lyrics. It is imprecise, because the linebased lyrics don't correspond to individual notes. But you can edit the positions of the note-based lyrics using the event list or the Move Lyric back/ahead to time line functions discussed above.
The Lyric Document window displays a full screen of fully formatted lyrics so you can easily copy and paste lyrics to and from your favorite word processor. If you have the lyrics available you can quickly paste them into Band-ina-Box. You may already have the lyrics to your song typed into a word processor, nicely formatted with font/color/bold choices etc. Previously, you would need to retype them into Band-in-a-Box and would lose your formatting.
You can also select the color for the chords in the options dialog. With this option selected the Big Lyrics scroll a page at a time. When the lyric cursor reaches the next-to-last line of the lyrics it will scroll to the top of the page, allowing uninterrupted reading of lyrics. If you have the Lyrics window option “Auto-open lyrics window for songs with lyrics” selected, and a MIDI file (or .KAR) containing lyrics is opened, the lyrics window will open to show the lyrics.
Printing Band-in-a-Box prints Lead Sheet style notation with chords, melodies, lyrics and text notes. It will also print instrument parts from your Band-in-a-Box arrangements, either individual instruments or multiple parts. Most songs will fit on one page, so your printout will look similar to a standard fake book. You can easily make and print out a custom fake book of all of your tunes. Instantly transpose and print parts for brass or reed instruments.
Customize your printed sheet music in the Print Options dialog box. Include Chords If selected, this will include the chords of the song on the lead sheet. Remember that you can set the height that the chords will appear in a different dialog box (the Options Dialog box). Include Notes If you want only a chord lead sheet with no Notes, then turn this off. Otherwise it should be ON.
Treble Clef Normally you will want to include the treble clef unless you're printing a bass part or left hand piano part alone and want to save space. Bass Clef For melodies or solos, you probably won't want the bass clef printed. For other parts (piano, bass, drums, etc.) you should set this option to YES. AutoSet Clefs With this setting the program will print only the clefs that are necessary.
- Click the [A] button to print the title in upper case. - The [T] button automatically inserts the current tempo setting for the song. - The [©] button will insert the copyright symbol into the copyright field. - The [S] button will enter the full style name into the Style field. Setup Printer This launches the setup dialog box for your printer. If you choose a new printer, Band-in-a-Box will automatically set this as your default printer.
Display Options Use this button to display the notation across the full width of the screen. This button will shrink the notation to display a full page at a time. Saving the page(s) as Graphics files The [Save…] button saves the current page as a Graphics file. The [Save + +] button saves all of the pages to graphics files named songnamexxx.bmp, where xxx is the page number. With the clipboard button you can quickly copy a bitmap to paste into other applications.
Printing Multiple Parts To print more than one track of notation: - Open up the Lead Sheet window. - Click the mouse on the track that you want on the top stave. - Ctrl+click (hold down the Control key and click the mouse) on the tracks that you want below the top stave. You will then see a group of tracks, displayed in the order you selected them. Note: When you are viewing Multiple Tracks of notation, the clefs will be auto-set for you, ignoring the clef settings in the Lead Sheet options window.
This allows you to print all of the songs in a subdirectory with one command. This feature is accessed from the File | Print Multiple Songs menu item. You can set options to refine which songs will get printed. For example, you might want to only print songs in a certain style (e.g. Bossa Novas ), or only songs beginning with letters R to Z, or only songs with melodies.
Pop Ballad 9 Irish L Shuffle Rock A Pop Ballad 12/8 L Light Rock B Country old 12/8 M Medium Rock C Reggae N If your printer requires loading each sheet, you might want the program to beep after each printed song. The “Beep after each printed song” setting is useful to monitor the printout if you aren't near your printer, because if it stops beeping, then printout has stopped, and you may be out of paper.
Chapter 8: Automatic Music Features Automatic Songs – “The Melodist” Feel like composing a brand new song? Using the “Melodist” feature you can compose a new song in the style of your choice, complete with intro, chords, melody, arrangement, etc. All you have to do is choose from one of the many “Melodists” available and press [OK] button. The program then creates the intro, chords, melody, and arrangement in any given style. The Melodist will also generate a melody over an existing chord progression.
To filter the Melodists, de-select the “All” checkbox and then check on the genre that you are interested in. And you can also filter to show/not show melodists from Melodist sets that you don’t have. Scroll down the list, and pick a Melodist that you'd like to use. The Melodist will generate Intro, Chords, Melody Harmony, Style, and Solos using the group of settings preset with the selected Melodist. Scroll down the list, and pick a Melodist that you'd like to use.
If set to “section plus” it will transpose the A2 section, and might also transpose 2 bars early or 2 bars late. The song will only get transposed if the particular Melodist is set to transpose the section. This feature is discussed in more detail in the Melody Maker section. This area determines the key for the song. If set to “Any Key” the program will randomly pick a key for the song, weighed more heavily toward the popular keys (C, F, etc.). “min.
The Favorite Melodists dialog keeps track of the last 50 melodists that you've used, so you can easily recall them. Highlight the melodist you want to use and press the [OK] button, or double-click on the selection you would like to make. If you'd like to create your own Melodists, or permanently change the settings of existing Melodists, press the [Edit…] button to launch the Melodist Maker. Automatic Intro – Song Intros With a single button you can generate a 2, 4, or 8-bar intro for any song.
Automatic Song Title Generation The Song Title generator names every song that the Melodist writes, if the Auto-Titles checkbox is selected. This feature can be used on its own to suggest titles for your own compositions. It will keep making titles until you get one you like. Press the [TITLE] button to generate a song title , a new title will appear immediately in the title area of the screen. Click again for another one. Select Edit | Undo Title to go back one title.
First, you should load in a song. There are several types of songs that you can load in: You can generate a brand-new-royalty free composition by pressing the [Generate Song Now] button, after choosing a Genre and variation. You can choose from over 100 premade “SoundTrack” compositions that we have made. These are designed to be suitable for “background” music for various uses.
Pick a type of Soloist in the “Soloist type” list box and choose the appropriate style, or enable the “Auto” checkbox and press the [Suggest] button next to it. This brings up a list of Soloists in that style; simply choose which one you like. You can select genres of soloists (e.g. Modern Jazz) and see only soloists in that genre. To do this, de-select the “All Genres” checkbox, and then check on the genre that you are interested in.
The [Clear] buttons will remove the currently selected Instrument, Harmony, or Style. Use the [Choose(1)] button to select an instrument and automatically set the soloist note range for that instrument. For a harmonized solo, choose a harmony from the Harmony list. Use the [Choose(2)] button to select any style from the \bb folder. Solo Mode In Normal Solo Mode, Band-in-a-Box solos in the normal way of improvising choruses of the song.
Tip: You can have these values preset to the values you'd like by first selecting/highlighting the range of bars that you'd like from the Chordsheet screen, then clicking on the Soloist button. In real life, a Soloist tends play a couple of extra notes after the solo section ends. Setting “OK to solo for an extra beat”allows the Band-in-a-Box soloist to behave in the same way. If you want to overdub a solo and you have multiple solo tracks going at once, de-select “Overwrite existing solo in range.
To generate a solo that is influenced by the Melody, select the Enabled checkbox in the “Melody Influences Solo” group box. Then choose the type of influence by choosing a strength (0 to 100%) and a type. The default method works best on simple melodies or Pop tunes, and others work on Jazz and complex melodies.
Target Phrase Anchor Point score – phrase anchor points are points where both the pitch and timing of the Melody note and the riff match each other. Rhythm Matches – per cent of time that a melody note is found at the same time as the note in the riff at the same point (pitch is irrelevant). Density -# of Notes Matches – the number of notes in the melody compared to the number of notes in the solo. For example, 8 melody, 10 solo = 80%. Note: If set to exactly 49, 59, 69 etc.
5. Concentrate separately on different aspects of your playing with assistance from the “Wizard.” From soloing with proper phrasing and “feel” (the best notes are included automatically) to accompanying a soloist with confidence and authority Tip: Try muting out one of the accompaniment parts such as the piano or guitar part and play along to the Soloist in a supportive role - its fun! 6. 7. Use the Soloist track to record another part in addition to the Melody and other parts provided by Band-in-aBox.
Insert the title of your ‘soloist’ in the Title box, and any memo note you wish to add. (The Num field will be filled in for you.) For the Memo box, you can put in information like "extra legato, straighter 8th notes, on top of the beat, laid back, etc. The “Soloist is” box allows you to define what type of notes the Soloist will play (i.e. swing 8th notes, straight 8th notes, 16th notes, etc.) There are several databases of Solo ideas to choose from.
The Sub-Soloist checkboxes are for use ONLY with add-on hybrid soloists such as the ones found on the SOLOISTPAK for Band-in-a-Box. These checkboxes can be used to “sub” a different instrument and playing style in a Soloist which contains more than one playing style, such as BG_BAND.ST2 found on Soloist Disk Set #5. For more information on additional Soloist Disk Sets and the additional features available with them, contact PG Music.
For example, if you have a MIDI file that is a solo piano piece, File | Open MIDI file will put the music on the Melody track. Then choose Melody | Edit | Utilities | Piano Hand Split. Make sure that Melody | Track Type is set to piano. You will then see the piano part split into 2 hands intelligently. When this is done, the left hand will be stored on channel 8, and the right hand on channel 9, on the Melody track.
Here are the steps to generate a Guitar Chord Solo: 1. Select the Guitarist to use. In the main list at the left of the Window, you see the list of the Guitarists that are already defined. For example, you can see that Guitarist #2 is called “Jazz Guitar, single position.” That will create chord solos that stick to a single position on the guitar neck whenever possible. 2. Select Melody (or Soloist) track.
position for the chord solo to be played. If you wanted the solo to be in the 12th position, you could de-select the “Auto-Set” and then set the guitar position to 12th position. If you already have a guitar track that has guitar channels (if it was played on a guitar controller as a single string guitar part), then you might want to tell Band-in-a-Box not to change the guitar positions of the notes that it finds. Otherwise set “OK to change existing guitar channels” to true. 6.
Automatic Embellishments – “The Embellisher” Overview When musicians see a lead sheet that has a melody written out, they almost never play it exactly as written. They change the timing to add syncopation, change durations to achieve staccato or legato playing, add grace notes, slurs, extra notes, vibrato and other effects. You can have Band-in-a-Box do these automatically using the Embellisher so that you hear a livelier, more realistic Melody - and it's different every time.
Embellisher Settings The settings that affect the embellishment can be turned on and off, and given a certain percentage strength. Humanize The velocities, durations (legato), and timing of the notes are humanized. The original velocities etc. of the notes are ignored. The option to only humanize the timing of the music if the timing was “stiff” to begin allows the Embellisher to leave the timing of human input melodies alone, and humanize only the ones that were entered in step-time.
Quarter note doubled. Unembellished. Extra Notes Extra notes are added between melody notes. Unembellished. With extra notes added. Note Turns With a note turn, a single note is replaced by a group of notes that include the original note and semitone or scale tones above and below the note. In this “before and after” example, the C note is replaced by a turn of 3 notes with a note a scale tone above the C. Unembellished. Embellished with turn.
Embellisher Presets The presets allow you to quickly choose common combinations of settings for the Embellisher. The Embellisher Memo describes the current embellishment, with statistics counting the number of embellished notes. If the song is playing and the embellisher is enabled, you can update the embellishment by pressing this button. This is useful if you've changed settings, and want to hear what the new embellishment sounds like. The [Defaults] button reverts to the original Embellisher settings.
Chapter 9: Working With MIDI Band-in-a-Box has two built-in MIDI sequencer tracks. They are named the Melody and Soloist tracks, but they can be used to record any MIDI part you like – such as drum overdubs or layered accompaniments. MIDI can be recorded in Band-in-a-Box - Live with a MIDI keyboard, MIDI guitar, or MIDI wind controller. - In step time by entering notes in the Notation window with the mouse. - Using the Wizard feature to “play” notes with your QWERTY keyboard.
OK - Keep Take (yes/no) saves the take you just recorded. Remember that it’s easy to fix small glitches in the Editable Notation window or in the Event List editor. Take Again lets you quickly reject a take and start the recording again. Press the “A” key to do this with a keystroke. Cancel ends the recording session; nothing is saved. To start again press the [Rec.] button or the [R] key.
Enter the Editable Notation mode from the Standard Notation screen with a single mouse click on the Editable Notation button. In the Editable Notation mode you can enter, move, and edit notes and rests using standard mouse techniques – point and click, drag and drop, and right click to open the Note Edit dialog box. Once you have some melody entered, you can copy and paste chunks of it as you would in a text document.
Melody/Soloist Sequencer There are 2 tracks in Band-in-a-Box to add your own recordings. These are the Melody and Soloist tracks. Normally you would want a single part on each of them. But, since MIDI information can have separate channels, it is possible to store 16 separate parts on each of the Melody and Soloist parts. For the following discussion, we’ll assume that you’re using the Melody track, but the same functions are available for the Soloist.
Since this represents 6 separate tracks (in the case of violet.MID), this is likely “too much information” for you to read, unless you are a symphony conductor. To customize the notation display for sequencer mode, press the lead sheet options button, and see the settings for Multi-Channel Tracks. Press the “CUSTOM channels play/display” buttons to launch the Sequencer window. Then you can customize which channels will play and display.
So now that we’ve customized the display, we are seeing the bass and trumpet on the notation, and hearing the entire track. Removing All Tracks Except Melody From A Midi File One use for the Sequencer mode is to load in a MIDI file, and then delete all of the channels except the melody, so that you can allow the Band-in-a-Box rhythm section to provide the accompaniment. To do this, open the Sequencer window, and use the Edit pull down menu to delete all tracks except the melody.
Importing MIDI Files Importing MIDI Files to the Melody or Soloist Tracks Standard MIDI files can be read in to the Melody or Soloist tracks from MIDI files or from the Windows clipboard. You can read in all of a MIDI file, or selected channels and a specific range of bars. Use one of the following two commands: 1. Melody | Import MIDI File – to select a MIDI file from disk using the Windows Open File dialog. 2.
be loaded so you'll only hear the MIDI file. When the file is saved, the extension will be MGX, allowing you to easily identify the songs that contain entire MIDI files. The MIDI Chord Wizard is opened from the File | Import Chords from MIDI File menu item. In the Interpret Chords from MIDI file dialog, select the “Open ENTIRE MIDI File to Melody” radio button, and then click on [INTERPRET CHORDS NOW].
Editing the Melody Track Event List Editor You can edit events including all MIDI events and lyric events using the Event List Editor. It can be launched in several ways. - In the Melody menu, choose Edit Melody Track | Step Edit Melody. - In the Soloist menu, choose Edit Soloist Track | Step Edit Soloist Part. - In the Notation menu, choose Event List Editor… or in the Notation window by pressing the event list button (#).
In the Event List Filter select the type of information you want to display. In this case, it is program changes (patches) only. The track will then display with the program changes only. The Event Type to Edit dialog opens when either the [Insert] or [Append] buttons are pressed in the Event List Editor. This dialog allows you to select which type of event to insert or append - note, controller, pitch bend, etc. – and then opens the selected edit dialog.
Notation Window Editing You can often get better results by using the Notation Window to edit notes instead of the Event List window. To do this, open the Notation window in either Editable Notation or Staff Roll Notation mode. In both of these modes, notes can be dragged and dropped with the mouse. For precise note editing, right mouse click on the note you want to edit and choose “Edit Note” in the contextual menu. This opens the Note dialog where all of the parameters of the note can be addressed.
Note Panel Horizontal bars represent notes. Notes can be selected, edited, inserted, and deleted. Note Selection Selected notes are red. - Click on individual notes to select. - Shift+click on individual notes to add to the selection. - Ctrl+click on a note to invert (toggle) its selection. Overlapping notes are displayed in bold Aqua color, making them easy to identify. Overlapped notes can be eliminated from the right-click menu in this window.
To avoid choking the MIDI stream, the maximum event density is one event per 10 ticks. Repeated events of the same value are not inserted. Therefore, long gradual Line Tool fades have a lower density than short extreme Line Tool fades. Pencil Tool: Move the cursor over white space and hold the Shift+Ctrl keys. A Pencil Tool appears. Shift+Ctrldrag to freehand-draw a curve.
Chapter 10: Working With Audio Notice the “Audio” label at the top right of the screen, beside the “Thru” part setting. Clicking on the “Audio” label launches the Audio Playback settings dialog. This dialog makes it easy to mute, solo, or change the volume of the audio track, similar to the control of the other instrument parts in Band-in-Box. Simply click on the “Audio” label on-screen, and choose these options. There are two types of audio features in Band-in-a-Box: 1. The first refers to the Audio track.
Using the Half-Speed Audio feature to help you transcribe a piece of music. Once you open the Audio file, open the Audio window and you can see the audio data on the track. Choose “Half-speed tempo” (Ctrl+minus (-) hot key). Ctrl+equals (=) returns to normal tempo. (Use the Play | Tempo menu for slower speeds like 1/4, 1/8.) Highlight the range that you want to hear, and then press “Play Selected Area.” You can then move around the window to play different sections as you transcribe the recording.
Your audio file will then start playing at bar 1 of the Band-in-a-Box song in sync with the audio starting at the place you have marked as bar 1, and the bars will be in sync (approximately in sync, they will drift as the tempo of your live performance varies.) You can put tempo changes on certain bars to keep it perfectly in sync if you want to.
Audio VU meters These show the Record and Playback levels for audio, allowing adjustment of microphone and speaker levels. VU Meters can be launched by pressing the VU Meters button on the toolbar. The VU Meters will also open automatically when the Record Audio dialog is opened. The VU Meters will close or stay open when the dialog is exited depending on the “Leave VU Meters open” setting in the Record Audio dialog.
Punch-In Recording Punch-in audio recording allows you to punch-in record or overdub a section of audio. You can select a section to punch-in by highlighting it in the Audio Edit window. You can also hear the existing audio part when you are overdubbing. This is automatic. Also Record MIDI? In most cases you will only be recording audio, so you should set this to “No MIDI recording.
Playing the Audio File You can play the Audio file that you've recorded by pressing [PLAY]. The size of the audio file will be displayed at the top of the screen. If you haven't saved the song yet, your window title will look like this. In this example, the song is titled NoName.SGU, and there is a 6.1mb .WAV file associated with the file, and that's 1 minute and 9 seconds of audio. The total duration of the song is 3 minutes and 20 seconds. Save the song with the name “My First Song.
This button plays the selected area, and then stops. The other instruments are all muted; you just hear the audio. This button selects the whole track, useful for applying one of the built-in audio plug-ins. Non-Destructive Audio Track Editing The changes you make to the audio track are non-destructive and only become permanent if you save the file. If you have a song file called MySong.MGU, the audio track is stored in a MySong.WAV file.
In this dialog, there are 3 types of harmony that we can choose from: 1. Melody Pitch Tracking only (this would change the pitch of our singing to the correct pitches found on the MIDI Melody track). 2. Harmonize to the MIDI Melody. This applies a 1-4 part audio harmony – turning your singing track into a harmony singing quartet. 3. Harmonize to the chords of the song. If your song doesn’t have a MIDI melody, you can still create a vocal harmony, based only on the chords of the song.
The “Dry Voice Level” slider is the level of our original voice. We can make the harmony to include more of our original voice by raising this slider. Set it half way up (to 12dB). The 4 columns labeled Melody, Voice 2, Voice 3, and Voice 4- 8va are the 4 part MIDI harmony that will be transformed to an audio harmony using our original voice. The “8va” tells you that Voice 4 will be above the melody. Each of the voices have sliders for “Level” (loudness) and “Gender.
Melody Pitch Tracking Now let’s use the Audio Harmonies for a different purpose, to “fix” pitches that may be out of tune, or to change some pitches to more interesting notes. For this, reload the song Listen.MGU. Now resave it by [Save As] and give it the name “Listen Pitch Tracking.MGU.” Now, we’re going to change some notes of the MIDI melody. Open the notation, and change the pitch of the D note at the end of bar 2 to an E. Also change the ‘B’ at bar 7 to a ‘G’ below it.
Choir Effect In the TC-Helicon dialog, you can select a choir effect, from none/small/medium/large. A “large” choir effect makes each voice sound like 4 people singing, so if you use a 4 voice harmony, you will hear the effect as if 16 people are singing. Audio Harmonies Pitch Styles (automatic “Vibrato” and “Scooping”) When you generate audio harmonies to your recorded vocal tracks, you can select Pitch Styles, which adds vibrato and scooping effects to the vocal harmonies.
Pitch Styles Preset Details (one per voice) Each of the four voice banks has a Pitch Styles preset selection list. This control allows pitch scooping and vibrato effects to be added to the harmony voices. These effects can be used to increase the naturalness of vocals processed by melody pitch tracking, produce a more polished, professional sound in the harmonies, and even to create strange special effects.
31 Jungle Vibrato Special Effect. The sound of the jungle-man. 32 Landing Vibrato Special Effect. The sound of a close encounter with a spaceship landing. 33 Motorbike Vibrato Special Effect. A motorcycle-like sound. 34 Nervous Vibrato Special Effect. An agitated, uneasy sound. 35 Sheep Vibrato Special Effect. The likeness of sheep bleating in the field. 36 Siren Vibrato Special Effect. The sound of a North American emergency vehicle. 37 Slicer Vibrato Special Effect.
You can real time-process the Band-in-a-Box audio track using DirectX or VST Audio plug-ins. This is useful to “non-destructively” apply EQ, Echo, Reverb, Dynamics, and other effects to a Band-in-a-Box audio track. The advantage of real time processing is that you can set effects today, and if you decide you don’t like the effects tomorrow, the settings can be easily changed, since the real time effects did not permanently affect your audio track on the hard disk.
The Edit radio buttons let you chose which of the four in-line effects to edit. The Bypass checkboxes let you bypass any of the four effects in a group. In the above picture, four DX plug-ins are applied to the Band-in-a-Box audio track. First, PG Dynamics to balance input levels, PG Ten Band EQ for tone polishing, PG Reverb to add ambiance, and PG Peak Limit to boost and level the amplitude.
The [<] button lets you move a plug-in from the excluded list to the included list. The [>] button lets you move a plug-in from the included to the excluded list. The [Scan for New Plugins] button will re-scan for newly installed plug-ins. Use this option if you have installed a new plug-in since starting Band-in-a-Box. The [Register a New Plugin] button can register a plug-in with Windows, so that audio applications such as Bandin-a-Box or PowerTracks can use the plug-in.
Rendering Audio Files Direct-to-Disk Audio Rendering Audio rendering means converting a MIDI song to audio format, usually to a WAV file. Press the [.WAV] button on the main Band-in-a-Box screen to launch the Render to Audio File dialog. This shows the directory where the rendered wave file will be saved. You can use the [Choose] button to specify the directory for the rendered wave file, but remember that the file chosen must reside in the same directory as the current one.
Do you need to convert an entire folder of Band-in-a-Box songs to audio files? This can be done easily by a single command with an option to name the resultant audio files based either on the original file name or the song title name. Press the [Batch] button to Batch create audio files. Select the folder that you want to use (e.g. C:\bb\Styles 64). Add a suffix for each file name. For example, if the suffix is _Demo, then MySong.MGU will render as MySong_Demo.
file by real time recording of the MIDI output. See the Real Time Rendering topic. Once the wave file is rendered is can be converted to Windows Media format, or to other compressed formats like MP3 if you have the necessary codec present in your system. Or you can burn the .WAV to an audio CD and play it in any CD player. Use the “Test” button to check the converted file. Note: For rendering MP3 files the program uses whatever MP3 codec and bit rate you already have installed in Windows XP.
Launches the rendering Help file. If you are not sure if you have installed the VSC click on this button to find it on your hard drive. After the VSC wave file has been rendered, you can merge the recorded Band-in-a-Box audio track with the rendered wave file. Once you've saved the WAV file, you can test it by pressing the [Test WAV] button. You can then convert the file to a .WMA file (Windows Media File), by pressing the[Convert any WAV to WMA…] button.
If you use your sound card as your MIDI driver … It is essential that when you render the file, you have selected the correct inputs, and are recording the outgoing MIDI, and not recording the Mic or Line-In. If you use an external MIDI module as your MIDI Driver … You should connect a cable from the audio Line Out of the MIDI module (like Sound Canvas) to the Line-In on the sound card, and then deselect the recording of the rest of the inputs (Audio CD, Microphone, MIDI, Wave, etc.).
From this dialog, you can choose the type of compression that is appropriate (from the available installed codecs). You can save your settings as named presets by using the [Save As] button. Saving as Windows Media File Band-in-a-Box has enhanced audio support for saving in Windows Media Player format. Once you've saved a WAV file, you can compress the file for Internet use, using the Windows Media Player audio format (.WMA).
Column 2- Path and name of Wave files Column 3- Play time of each Track, formatted in minutes:seconds:frames Burn Time indicates the sum of all the burn list track times. Avail Time indicates the time available on the blank CD-R in the CD Burner. If no disc has been inserted, Avail Time reads “No Disc.” If an unwritable disc has been inserted (CD-ROM disc or already-finalized CD-R, CD-RW), Avail Time reads “UnWritable.” Add Files to the Burn List Wave files can be added three ways: 1.
Change the Order of Tracks in the Burn List Left-click on the “Trk” column of the file you wish to move, and drag the file to a new location in the list. Audition Tracks in the Burn List Left-click to select a track in the Burn List, then right-click and pick “Play Selected File” from the pop-up menu. To stop playback, right-click the Burn List and pick “Stop” from the pop-up menu. It is not necessary to stop a wave file before playing a new wave file. It is not necessary to stop playback before burning.
computer CD drives can play “Un-Finalized” audio CDs, so you can play them on your computer until all the songs have been added to the CD. Use ‘Burn CD – No Finalize’ if you wish to add tracks to an audio CD over more than one session. Note: Be sure to use ‘Burn CD + Finalize’ or ‘Finalize Only’ when you add the final track(s) to a multi-session Audio CD.
Chapter 11: User Programmable Functions The StyleMaker™ The StyleMaker is the section of the program that allows you to create brand new styles or edit existing styles. This is done by recording patterns for each of the drums, bass, piano, guitar and strings parts, or by entering these parts in the StyleMaker Pattern Editor notation window. If you don't want an instrument in a style you don't need to record any patterns for it.
Main screen, as the F4 key will not play the song, it will play the StyleMaker pattern. Play Pattern on Chord This plays back a pattern as it would sound in a song on a certain chord. This is useful to see the effects of smooth voice leading or macro notes in a pattern. (F8) Record Pattern Records a pattern. For drums it enters the STEP EDIT Drum Editor. For the other instruments, it starts a real time record ( 2 bar lead in then record 2 bar pattern) .
Import Instr. from Style Import an instrument from one style into another. See Import Instrument dialog box. (Alt +F3) Import Drums from .MID to Drum Kit Since you can define a custom drum kit for the grid editor, this function allows you to use the instruments that are found in a MIDI file. A quick way of building up a kit. For example, if you are making a Latin style called “mambo”, you could load in a Mambo MIDI file that you made, and then the StyleMaker’s “Style | Import notes from .
StyleMaker Toolbar Buttons These options are also available from the StyleMaker window pull-down menus. Saves and overwrites existing style using current name. Saves the style, but allows you to rename it first. Plays the current pattern. Stops the playback of the current pattern. Plays the current pattern over a specific chord. Allows creation or editing of a drum grid pattern. (Drum Grid Editor) Begins live recording of a Bass/Piano/Guitar/Strings pattern after a 2-bar intro.
Band-in-a-Box StyleMaker window showing Drums patterns window. The StyleMaker always opens to the Drums window, as indicated by the highlighted button to the left of Drums. Other parts are selected by clicking on their buttons, just as in the main Band-in-a-Box screen. The rows of cells are for the musical patterns that have been recorded for the style. Each numbered cell is a pattern; the blank cells are for new patterns.
Defining a Custom Drum Kit To set up a custom drum kit, select the menu item Style | Define Custom Drum Kit in the StyleMaker window to launch the Define Custom Drum Kit dialog. You can choose the 18 drum instruments to be used on the drum grid. Any of the GM instruments may be chosen. Kits may be saved and loaded to disk In defining a custom drum kit in the StyleMaker, you can use the drum notes found in a MIDI file.
.MID…]function would extract the drum notes from the MIDI file, and put them on the drum grid. Drum Screen Alternate Notes What are alternate notes? Alternate notes can be entered for any note. This tells Band-in-a-Box to randomly choose a different note to the one specified. For example - you might want a note to be a closed high hat 80% of the time, and an open high hat 20% of the time. - you might want a note to be high conga 60% and low conga 40% of the time.
Playback Bar Mask (Usual Setting =0) Playback Bar Mask determines on what bars of the song the pattern will play. The bar #s are counted relative to the last part marker. Bar 1 is the first bar after a part marker for example. A bar mask setting of 0 is the default. This lets the pattern be played at any time.
RealDrums Styles RealDrums are actual recordings of studio drummers, pieced together by Band-in-a-Box to create a unique "real" drum track that is played along with the MIDI tracks created by Band-in-a-Box styles. It is possible to assign RealDrums (audio drums) to a particular Band-in-a-Box style in the Misc. Style Settings dialog.
A new pattern can be created by selecting an empty cell in the StyleMaker grid and then opening the StyleMaker Pattern Editor window to enter notes with your mouse. A quicker way to make a new pattern is to record it live from a MIDI keyboard or any other MIDI controller that is connected to your computer. Recording a New Pattern New patterns are recorded by playing them live in real time as the StyleMaker plays an accompaniment on the drums and other instrument parts for the style.
- Bar 2 of 4 - Bar 3 of 4 - Bar 4 of 4 - Bar 5 of 8 - Bar 6 of 8 - Bar 7 of 8 - Bar 8 of 8 Special Bar Masks - pre-fill - refers to the bar before a fill - fill - refers to the bar of a fill (this allows you to put in "bass fills" for example) - post-fill - refers to the bar after a fill, which is the same as the first bar after a part marker. Playback Beat Mask (Usual Setting = 0) Set the beat mask to a beat from 1-4 if you want the pattern to only be played on certain beat #s.
Remember that to get Bass Macros working you must: - Hit the right note # (you may be out by an octave). - Set “OK to use macros” to “Yes.” - Playback the Pattern with [F8] key or [CHORD] button. The [F4] playback key gives you a literal playback with strange sounding high macro notes. Chord Selection Dialog Box This section is accessed by the [Chord] button, the F8 key or by choosing Pattern | Play Pattern on Chord from the pull-down menu.
Thru Patch If you set the Thru Patch to other than 0 the instrument that the user plays along to your style will be the Thru patch that you set. If you're making a "Heavy Rock" style, you might want to set the Thru patch to be Overdrive Guitar if you expected that the user would want to play along on a rock guitar patch. Melody Patch If set to other than 0 all melodies will be played on the specified instrument.
Allow Volume Changes with Style (Usually = No) Usually you don't want specific volume changes in a style. But if you decide to change the volume of instruments, you can do it by setting this to YES and then entering the Volumes you want in the settings below. (A better way to change the volume of a part is to use Pattern | Volume Adjust (Alt+W) to set the volume of each pattern individually.) ‘Riff’ voicing type uses chord tones This is an option for piano, guitar, and string patterns.
Similarly, each push is accompanied by a drum stab, and the style can define what instrument to use and at what volume. The Lowest Bass Note setting defaults to the low E on the bass guitar or acoustic bass. It can be changed to match the range of other bass instruments, such as a tuba, or to extend the range of the bass for keyboards or 5-string and 6string basses.
Relative Weight (Usual Setting = 5) Set this # higher/lower if you want the pattern to be played more/less often than the other patterns on the same row. This number is also displayed on the main StyleMaker screen. A setting of 9 (always) is a special setting that instructs the pattern to always be played instead of the other patterns on the same row. These patterns always have other options set which specify the times that this pattern would be eligible to be played.
OK to use Macro Notes (Usual Setting = No) Piano Macros are special notes that you record. When they are played back they are replaced by a function, as listed below.
You can see which tracks have intelligent guitar parts by looking at the title window of the Guitar fretboard, when the track is highlighted. If it is a Guitar Style track, it will say [Guitar Voicings] after the name of the track. The usual track that has the intelligent guitar styles is of course the Guitar Part. Some of the styles have more than 1 guitar, so the piano and/or strings part might also have an intelligent guitar part. In these cases, you can also view the guitar on those tracks.
In the dropdown “Guitar Chord Types to Use” combo box, set the type of chords to use: Jazz, Pop, Folk, Half Note (sax), Ukulele, Mandolin, 5-string Banjo or alternate guitar tunings. Set the complexity of the chords to use. These can be single chords, chords with variations, inversions, and chord “walking” patterns. If you want a simple guitar style, set the first one to 100%, and the rest to 0%. Set the strum speed and fret range that should be played on the guitar.
Guitar Macro Notes Tip: Middle C is C5 or note number 60 The main Guitar Macro notes to use are: Strummed Chords C6 note Plays a guitar chord, with a slow strum. D6 Plays a guitar chord, with a faster strum. For example, if you want a simple 4-in-the-bar pattern that plays a slow-fast-slow-fast strumming pattern, play the notes C6 D6 C6 D6 for the pattern. Additional strumming macros are: F#6 Back strum, chromatic below. G6 Back strum. G#6 Back strum, chromatic above.
Check the “Over-ride Guitar Settings for this pattern only” checkbox to set new parameters for this pattern only. Guitar Chord Types to Use Use this feature to set the type of guitar chords to use for this pattern from the list, which includes alternate tunings. Single Chords CHD1 The Single Chords feature will play the chord as intended in the pattern for the percentage value entered.
Faster Strum Speed (ms) The Faster Strum Speed setting affect the rate in which the guitar chord is strummed. Note that a lower setting in ms equals a faster strum. Include Highest Note in Strummed Chord Check to include the highest note (for Strummed Macros) when played as a macro. Include Highest Note in Finger Picking Check to include the highest note (for Single String Macros) when played as a macro. Only include first chord of pattern Check to play the first chord only.
Velocity Boost of pushes Pushes can get a velocity boost, so that they are played louder than other patterns. A usual setting would be 10. # ticks to push Styles can be pushed with the StyleMaker. This will cause the patterns to be played a little ahead of the beat, a certain % of time, which gives your arrangement a more human (musical) feel. Band-in-a-Box uses a resolution of 120 PPQ, i.e., 120 ticks to a quarter note.
Allow Volume Changes with Style (Usually = No) Usually you don't want specific volume changes in a style. But if you decide to change the volume of instruments, you can do it by setting this to YES and then entering the Volumes you want in the settings below. (A better way to change the volume of a part is to use Pattern | Volume Adjust (Alt+W) to set the volume of each pattern individually.) ‘Riff’ voicing type uses chord tones This is an option for piano, guitar, and string patterns.
Assign Instruments to Style Dialog Box Select the [Pat.] button in the StyleMaker tool bar to open the Assign Instruments to Style dialog. This dialog box allows you to assign instruments to a style. When the song is played back using the style, these patch changes will be sent to your synthesizer. Remember, these are General MIDI Instrument numbers, not the patch numbers of your synth (unless you have a General MIDI synth).
Trim Pattern The Trim Pattern routine deletes notes past the end of a pattern, or (optionally) a specified distance from the end of a pattern. This can be accessed from the Pattern | Trim Pattern(s), row(s) command. In the dialog displayed, we are trimming 50 ticks from an 8 beat pattern. This means that all of the information past 8 beats (less 50 ticks) will be deleted.
Event List Editor The [#] button in the StyleMaker Pattern Editor notation window opens an event list for editing, inserting, or deleting notes in the patterns. Alternatives to Recording Patterns It’s not always necessary to record every pattern for a style, or any patterns, for that matter. The import features in the StyleMaker make it possible to assemble an entirely new style from existing styles, or to import patterns from favorite MIDI files.
When you’re ready to generate the Style, press [OK- (re) Generate style with name ---〉], and choose a name for your style. Remember that style names in Band-in-a-Box can be a maximum of eight characters, with no spaces! (This is to insure compatibility with Macintosh and previous versions of Band-in-a-Box.) Press [Play] in Band-in-a-Box and you can hear the results. You can revisit the Make a Hybrid style dialog to make any changes.
In the StyleMaker, when you choose Pattern | Import from a MIDI File (or clipboard or Melody track) the dialog shows a further option at the bottom. For example, if you import 8 patterns, the 8 patterns will be inserted in the first available 8 positions on the current row. They will be offset by the # of beats present on the current row. For example, if you are on the “4 beat” row, the patterns will get inserted offset by 4 beats, so you'd get patterns for each bar in the 8 bars imported.
patterns in the StyleMaker. Since the StyleMaker requires all patterns based on a C7 chord, this function automatically maps the entire track to notes on a C7 chord. You can then import any # of patterns (using the function to choose the number of patterns to import). Editing Patterns Slide Pattern X ticks This is another option available on the StyleMaker menu. This allows a pattern to be time shifted any number of ticks, based on a PPQ setting of 120.
Press the [Open] button and load in the file c:\bb\violet.MID. The Style Wizard then does the following automatically: The chords for the MIDI file are interpreted and written on the Chordsheet. The “part markers” for the file are displayed on the Chordsheet. For Violet.MID, the Style Wizard has found the correct part markers – by looking for drum fills and other signs of a part change – and has assigned substyle “a” to all of them. We'll change some of them to “b” later.
OK, the Style Wizard has already made the correct settings for the “BB Parts” for us, so we don't need to make any changes there. Let's move to the Snapshots section, and enter the bar numbers that correspond to the substyles that we'd like for the Jazz tune. After listening to the tune, we notice that there is a “2-feel” Jazz section, and a “4-in-thebar” section. We want those as “a” and “b” substyles, so we enter the bar #s that correspond to these settings.
RealDrums are actual recordings of studio drummers, pieced together by Band-in-a-Box to create a unique “real” drum track that is played along with the MIDI tracks created by Band-in-a-Box styles. You can combine any RealDrums style with any Band-in-a-Box style, so the potential combinations are endless! A RealDrums style consists of a wave file containing various bars of drum patterns, and a text file with instructions on how Band-in-a-Box should interpret the wave file.
6. 64_bars_of_drumming_with_shots_two_endings.txt 1. 32_bars_of_drumming.txt bar# 1-2 – count-in for two bars (i.e.
39 – single drum hit, which will be used for “shots” in Band-in-a-Box 40 – single drum hit, which will be used for “pushes” in Band-in-a-Box 4. 64_bars_of_drumming.txt bar# 1-2 – count-in for two bars (i.e.
10 – Fill 11 – PostFill 12-17 – normal playing 18 – Fill 19 – PostFill 20-25 – normal playing 26 – Fill 27 – PostFill 28-33 – normal playing 34 – Fill 35-36 – 2 bar ending Bars 37-70 will use a slightly different groove (‘B’ section) than 3-18 37 – PostFill 38-43 – normal playing 44 – Fill 45 – PostFill 46-51 – normal playing 52 – Fill 53 – PostFill 54-59 – normal playing 60 – Fill 61 – PostFill 62-67 – normal playing 68 – Fill 69-70 – 2 bar ending 71 – single drum hit, which will be used for “shots” in Ban
drum tends to peak a few milliseconds after it is hit. Because of this, you want Band-in-a-Box to “grab” a bar of drums a few ticks (1 beat = 120 ticks) early to compensate for this. The amount entered in the template is –5 (ticks), but if you are finding that the drum hits at the beginning of bars are not starting properly, you can experiment by setting a different offset value. –6 or lower (since it’s a negative number “lower” means –7, -8, -9, etc.
Example 1: Wave form of an entire RealDrums style wave file Elements of the Text File The text file contains three main portions, global settings, pattern definition, and shots definition. We’ll examine each one separately. Global Settings Wavename=x.wav The first line of the text file must be “wavename=x.wav”, where “x” is the name of the filename. For example, the first line of the JazzBrushes_120 text file is “wavename=JazzBrushes_120_Style.wav”.
Example 2: The left edge of the highlighted area represents the beginning of the drum hit that occurs at bar 15, and the right edge of the highlighted area represents the actual downbeat of bar 15. dbadjust=x If a value is entered here, when the RealDrums track is played in Band-in-a-Box, the volume will be raised (or lowered if a negative value is entered) by the amount entered. This is used to balance the RealDrums against the other DXi instruments.
is a 20% chance that it will eliminate 1-bar patterns as possibilities. If “MultibarPatternPercent=80” is entered, then every time there will be an 80% chance that 1-bar patterns will be eliminated as possibilities. If such an instance occurs, but no multi-bar patterns will fit in the Band-in-a-Box bar in question, a 1-bar pattern will be allowed. If no amount is entered here, then Band-in-a-Box simply always picks between all possible patterns based on their relative weights.
It is important, however, to not enter both of these lines. If you do this, Band-in-a-Box will not be able to find any patterns at all, and you will get an error message. MSSlide=x This shifts the entire drum part either forwards or backwards by x number of milliseconds in relation to the MIDI parts. A negative amount will make it play slightly before the MIDI parts, while a positive amount will make it play slightly after the MIDI parts.
As the name implies, PostFills bars occur after Fills. That means that PostFill bars always occur in bars in which there are part markers. Typically, PostFill bars are generally bars that have a cymbal crash on the downbeat, which is intended as a completion to the fill that occurred in the previous bar. PostFills can be any number of bars long.
to occur only when the preceding bar is ‘A’ or ‘B’. Instead of “0”, you would enter “Aending” or “Bending”. Just remember that if you do this, you need to cover both eventualities. If you enter a “0” ending, this on it’s own covers both cases.
• • pattern,Normal,A,7,3,2,13: 0% pattern,Normal,A,2,1,1,20: 0% It is therefore important that you are very careful when using a weight of 9. It is usually used in conjunction with a mask (masks will be explained in greater detail below). For example, if you had a mask that stated that a normal pattern could only be played 7 bars after a part marker, if you then gave it a weight of 9, any time Band-in-a-Box needed to find a pattern 7 bars after a part marker it would always use that pattern.
to cover all possibilities. If you have only patterns with “1” masks, and no patterns with “2” masks, then Band-in-aBox will not be able to find any patterns for even bars. The safest thing to do is to use a mask of “0”, but this may not be the most musical approach. A mask of 4 is often used for more subtle fills that would highlight 4 bar phrases. Masks higher than 8 are not commonly used, as it would mean that the pattern would be played very rarely. Example 7: Normal pattern needed for bar 13.
A good rule to follow is to try and have at least one 1-bar PostFill, Normal, and Fill patterns for each subsection, just to make sure that all possible circumstances will be covered. Once you have that, you can determine what other patterns will work well based on the phrasing of the drummer. 6. Location The final element in pattern definition is the location of the pattern in the style wave file.
3. Tick adjust The shots do not necessarily have to occur at the bar lines, and the tick adjust can be used to tell Band-in-a-Box exactly where the shot starts. Simply measure the number of ticks from the downbeat of the bar number entered to the start of the shot, and that is the number that should be entered here. If the shot starts before the bar number that was entered, a negative number should be entered here.
Additional Entries in the Text File Bars Blocked During the testing of your style, you may come across instances where a particular bar from the style wave file simply does not sound good going into another specific bar from the style wave file. When this happens, you can enter a “BarsBlocked” line into your text file to ensure that these bars are never played back-to-back.
with one addition. For the style in which the tempo is different in the text file then it is in the wave file filename, you would need to add the “ForceWavTempo=” line to the text file. For example, if you have a “MyFunkyStyle_90” Style, the following files would be present: C:\BB\Drums\MyFunkyStyle\MyFunkyStyle_090_Style.txt C:\BB\Drums\MyFunkyStyle\MyFunkyStyle_090_Style.wav For an expanded style, you could create this file: C:\BB\Drums\MyFunkyStyleEXP\MyFunkyStyleEXP_180_Style.
• • ;Shot,0,83,188,1151,1,90 ;Shot,0,85,380,1058,3,90 Band-in-a-Box will therefore ignore those lines, and you will only hear the first shot. You can then adjust the volume level until you have it right, then do the same with the second shot, etc. Developer Mode It is also extremely useful when testing RealDrums styles to use “Developer mode.” This is a checkbox in the RealDrums settings. When it is turned on, Band-in-a-Box does two things. First of all it spell-checks your text file when you play a song.
6. WavBar=x This tells you the bar of the actual style wave file that was used for the current Band-in-a-Box bar. Remember that this is using –1 based numbering. 7. Candidates=x This tells you how many possible patterns there were for Band-in-a-Box to choose from for the current bar. If there were 3 or less possible candidates, this line appears instead as “FEWCandidates=”. This lets you know that perhaps there are not enough of a certain type of pattern.
You can enable “Style uses RealDrums” in order to designate a RealDrums style. If your style is in the correct directory, it should appear when you press the “RD” button. You can then select your RealDrums style, and whenever the current style is played, it will use your RealDrums style (provided that RealDrums are enabled). There are also additional volume controls here.
Tip: When you want to hear the harmony as you are developing it, have a song with a melody playing before you enter the Harmony Maker. After you have made changes to the harmony, hear the changes by pressing the [Update] button. Settings For Each Voice Chan. A 1-instrument harmony will use Channel A only. Additional instruments can use Channel B and C.
Because the harmony is saved automatically for you, you won’t need to ever press these buttons. All of the 256 harmonies are saved in a single .har file called DEFAULT.HAR. If you have run out of harmonies, you can start a new harmony file by pressing the [Save As] button. For example, if you make a 3rd party disk of add-on harmonies, save it as your name MYNAME.HAR. Then you can load in your bank of harmonies (from the Harmonies | Edit a Harmonies File) without disrupting the existing DEFAULT.HAR file.
Lowest Harmony Note You can set a lowest note for the harmony to play. When the melody is low, harmonies begin to sound “muddy,” so you can avoid the harmony being played below a certain note. Overall Harmony Octave This sets the overall octave of the harmony. For example, in the 5-part Trumpets harmony the harmony is always be played an octave higher than the recorded melody. This is because the 5-part harmony is spread over 2 octaves.
The Soloist Maker This module allows you to define your own soloists. For example, let's say you want to create a soloist in a style similar to John Coltrane - the legendary jazz saxophonist. The Soloist Maker allows you to define the parameters essential to the particular soloist's playing, such as instrument range (i.e. tenor saxophone), extra legato playing, playing more on top of the beat than most Jazz musicians, and playing straighter 8th notes than usual swing 8th notes.
songs) by pressing the [*.ST2] button. Note: If you have an .ST3 database available for the style of soloing you want to generate, you can still choose the .ST2, and the program will automatically substitute the appropriate .ST3 file if, (a) it is available and, (b) you have selected the “Use Large Soloist files” checkbox in the “Select Soloist” dialog. Press the [Choose] button in the Soloist Editor to select the instrument the Soloist should play (i.e. Tenor Saxophone).
You can also save your soloist to another Soloist file (*.s1) by pressing the [Save As] button Press the [OK] button when you are satisfied with your choices. You can control the maximum number of notes per quarter note that the Soloist will use. For example, you can set a “Rock Guitar” Soloist to use nothing shorter than 16th notes. This would produce less “guitar hero” solos with bursts of 32nd notes etc.
OK to solo for an extra beat Usually, Soloists end a little after a bar's end – they play a couple of extra notes, spilling over to the next bar. Selecting this option the gives Band-in-a-Box soloist this ability also. Overwrite existing solo in range If you want to “overdub” a solo and have multiple solo tracks going at once, deselect this checkbox, and avoid getting a little messy. Generate Solo Now Once you press this button, the portion of the solo that you have selected will be generated.
Num The Num selection box allows you to select the Melodist that you'd like to edit. The top area of the Melodist Maker screen also allows you to set the Title of the Melodist and supply a Memo. Choose ST2 Database Select the associated ST2 database for the Melodist. Some ST2 Melodist databases are MEL1.ST2=Jazz Swing (8th notes), MELPOP1.ST2 (Pop Ballads, 16th notes), MELWLZ1.ST2 (Waltzes, 8th notes), and MELROK1.ST2 (Rock, 8th notes).
Mix Minor and Major Chord Progressions Typical major key chord progressions have progressions like (in the key of C) Dm7 | G7 | Cmaj7, whereas in the key of Am, they would be |Bm7b5| E7 |Am6. This setting determines how much the two types of progressions should be mixed in a single song. Default = 0. Chord Substitutions Throughout the Form Normally an AABA song has identical chords for each A section.
within the current position. If set to 5 (for example), the chords will be limited to chords that can be played within the current position and up to 5 frets away from the current position. Force Open Position This option forces all of the guitar voicings to the open position. The exception is when the Melody notes are so high that they can't be played using open position voicings.
- If a note occurs and it is the “First Note of a New Chord” and the note is not followed by another note for at least 50 ticks (120 ticks = 1 quarter note), then a chord will get voiced 90% of the time. If a note occurs (not the first note of a chord), that is on “Beat 1 of a bar,” and the note is not followed by another note for at least 50 ticks (120 ticks = 1 quarter note) then a chord will get voiced 90% of the time. Similar interpretations for notes occurring on “Beat 2, 3 and 4.
Good chords Advanced chords Unusual chords Barre chords Include Open Strings (Never/ Sometimes/ Favor) Popular alternate chords. Chords that are difficult to play, advanced voicings. Voicings that should be avoided in most cases but have some uses. Chords that require the index finger to be played in a Barre position. If set to Never, no chords that require and open string will be played. If set to Favor, it will play open strings whenever possible. Sometimes is a “middle ground” setting.
Chapter 12: Tutors, Wizards, and Practice Aids Audio Chord Wizard (“Chords from MP3”) This amazing wizard automatically figures out the chords from any MP3, WAV, or WMA (Windows Media Audio) file and displays them in Band-in-a-Box. Just load an audio file and you’ll instantly see the chords. As well as the chords of the song, the Audio Chord Wizard also figures out, - the tempo of the file, - bar lines throughout the song, - fine tuning detection (e.g.
The Audio Chord Wizard first opens the audio file and makes initial calculations, finding audio beats and estimating a tempo map, and then displays your audio file. Audio Chord Wizard Window Primary Program Controls Toggle Play/Pause (Space bar or Play/Pause key). Stop play, rewind to start with Esc key. Moves nearest bar line to current play position. F8 or Enter keysalso set bar lines. Song time signature, 2/4 to 12/8 supported.
Average tempo, right-click for options. Song key signature. Use to correct pitch of song if necessary. Exit and send chords to Band-in-a-Box. Exit without sending chords to Band-in-a-Box. Chord Detection Chord Detection accuracy depends on the accuracy of the bar lines. If bar lines are not well-aligned then the Chord Detection can be expected to be rather poor. It is quick and easy to align the bar lines on most songs, once you get the hang of it. The first task is to locate the beginning of Bar One.
If you prefer stopped-time editing, you can either mouse-drag Bar 5 to its desired position, or drag the Playback Location Cursor to the desired position and then tap F8 or the Enter key. When satisfied with the Bar lines and Chords, click the [OK] button to return the Chords and Tempo Map to Bandin-a-Box. Keyboard Shortcuts Keyboard shortcuts make it easier to navigate the song and tap in barlines without having to work the mouse with start/stop/scroll actions.
Bad Initial Tempo Estimates Double/Half Tempo: Sometimes Audio Chord Wizard will guess double or half of the tempo you might prefer. Slightly Wrong: Sometimes syncopated songs can have musical anticipations which make ACW guess a tempo slightly too fast or slightly too slow. Completely, Horribly Wrong: Some songs have rhythms difficult for a computer to understand.
The Fine Tune Control currently does not change the pitch of playback (though that would be an excellent future feature). Currently ACW's Fine Tune control only improves Chord Detection on mis-tuned songs. The Fine Tune control is calibrated in cents, 1/100th of a semitone. Therefore, if a song is perfectly in the key of C, but if you set Fine Tune to +100 Cents, ACW would display chords in the key of B. Similarly, if you set Fine Tune to -100 Cents, it would display that song's chords in the key of C#.
Odd Length Bars and Drastic Tempo Changes If a 4/4 song contains occasional bars of 3/4, 5/4, or whatever, or if there are sections where the music has an extreme ritard or accelerando, sometimes you can just Tap Bar Lines to adjust it. But it is sometimes more convenient to manually add or delete bar lines. The following example song has an overall Time Signature of 4/4, but Bar 9 should have a time signature of 2/4.
Change Bar 10 to its desired duration. Hover the mouse over the red triangle marker at Bar 11, and the mouse cursor becomes a drag cursor. Click and drag the barline to the location marked 11:3 Now we have edited bar 9 to have its proper 2/4 Time Signature and preserved the song tempo on both sides of the 2/4 bar. Notes Display The Notes Display looks like a MIDI Piano Roll, but it is not exactly the same as a MIDI Piano Roll.
Audio Chord Wizard Utilities Dialog The Audio Chord Wizard Utilities dialog box can be launched at any time from the menu item (File- Audio Chord Wizard Utilities, or Audio – Audio Chord Wizard Utilities). It is also launched automatically after returning from the Audio Chord Wizard Automatic detection of key signature based on the chords only. This is useful for a song from the Audio Chord Wizard, where you forgot to set the key signature or for any song without the key signature set.
This erases the audio track from BB. If you have loaded in an MP3 file, the audio track isn’t the MP3 file, it is the WAV file copy that BB has made of it. So you wouldn’t be erasing your MP3 file! Note that you also have to SAVE the BB file to have the erasure be complete. If you enable the MIDI style, you’ll be hearing the audio file as well as the BB MIDI style. Otherwise you can mute the BB style by disabling it here.
Press the [Open (Change)…] Button to select the MIDI file that you'd like to import. Once you've selected the file, you can press the [INTERPRET CHORDS NOW] button. When you do that, the chords will be interpreted from the MIDI file, and written onto the chord sheet. Prior to pressing the [INTERPRET CHORDS NOW] button, you might want to make some custom settings. When you load in the MIDI file, Band-in-a-Box interprets many things from the MIDI file for you automatically.
It has automatically determined that the “Violet Song.MID” file - has 2 bars of lead-in. - has 103 bars of chords. - is in the key of F with a 4/4 time signature, and a tempo of 120. - has the Bass Part on channel 2. - has the chording (comping) parts on Channels 3, 6 and 7. - has the Melody on Channel 4. - has no other parts like the Melody to put on the Soloist track.
Once you have done that, you should choose one of the Presets, to quickly put the settings to the type of song that we are trying to interpret. Chord Options When you choose one of these presets, it makes a number of settings in the Chord Options section of the dialog. You can override them in this dialog. Chord Resolution This is the minimum number of beats for a chord.
Delay Lowest Bass Note Usually a bass player plays the root of the chord at or near the time when the chord changes. But in solo piano playing or some bass styles, the bass doesn't state the root until later on, and this setting should be set to “delayed” in a solo piano style of this type. Primary Style Set the primary style of the song to Jazz or Pop using the Lead Sheet Method combo box. Using the Chord Options Presets to quickly make settings For the song “Violet Song.
As you can see, by comparing the two sets of chords, the Chord Wizard got almost all of the chords correct in this example. The Chord Wizard purposely avoids chords like “C13.” It will put a simpler “C7” instead, since this is more like a typical lead sheet. If you've read in the entire MIDI file, you have 103 bars of chords on the Chord sheet. This actually contains 3 choruses of the song.
Practice Window The Practice Window allows convenient “1-click” access to many Band-in-a-Box features that help you with practicing. These include the Ear Training dialog, games (Pitch Invasion etc.), Metronome, CopyMe, Sight Reading, 101 Riffs series, and more. To launch the Practice Window, press the [P] practice button on the toolbar, or choose Window | Practice Window (hot keys Alt+Shift+L). There are several purposes for the Practice Window.
One button access to many other PG Music educational programs and lessons. Most of these items are “add-on” products, available separately, and are not included in the Band-in-a-Box program. If you have these items installed to your hard drive, the Practice Window will find them if they are installed them to the default directories, and if not, you will be able to point the program to the location of the program, which will be remembered in future sessions.
Jazz and Pop music is further enhanced by ear training exercises to recognize common chord types (e.g., Major, Minor, Dominant, etc.). For example, Band-in-a-Box will play a chord and you will have to identify the correct root and chord type. Your score can be tracked, allowing you to monitor your progress. Clicking on the various chord types lets you instantly hear the differences between various chords. Other options include “types of roots and chords to use,” and “voicing types” (open, closed, etc.
Start the game by pressing the [Guess Interval] button. You can control the starting note and the second note in the dialog. Once the game starts, click on the interval that you think is being played. Chord Tutor Click on the [Chord Tutor] button to enter the Chord Tutor module. - Press the [Play Tonic] button to familiarize yourself with the root note of the scale as a reference point. Click on any of the other note names to hear that root. Click on any of the chord extensions to hear that sound.
Guessing the root You can test yourself on roots only or root AND extension. Press “Guess a New Root” and you'll hear a root played. Press this button to hear the root-to-guess replayed. If you need help, press [Play Tonic – C] to hear the root again. When you think you know the root, press the root name on the list of note names at the left. If you guess incorrectly, you'll see a message that says “Wrong Root.” You'll then hear the note that you guessed playing, followed by the root-to-guess note again.
In this mode, you need to guess both the Root and the Extension. You can guess them in any order. Click on the root, and when you get it correct you can move on to the extension. Types of Roots to Include For the Roots, you can choose which types of roots to include. This can be any of the 12 semitones, or just the scale tones, or just the 1-4-5 of the scale. Extension to Include For the extensions, you can include all of the extensions listed in the dialog, or just the subset that are common extensions.
For Pitch Invasion, choose a level that will specify the # of note types that will be invading. The LEVEL determines the speed of the notes. To shoot the aliens, click on the on-screen keyboard, MIDI keyboard or QWERTY keys. The program settings allow you to customize the game. Press the HELP button for more information. Music Replay Music Replay develops your pitch, rhythm, and melody recognition by replaying what the program plays, in note, rhythm, or melodic modes.
for that song. Options available to “include/exclude falsetto range,” “restrict choices to these keys […],” and “transpose now.” Before we enter the Vocal Wizard, we’re going to load in the song Old Folks at Home (present in the c:\bb\Tutorial - BB 2005 folder). The song Old Folks at Home is in the key of F, we’ll use the Vocal Wizard to find the best key for a baritone. To enter the Vocal Wizard, choose the menu item Window | Vocal Wizard, or press the Vocal Wizard button on the toolbar.
2. 3. 4. Selecting the keys that would be “allowable.” Most musicians have favorite keys, so this area allows selection of keys that would be acceptable for the Vocal Wizard to choose. For example, if we choose “Jazz” keys, we’ll see that the Vocal Wizard now recommends the key of C instead of D. Setting the range of the song to analyze (usually the whole song). Normally you’d want to analyze the whole song, but this allows you to select a partial range. Selecting the track to analyze.
In the example Old Folks at Home, you can see that D is the best key (“green”), but any of the keys from G to Db are also good keys in the selected vocal range. The area in black at the bottom gives an analysis of the vocal range if the song was transposed to the chosen key. Now that the Vocal Wizard has told us the best key for this song, we can either close the dialog, or transpose it now to the recommended key (or any other key that we have selected with the radio buttons.
The first thing you should do is set the “Genre” for the reharmonization. For example, if you want “Jazz Swing” genre, choose that in the genre drop down. You’ll then get typical Jazz chords. Verify that the key is correct. Band-in-a-Box analyzes the melody, and gives its best guess as to the best key for the song. If it is different than the current key, Band-in-a-Box will suggest the new key, and you can press the button to set the key to the new key.
Choose a chord progression, and press [Do-Reharmonize NOW] and the program will insert that progression. The progressions are sorted in alphabetical order, or from “best to worst” depending on this setting. Chord Substitution Wizard Reharmonizing a song with the Chord Substitution Wizard is a fun and educational way to perform or practice a familiar song in a brand new way.
Chord Substitution Dialog This dialog depends on what chords were present at the bar that was currently highlighted. This bar number is shown in the dialog and may be changed. In the example shown, the chord was an F7 chord, so the substitutions shown are for an F7 chord. The substitutions shown may work for up to 4 bars, depending on the substitution. In the examples above, the substitutions work for 2 bars.
Auto Chord Substitutions You can quickly auto-generate substitutions for an entire song, or portion of a song using the auto-substitution dialog, which is accessed with the menu command Window | Auto Generate Chord Substitutions. For example, we can generate substitutions for the !Freddie.MGU song. Here is the original chord progression.
If you'd like Band-in-a-Box to only generate chords for a certain range of bars, you should highlight that range of bars in the chordsheet first, and then launch the dialog. The Range will then be set to “Part of Song” and the “Bar” and “# bars” settings will also be set. You can override these settings with manual settings, if necessary.
Tip: The Tutor uses the MIDI THRU part to playback on. You can control volume, panning, etc. by using the THRU settings on the main Band-in-a-Box screen. Guitar Patch You can select the patch to use directly from the Tutor dialog. Type of chords to display The tutor will display Jazz, Pop, and Folk voicings in easy, medium, and advanced forms. The advanced forms use inversions, and changing patterns of chords, while the easier ones just stick to the common “campfire” chords.
Show muted high note of 3 note comping One of the tutors uses 3 note Jazz voicings to simulate the famous Big Band chord guitar comping styles. If you use this, you'll only see 3 notes in the chords of course. Since it sometimes helps to see the entire 4 chord voicing in this case, there is the option to show the muted note as well. Note: This applies to the guitar tutor. There is also the option to show this for the guitar styles. This option is present in the Guitar Options dialog.
Here's a sample row from the Tracks Area. This indicates that “Channel 2” is used in the file. The checkbox indicates that it will sound when the [Play] button in the Style Wizard is pressed. Deselecting this checkbox will mute the channel during playback. Muting/Playing the channels is essential in auditioning the MIDI file to determine which “BB Parts” to use, and what bars to use for “Snapshot bars.” The “Channel selector” presets help with the selection of the channels as described above.
Chords from MIDI file dialog (the Chord Import Wizard) to allow you to tweak settings controlling the chord interpretation. For example, if the interpretation of the chords isn't accurate, use this button for different settings. The [=] button will re-load a MIDI file that is already on the Melody track.
The “Copy Melody to Melody Track” is a utility function that should only be used when the style is “finished.” Prior to executing this command, the Melody track contains the entire MIDI file with all of the parts. This “MIDI-file-on-the-Melody-track” is used to create the style. Once the style is created, you might want to extract the actual Melody track from the MIDI file to put on the Melody track. The channels used are the channels that have the BB Part set to “Melody.
The Voicings settings determine, for the various instruments: Drums (“voicings”): Whether the patterns will use live or grid style patterns. Default mode is “auto,” which normally uses live patterns, but you can force it to use live or grid style patterns. Live patterns have higher resolution and more instruments. Bass (“voicings”) determine if the bass part will use All notes / Scale tones only / Root 3rd, 5th, 7th / Root, 3rd, 5th / Root and 5th / or just the Root.
Repeats and Endings Wizard Tutorial For this tutorial, we’ll be using demos from the “Tutorial– Repeats and Endings” folder. Load in the Song “Miles1 Tutorial (no repeats yet)” from the Tutorial – Repeats and Endings folder. You’ll notice that this is a 1-32 bar form. There are no repeats and endings entered for this song. We’ll be adding them now. First of all, when you load in a song, you’ll notice some new “Form Marker” features that happen for any Band-in-aBox song.
We then see the Edit Repeats and Endings dialog. Click on the 1st/2nd endings radio button, and enter the following. - Repeat begins at bar 1. - 1st ending begins at bar 9. - 1st ending lasts for 8 bars. - Type of Repeat/Ending = 1st/2nd endings. By entering this data we’ve defined the complete 1st and 2nd ending. If the 1st ending begins at bar 9 and lasts for 8 bars, the 2nd ending must begin at bar 17+8=25 (there’s an 8 bar repeated section from bar 1 to 8).
Now we can see a LINEAR view of the same song, similar to the way it was before we put the 1st/2nd endings on it. To do this, deselect the Fake Sheet checkbox on the main page. You’ll then see the song like this. This shows all of the 32 bars, including the bars that are part of the repeat – these are highlighted in gray. Exposing these bars shows the linear view of the song, the way the song would be played.
Chapter 13: Tools and Utilities Roland VSC3 Virtual Sound Canvas An important part of Band-in-a-Box is the band that you actually hear. This is determined by the MIDI driver that you use for output. The Roland Virtual Sound Canvas (VSC) is a top-quality software synthesizer. You should install both the Roland VSC and VSC DXi, which are separate installations from the Band-in-a-Box program.
Using TranzPort with Band-in-a-Box. First, you need to purchase a TranzPort unit, and install it. Now, make sure that the TranzPort is installed and working. You can determine that it is installed and working by running Band-in-a-Box, and looking at the list of MIDI Drivers (Options-MIDI Drivers). If “TranzPort” appears on the list of MIDI-IN and MIDI-OUT drivers, then the TranzPort is installed correctly. Important: DO NOT SELECT the TranzPort drivers, since it is not a sound module.
Playback Display During playback, you will see the chords (and/or lyrics) to the song, scrolling along in time to the music. For example, you might see this… *5| D | D7 7| G | Gm | The * marks the current bar (bar 5), which is a D chord. The screen always scrolls to show you 2 bars ahead of the current time. TranzPort Dialog There is a TranzPort Settings dialog inside Band-in-a-Box with additional settings.
The Guitar Tuner must be able to receive audio from your instrument via the line-in or microphone input of your sound card. Please make sure that either the Microphone In or Line-In is enabled in the Recording Properties of the Windows Mixer (or the appropriate Mixer application for your sound card). Master Tuning This function allows you to tune your sound card or module to another instrument, as well as adding a testing function to see if your sound card supports Master Tuning.
The Drum Kit window can be resized to tile or fit with other windows of interest, or the drums can be moved offscreen. The window looks best if your computer display is in High Color (16 bit) or True Color (32 bit) video mode. The onscreen instruments may be played by mouse clicking or by pressing the appropriate computer keys. There is an option to display all the QWERTY names on the drums at the same time, so that you can see what keys to hit without having to mouse over the instrument.
Computer “QWERTY” Keys Numeric keypad Press computer keys to play drums. Drums are grouped on the computer keyboard by category. The kick, snare, and hihat sounds are on the lowest keyboard row. The lower-middle row contains toms and cymbals. The upper-middle row contains Latin drums, and the top row contains Latin hand percussion. The Numpad keys contain the rest of the Latin hand percussion plus the electronic tones. Multi - Note Instruments Kick Drum - Ac.
Drum window is always on top Use this checkbox to keep the Drums window on top of other program windows. Note Velocity When playing drums with a mouse or computer keys, the shift key toggles between two levels of note velocity. The two velocity levels can be set any way desired. For instance, if you want the shift key to send quieter notes you can set the shift velocity lower than the non-shift velocity. Randomize Use this checkbox to enable the program to send random velocity levels when playing the drums.
The MIDI Monitor main window. Tip: To display the data received from the computer MIDI Input, the MIDI THRU option must be enabled in Band-in-a-Box. The MIDI Monitor has options for 1-based patch numbering and patch name display. Quick View Filter presets (such as “Notes Only,” “Controllers Only,” “Program Changes Only,” “Programs including Bank Changes”). MIDI Monitor- Main Window MIDI Display Controls Event The current event number since the display was last cleared.
Current Time - The millisecond count since the timer was last started. Click anywhere in the Timer area to clear the Current time, setting it to zero. Channel Activity Panel This panel has an array of “LEDs” to show which channels are active. MIDI Display Area The MIDI Display area at the bottom of the main window, displays the data generated by Band-in-a-Box and/or data received at the computer MIDI input. Each row is a single MIDI event. Event number, starting from when the display was last cleared.
Tip: Virtually any combination of display events can be selected in the filter. It is therefore possible to select combinations that do not display any MIDI events at all. The MIDI Monitor will warn you about the more obvious “nil” combinations, but if you find that you are not receiving what you expected, carefully re-examine these filter settings. Sound Blaster Support There is direct support for the Sound Blaster series of sound cards.
Event List Filter There is a filter for the Event List Editor, allowing you to, for example, quickly spot all patch changes. For example, to examine all of the patch changes on the Melody track. Choose “Use Event Filter,” and then press the [Filter…] button. In the Event List Filter select the type of information you want to display. In this case, it is program changes (patches) only. The track will then display with the program changes only.
The Event Type to Edit dialog opens when either the [Insert] or [Append] buttons are pressed in the Event List Editor. This dialog allows you to select which type of event to insert or append - note, controller, pitch bend, etc. – and then opens the selected edit dialog. PG Vinyl DirectX Plug-In Remove clicks and pops from your old vinyl record collection with the new PG Vinyl plug-in. If you no longer have a phono preamp, just attach your turntable to your mixer console.
against the inevitable vinyl pops, clicks, and surface noise. Pre-emphasis also prevents low frequency signals from bouncing the stylus out of the groove. When you play a record, the preamp's RIAA de-emphasis will reverse the EQ. High frequencies are cut, and low frequencies are boosted. If you do not apply RIAA de-emphasis, either with a phono preamp or in the software, vinyl will sound too bright and shallow.
results with less than one percent of DeCrackle Activity. Strive to mute only the minimum necessary to clean your record. NOTE: If DeCrackle is set outrageously high, the DeCrackle Activity reading can exceed 100 percent. This is not a bug. The DeCrackle section does three processing passes in progressively lower frequency bands. It might happen that the first pass will “heal” a click, but subsequent bands will ”heal” the left-over residue of that click.
As you increase the Fill Gaps knob, PG Vinyl Tool extrapolates the midrange signal in the vicinity of the click, synthesizing a guess of what the signal might have been in the tiny muted region. If you set Fill Gaps to 100, it will insert this extrapolated guess at the same level as the original signal. This allows many clicks to be snipped from a dirty record, without reducing the mid-frequency content. On many recordings, the extrapolated guesses are quite good.
minimum music level is exterminated. Be sure to check the DeNoise Amount against the quietest parts of the recording, because the quiet locations are most likely to be affected if the DeNoise Amount has been set too high. Conclusion PG Vinyl Tool offers many tools which can clean vinyl records. But there is a limit what can be done for severely damaged discs (without investing in very expensive tools).
Channel View Channel View is only meaningful when metering a stereo track, or Aux/Master inserts (which are almost always stereo). The Channel View setting has no effect on a mono track. If metering a stereo insert, select the Left+Right button to view the summed frequency response of both the Left and Right channels. Select the Left or Right buttons to view only one of the channels. Zoom In/Out (Adjust the vertical amplitude resolution in dB.
between center and side channels, so no processing takes place unless there is a significant difference between the loudness of the center versus side channels. Vocal is not the only sound which can trigger the compressor. Any loud midrange center instrument could trigger the compressor, so if you crank the Amount too high, snare drum or other loud center instruments may unpleasantly “pump” the side channels. Reduce Reverb Attack Slider Works like a compressor Attack control.
Chapter 14: Reference Band-in-a-Box Menu Descriptions This chapter gives line-by-line descriptions for all Band-in-a-Box menus. File Menu New is used to blank the chordsheet and start a new song. Open (BB song) is used to open an existing Band-in-a-Box song. Open MIDI file loads a MIDI file into Band-in-a-Box and the MIDI file will play with the chords intelligently interpreted on-screen.
Open (Using Custom Dialog) uses the custom dialog that allows long-file-names, font selection, and even remembers its settings (unlike the standard windows 95/98 dialogs). Open Using Standard Dialog uses the standard windows 95/98 dialog. Open with Melodies lists only song files that have melodies (*.mg?). Open Song by Title allows selection of songs by displaying the full title of the song (not 8 character file name).
Run Explorer in Current Directory launches Explorer. Pressing Ctrl+Shift+F3 is the usual way to get to this item, and will quickly open Explorer. Once Explorer is open, you could double click on a song or style to load it in. (Assuming that there is a file association for Band-in-a-Box songs and styles made in Explorer.) Auto-rename song files to Long File Names will rename all song files in the current directory to long file names, using the song title as the name.
Print Multiple Songs… prints all songs, or just selected songs, in a song directory. Make Song Titles allows you to assign long, full titles to song filenames. Load User Style allows you to choose a user style. (See Selecting Styles.) Exit to exit completely from the Band-in-a-Box program. The last five files opened are listed at the bottom of the menu, numbered 0 through 4. Edit Menu Edit | Undo and Edit | Redo allow you to undo or redo most operations.
Place the mouse cursor at the bar to begin the selection. Then, holding down the left mouse button, drag the mouse over the region. As you do this you will see that the region will be inverted (i.e. looks dark). When you have selected the desired region of chords to copy, release the mouse button. Copy the selected region to the clipboard with the on-screen copy button, the keystrokes Ctrl+C, or select the Edit |Copy menu item.
Inside the dialog, you should choose the “Source Track” and the destination track to Copy/Move selected channels to. Source track can be any of the Band-in-a-Box tracks – Bass, Drums, Piano, Guitar, Strings, Melody, or Soloist. The track to “Copy/Move selected channels to ->” can be Melody or Soloist (since these are the only tracks that are editable in Band-in-a-Box). For copying from Melody or Soloist track, you can also specify which channels to include in the copy, or delete or move certain channels.
Reduce (durations of chords by 1/2) cuts chord durations by 50% (e.g., 4beats>>2beats; 2beats>>1beat). Expand (durations of chords by 2) doubles the durations of chords (e.g., 1beat>>2beats; 2beats>>4beats). Unfold (convert to 1 BIG chorus) Choose this command to unfold a multi-chorus song into one BIG chorus. When selected, Band-in-a-Box will display all choruses and verses of a song without loops or repeats.
Set Time Signature (range of bars) In Edit | Set Time Signature (range of bars) you can assign a specific time signature at any bar and apply it to a range of bars, as often as you want. For example, to have one 5/4 bar, bar 13, select this menu item, and toggle the 5/4 button. Then, type in the bar beginning (13) and number of bars (1) in the space provided. Time signature changes are printed on the Notation and Lead Sheet.
Song Memo… A song memo of up to 2000 characters may be added. When a song has a memo associated with it the word Memo highlights in pink. Clicking on the [Memo] button launches the Song Memo dialog, where you can type or edit a memo about the song and select an “Auto-open” option that will show the memo each time the song is loaded. The Song Memo has an option to close automatically during playback.
Also a “simplify Jazz chords” option will simplify chords like C13#11#5 to simply C9. Chord Settings… This launches the Chord Options dialog box, where you can put in rests and pushes. You can launch the Preview, Chord Builder, or Chord-Substitution Functions from this window. The Chord Options dialog box can also be opened with the chord options button, with the keystrokes Alt+F5 or with a right mouse button click on the chordsheet.
New - Make A New Style This function allows you to begin to create a new style, using the StyleMaker feature. See online Tutorial #6: StyleMaker - Making a New Style. Edit a Style This allows you to edit an existing style (*.STY) from disk. The resulting style can then be saved with the same name or a different name. This function uses the StyleMaker. See online Tutorial #5: StyleMaker – Editing Styles. Edit Current Style This allows you to quickly get into the StyleMaker to edit the current style.
Style Aliases You can create an alias so that when Band-in-a-Box looks for a style, it will load its alias instead, so when you have found a new favorite style just change the alias and you don’t have to change all of your songs. - To create a new alias, click on an empty spot in the Alias list, or click on the alias you wish to edit if you wish to change an existing alias. Press the [Choose] button below the Original Style box and select the style you wish to be replaced.
If you choose MOST settings, the patch map and drum kit will be left intact, and not reset. If you choose ALL settings, all settings will be reset to factory. What add-ons do I have?… An intelligent dialog, also accessible from the Help menu that will search your directory to tell you which add-ons you have and which you don’t. Utilities Edit Chord Shortcuts file (shortcut.
Whether you want to load different patches (or ones you have “tweaked” with a patch editor/librarian such as the SC-Pro Editor/Librarian) into your MIDI device or whether you have a synth that requires a SysEx to set it to a certain mode, you can easily send SysEx files with a configurable delay (the default is 100 ms). If you would like to send a SysEx file to your MIDI device automatically at the start of each session, you need to make a file called STARTUP.SYX, and put it in your c:\bb directory.
These options are useful either if you have a newer synthesizer that supports bank changes and has nice patches in higher banks or if you have an older synth that requires custom mapping of sounds. To access these features tick the Enable Advanced Settings checkbox. Then, type in the values you would like to change. Say, for example, you have some great string sounds on your synth on Bank 4, Controller 32. With this feature you can save them as part of your Band-in-a-Box setup by clicking the [Save] button.
Preferences… The Preferences dialog box allows you to set various settings that are saved in the Band-in-a-Box for Windows configuration file called INTRFACE.BBW. You can open the dialogs with keystrokes by typing the underlined letter shown on the tabs. For example, you can open the “Arrange” Prefs tab by the keystrokes - Ctrl+E to open the Prefs dialog, then - A to open the Arrangement Options.
Now that people have their sound cards hooked up to big speaker systems, a simple “beep” issued by Windows when an incorrect key is pressed can seem loud enough to “wake your neighbors.” Setting the “silent beep” option allows Band-in-a-Box to visually flash the window title bar to get your attention, instead of generating an audible “beep.” Always save songs with “U” extension Older Band-in-a-Box songs had additional extensions for last letter (1-9, A-O) to indicate style type.
Toolbars Toolbar mode settings are for the main toolbar. The Normal mode shows toolbar icons with text labels. Options are Text only, Icons only, or No toolbar. Show on-screen piano shows or hides the on-screen piano. Floating Toolbars Always Show Text toggles floating toolbar text off or on. Song Title area font allows the selection of any installed font the song title. Chordsheet Enable display of Repeats/Endings allows repeats signs and 1st/2nd ending markers to be shown on the chordsheet.
For Roman Numerals of Chords in minor keys, use relative major For minor keys, base roman numerals on the relative major. For example in key of Am, Am is either the Im chord or the VIm chord. Chordsheet Font You can choose the font to use for the chordsheet. If you choose a Custom font, you can choose the size as well. If you choose one of the preset fonts, the size is set automatically to fit into the height of the chordsheet row.
Allow Any Rests You can disable the rests feature. You might want to do this if you’ve got a song with a lot of rests in it, and are then having difficulty recording a melody because you don’t hear the drums providing the beat (due to the drums resting). If so, you can temporarily disable the rests so that you can record and listen to the drums. Allow Any Pushes If for some reason you don't want a style or a song to have pushes, you can set this to no.
When a song is loaded, but the required style is not found In this group of settings you can control the behavior of the program when a required style is not found. Text files like c:\bb\A_PGMUSIC.NA list the substitute styles to use. You can make your own *.NA file, but call it something like MYSTYLES.NA. Don’t edit the A_PGMUSIC.NA file. OK to substitute with a similar style If set this will enable the substitution of styles using the c:\bb\A_PGMUSIC.NA text file and any other *.
Drum Lead-in options Allow Lead-In Bars People who use Band-in-a-Box for soloing practice will likely turn the lead-in off to allow endless looping uninterrupted by the lead-in count. To eliminate the lead-in count, select Allow Lead-In Bars to = NO, this will start the song from bar 1 with no lead in. 1 bar lead-in If this is set, the count-in will be a single bar instead of 2 bars. Play Lead-In Even If Intro Present If a song has an intro, it’s usually not necessary to play the 2 bar lead-in count.
Write Section Text as Text Events Your section text can be included in the MIDI file as text events. Include Volume/Reverb/Chorus/Panning This will include the volume, reverb, chorus, and panning settings that you have made in the Band-in-a-Box synth window in your MIDI file. Include Forced Channel Meta Event This will include the forced channel META event. It is recognized by PowerTracks Pro Audio and other PG Music Inc. programs only.
For partial range MIDI files, chop of sustaining notes at end If you have made a MIDI file for part of the song this setting controls whether the notes will sustain at the end of the range in the MIDI file or be cut off. If song has RealDrums - Also generate MIDI drums in the MIDI file - If your song uses RealDrums for the drum track you may want to uncheck this option. - Also generate RealDrums in xxxx_RealDrums.
automatically load in the appropriate Drum/Patch kit file (*.DK). If you leave this as it will automatically default to the General MIDI patch list. Get Patch/Drum Kit Info This contains information on setting up custom patch/drum kits. Use DXi Synth Check the Use DXi Synth checkbox to enable DXi playback. To use this option, you must have a polyphonic DXi synthesizer installed on your computer, such as the Roland/Edirol VSC DXi.
Controllers Thru: Guitar synthesizers and wind controllers contain large amounts of additional MIDI data which may not be required for Band-in-a-Box and may only serve to hinder the system performance of your computer. To prevent this information from being sent Thru, set this option to “No.” Use Thru Channel: Band-in-a-Box uses the Thru channel as a part, just like the Bass/Drums/Piano, etc. The Thru Channel is re-channeled to the Thru channel as assigned in the MIDI settings dialog.
MIDI Channels: Range 0 to 16. If set to 0 the part will be Off/Disabled, which is not the same as muted. Octave: Adjusts the octave of the part. Range (-2 to +2). Usually set to 0. (Bass is usually set to -1 for most General MIDI (GM) instruments.) Patch: Range 0 to 128. These are General MIDI patch numbers. Volume: Range 0 to 127. Average volume setting is = 90. This can also be set from the main screen. Note: Only General MIDI, XG, and GS instruments respond to Reverb, Chorus, and Bank changes.
If they don’t the harmony sounds dissonant. Leave this setting to YES, unless you have a specific reason to disable it. The harmony is changed by moving the voices to the nearest chord tone. Overall Harmony Volume Adjust Sets a level for the overall harmony in a range of -128 to 128, with 0 leaving the settings as programmed in the Harmony file. Harmony Channels Band-in-a-Box already uses 7 channels (Bass, Drums, Piano, Guitar, Strings, Melody and Thru channels).
Soloist – Prefer Long Phrases Set this checkbox to “True” (enabled) if you would like the Soloist to use the longest musical phrases it “knows.” This setting is normally used in conjunction with the Use Large Soloist files setting. Note: This option may also increase Soloist creation times. Disable this feature if you are using a slower or low-memory equipped computer.
Patch Map This opens the General MIDI Patch Edit dialog, where you can make a customized General MIDI patch map. Type in the patch number that your synth uses for each instrument listed. For example, if your sound source has its Acoustic Piano at patch location 41select the box to the left of Acoustic Piano and type 41. Do the same for all of the instruments in the General MIDI patch list. If your synth doesn't have an exact match, use a close sounding patch that it does have.
Type the MIDI note numbers for the various instruments as you find them on your drum machine or keyboard. Press the [Save] button to save the kit as MYSETUP.DK. If you are making a kit to save under a different name then save the kit under Opt. | Utilities | Save Alternate Patch/Drum Kit. Customize the Relative Volumes of the Drum Kit Instruments. Perhaps when you listen to Band-in-a-Box you feel that the crash cymbal is too loud or the kick drum is too quiet.
The default settings are to change the volumes by 0 %, which would leave them as they are. If there were a drum note with a velocity of 50, it would be affected as follows: +40% would change it from 50 to 50+(40%x50)=70 -40% would change it from 50 to 50-(40%x50)=30 The current settings for your drum velocities are saved in the intrface.bbw configuration file.
Favorite Instruments This button opens the Favorite Instruments dialog. For each of the Band-in-a-Box parts you can assign up to 10 “favorite” General MIDI instruments. Note: If you use a custom patch map it will convert your synth’s non-GM patch numbers, always enter GM patch numbers for the favorite instruments. The [Patch List] button displays the General MIDI Patch List of instrument names and patch numbers. The [Combos] button opens the Favorite Combos dialog.
The Favorite Combos dialog box allows you to save up to 10 of your favorite instrument combos. For example, you could setup Combo #1 to be an Acoustic Jazz combo which would send out patches like Acoustic Bass, Acoustic Piano, Acoustic Guitar, Flute, etc. After you have finished typing in the instrument patch numbers select the [Save] button. Output Chords on Channel The Preferences [OutputCh.] button opens the Output Chords on Channel dialog.
When playing along on your MIDI keyboard, you can set the Thru transpose to transpose semitones or octaves. You can define a “favorite key” and Band-in-a-Box will optionally transpose any and all loaded songs to that key. This is a great feature for practicing in a certain key. You can also set the THRU transpose to the favorite key to transpose the THRU part so that you can always play along in your favorite key (regardless of the actual key of the song).
These settings are described in the Notation chapter and in the online Help. Lead Sheet Options The [Lead sheet] button opens the Lead Sheet Options dialog. If the Lead Sheet window is not open the program will open it. These settings are described in the Notation chapter and in the online Help.
Audio Settings The Preferences [Audio] button opens the Audio Settings dialog. Audio Driver Type You’ll see the following options for Audio Driver Type: MME or ASIO. MME is the default audio driver type that is used in Windows. MME is good, but there is latency (delay) associated with MME drivers. For this reason, Steinberg developed a faster type of audio driver system, called ASIO. It allows for much lower latency than ordinary MME drivers do.
Once you have selected an ASIO driver, you will see the Input Port and Output Port list boxes filled with your driver’s input and output ports. By default, the first of each will be selected. You are allowed to select different ports (but only one input and one output port at a time can be selected). The ports you selected will be available for output within Band-in-a-Box. If you do not hear input or output, then you may need to try different ports than the defaults.
The ASIO Driver’s Control Panel button launches a settings dialog specifically provided by your driver manufacturer. This usually lets you adjust the latency, and usually you will have a choice between buffer sizes in milliseconds. Show Warning for Untested Soundcard Formats can be unchecked if you do not want to see the warning message for ASIO drivers that have not been tested in Band-in-a-Box. The Driver Info field shows various characteristics of your driver. The Name is the driver’s name.
computer and excellent sound card, the audio latency can be adjusted rather low. However, if you hear audio dropouts, you can set the latency as high as 2000 milliseconds. Audio Track Type for THIS song You can choose between mono and stereo for the audio track. Tracks can be edited in either format, and converted from stereo to mono or vice versa. You can change a project from mono<>stereo at any time.
Guitar Settings The Preferences [Guitar] button opens the Guitar Settings dialog. The Guitar Settings dialog allows you the ability to adjust various parameters on the virtual guitar fretboard so that music can be displayed effectively (and easily) on this window, regardless of the original instrument intended for the track data. It also offers the ability to enter notation using the virtual guitar and play back track data in specific fretboard positions for educational and sight-reading purposes.
- If “Note Guides” is selected guide notes will be shown on the keyboard. The guide notes can be scale tones, chord tones, or roots only. Note Names and Note Colors can be used as in the Notation settings. There is an option to Show Out-of-Scale notes in Yellow. The size of the piano keyboard can be entered in pixels, or set with the preset buttons, or set by dragging the bottom border of the window. Lyric Window Options The [BigLyrics] button opens the Lyric Window Options.
Print Options The [Print] button opens the Print Options dialog. These options are described in the Notation chapter and in the online Help. Overrides Global Song overrides allow you to set the overall song looping (always OFF, always ON, or as set in the song). For example, if you want every song loaded to have looping set to on, then set “Always set loop to ON.” But if you are going out on a playing job, and don’t want any songs to loop, then set it to “Always set loop to OFF.
Similar overrides are available to see which other information gets loaded from a file, such as patches, harmonies, volume/reverb/chorus/panning/banks. For example, you can set every song to load with looping ON, and don’t load any reverb settings from songs. RealDrums The RealDrums button opens the RealDrums Settings dialog. Select the "Enable RealDrums" checkbox to hear RealDrums. Tip: Try turning off the RealDrums by de-selecting "Enable RealDrums." You can do this even while the song is playing.
We provide many styles that already have RealDrums. These styles can be identified by the style name beginning with a minus sign. For example "-ZZJAZZ.STY" is a version of the ZZJAZZ.STY that uses RealDrums. You can set the RealDrum style inside the StyleMaker, by pressing the MISC button, and then typing the name of the RealDrum style. The StylePicker has a special category that lists a lot of RealDrum styles that are included with the program.
Practice The Practice Window allows convenient “1-click” access to many Band-in-a-Box features that help you with practicing. There are several purposes for the Practice Window. Quick access to your favorite/preferred “practice” folders, so that you can setup load in songs without having to navigate dialogs. One-click access to many of the educationrelated features of Band-in-a-Box (play along soloing, Ear Training, games). Handy buttons for on-screen transposition for non-concert instruments.
Most of these items are “add-on” products, available separately, and are not included in the Band-in-a-Box program. If you have these items installed to your hard drive, the Practice Window will find them if they are installed them to the default directories, and if not, you will be able to point the program to the location of the program, which will be remembered in future sessions.
Step Advance submenu - When a song is paused these commands can be used to navigate step-by-step through the currently selected track. For example, if the current track is set to the Melody track using the row of buttons on the Notation window, Lead Sheet window, or Guitar window; pressing the advance buttons will display the next note or chord of the melody on the piano display, guitar display, lead sheet and notation. This is a great way to study the notes being played, and to navigate around the track.
Previous Juke Box Song / Next JukeBox song Wizard Play Along feature - Navigate back and forth in a juke box set list. - Wizard uses “Smart” notes - Panic! - The Wizard is a play along feature that allows you to use the QWERTY keyboard or your connected MIDI keyboard to play along with Band-in-a-Box. The Wizard is only active during playback. Toggle this on so the Wizard will only play notes based on the chord/key of the song.
- Erases only the note-based lyrics. Kill Lyrics Choruses - Select from a list box to kill lyrics in the selected chorus. Move Lyric ahead to time line Move Lyric back to time line - If you have a note-based lyric that you want to time shift ahead or back, you can click on the time line at the destination that you want, and then choose this item. You can also shift lyric times using the Lyric Event list.
Melody Menu Track Type Normally you'd leave the track type set to Single. But you can set it to: - Multi (16) -Channel – All channels get preserved, and outputted on the channels, this would be useful for importing an entire MIDI file, and playing it from the Melody channel (using a silent style). - Guitar – Channels 11 to 16 will display on the guitar as strings 11 to 16, TAB will show, the notation will be up an octave, and the MIDI file will contain the channels preserved.
Sequencer Window for multi-Channel Melody There are 2 tracks in Band-in-a-Box to add your own recordings. These are the Melody and Soloist tracks. Normally you would want a single part on each of them. But, since MIDI information can have separate channels, it is possible to store 16 separate parts on each of the Melody and Soloist parts. When the Melody or Soloist track has been set to “Multi (16)-Channel” we refer to this as “Sequencer Mode.” Selecting this command will then launch the Sequencer Window.
Edit Melody Track submenu Import Melody from MIDI File allows you to import MIDI data from a file (*.MID) into the Melody track. Import Melody from Clipboard allows you to import MIDI data that has been pasted into the clipboard (e.g., from a sequencer such as PowerTracks). Record Melody launches the Record Melody dialog to record a MIDI melody. Record melody From any bar starts recording at the current location of the highlight cell after playing a two bar lead-in.
- Resolution. Choose the division you would like the track quantized to. Choosing 16 will Quantize to 16th notes. - Starting at Bar# and Chorus #. Quantization will begin at the place you select and applied for the number of bars. % strength. Choose 100% if you want the notes quantized exactly to the division. Otherwise, the notes will be moved the % toward the target quantization. Quantize Start Times. By default, this option is set to “Yes.
Adjust Level of melody allows you to increase or decrease the volume (velocity) of the Melody track without affecting the other tracks. Timeshift Melody (ticks) allows you to move the Melody forwards or backwards in small increments relative to the rest of the song tracks. (Measured in ticks or parts per quarter, PPQ). Insert Beat(s) in Melody allows you to insert a blank beat or beats into the song relative to the current time signature.
Change Pitch Bend Range… lets you set the range in semitones. Insert Guitar Bend events when pitch bend found… will insert controllers so the guitar will display bends. Transpose One Octave DOWN / Transpose One Octave UP transposes the Melody part one octave in either direction. This is often useful if the Melody instrument has been changed. Transposing can be done while the song plays. Piano Hand-Split manually splits a piano part on a Melody or Soloist track using the intelligent hand-splitting routines.
Soloist Menu Track Type Normally you'd leave the track type set to Single. But you can set it to: - - - Multi (16) -Channel – All channels get preserved, and outputted on the channels, this would be useful for importing an entire MIDI file, and playing it from the Melody channel (using a silent style). Guitar – Channels 11 to 16 will display on the guitar as strings 11 to 16, TAB will show, the notation will be up an octave, and the MIDI file will contain the channels preserved.
saxophone), extra legato playing, playing more on top of the beat, playing straighter 8th notes than usual swing 8th notes. In addition, you can set phrasing options, such as how long the phrase should be, and how much “space” to leave between phrases. You can also set how “outside” the playing should be. Edit Current Soloists File opens the Select Soloist dialog with the currently installed Soloists file. Refresh Soloist allows the Soloist full access to all solo ideas contained in its database.
We have customized the piano track so that it can be heard (play=true), but not seen in notation (Show=false). There is a small button at the right of the track line that allows you to delete/ rechannel or merge the channel with another channel. You can increase or decrease the velocity of the track and move it to the Melody track. You can also change the patch (instrument) for that track by using the instrument patch combo box.
Quantize Soloist opens the Quantize Soloist Options dialog. The Humanize Soloist Part… feature is an advanced version of this function. Humanize Soloist Part w/Straight Feel / …/Swing Feel. Band-in-a-Box uses intelligent humanization routines, which can humanize a Soloist from one feel to another, from one tempo to another, and vary the amount of swing in 8th notes (but not randomly). The results are very musical, with natural sounding MIDI solos.
Loosen up Start times Loosen up Start Times is a dedicated function to vary the start times of notes on the Melody or Soloist tracks, with options for what notes to affect (harmony, chords, and amount of variance). Transpose One Octave DOWN / Transpose One Octave UP transposes the Soloist part one octave in either direction. This is often useful if the Soloist instrument has been changed. Transposing can be done while the song plays.
The next two items, Record Audio and MIDI (Melody) and Record Audio and MIDI (Soloist) refer to the situation where you want to simultaneously record an audio track (vocals etc.) as well as a MIDI piano part. You can record the MIDI to the Melody or Soloist track. The Plugin menu command refers to running a plug-in audio effect. This applies an audio effect such as Reverb or Chorus to the already recorded audio part.
Insert Beat(s) in Audio and Delete Beat(s) from Audio are used to insert, silence, or remove parts of the audio track. You can specify the region to use. For example, if you decide to add an extra 2 bars to the intro in Band-in-aBox, and you've already recorded an audio track, you should insert 2 bars (8 beats in a 4/4 time signature) into the audio track as well. Mute Audio is a toggle switch to mute and unmute the audio track. Render MIDI to Stereo .
Audio Harmonies & Pitch Tracking opens the Generate Audio Harmonies dialog. There are three uses of the Audio Harmonies in Band-in-a-Box, namely: - Pitch tracking (fixing) of the melody. - Harmonizing your voice using Band-in-a-Box harmonies (when a MIDI melody is present) - Harmonizing your voice to the chords of the song (when no MIDI melody is present) DXi Synth Settings opens the DirectX Plugins dialog to the Synth Track where you can select a DXi synth and apply real time effects to its audio output.
Send General MIDI mode ON, & BB Patches sends a General MIDI mode ON message to the external MIDI device and the sends the startup Band-in-a-Box patch changes. Send General MIDI mode ON (no patches) sets the external module to General MIDI mode. This command will ensure that the module is ready to accept GM-specific MIDI data such as Bank, Controller, and Patch information.
Run Other Program submenu Sound card Volume / Playback VU Meter launches the Windows mixer to adjust volumes on your sound card with the Playback panel. Sound card Recording / Recording VU Meter launches the Windows Mixer to adjust volumes on your sound card with the Recording panel. Note: This uses the c:\windows\sndvol32.exe Mixer program. You may need to have the Windows 98 version of this program for the Recording Panel to open properly.
Harmony Menu Melody Harmony (select)… This option brings up the complete Harmony styles list, and allows you to choose one for the current Melody track. Thru Harmony (select)… This option brings up the complete Harmony styles list, and allows you to choose one for the current Thru track. Favorite Melody Harmonies This option brings up your favorite 50 Harmony styles (based on recent usage) and allows you to choose one to use on the Melody track.
Allow Thru Harmony Toggle this option “On” to allow harmonies on the Thru MIDI channels. Allow Soloist Harmony (on THRU Harmony) Toggle this option “On” to allow the Thru MIDI channels to utilize the harmony features for the Soloist track. Convert Harmony to Melody Track… Converts a single line Melody track to include the current harmony selection, with options to convert the whole song or specify a range of bars, to eliminate note overlaps, and loosen note start times.
Notation Menu Notation/edit/note roll mode moves the notation window through its various entry modes. Print... brings up the print dialog box. Note Insert mode Toggling this to “on” allows you to insert notes graphically with your mouse or keyboard on the notation window. Mono Entry Mode Toggle this “on” if you are inserting single notes (not chords) on the notation window.
Window Menu Notation (or chords) Window toggles between the notation and the chordsheet views. Movable Notation Window opens a movable and resizable notation window. Lead Sheet Window launches the lead sheet notation. Big Lyrics Window launches a window that displays lyrics in a Karaoke format. Lyric Document Window displays a full screen of formatted lyrics. Easily copy and paste lyrics to and from your favorite word processor. Big Piano Window launches a window that displays a Big Piano.
Moveable Piano Roll Window opens the regular Piano Roll window, but lets you move and reposition it on the screen. Put Notation/Chords on Top moves the notation window to the top of the main screen and moves the piano roll at the bottom of the main screen. The MIDI Monitor, Guitar Tuner, and AWE Editor items launch the selected module. Each one has extensive help available inside the module. There are also buttons available for these items.
Chord Builder submenu Chord Builder… Allows you to build up chords using mouse clicks. Play Current Chordsheet Chord This function plays the current chord on the chordsheet. It is most commonly accessed by pressing Shift+Enter on the chordsheet. MIDI Chord Detection… This Window menu command brings up a submenu for entering chords from a keyboard. Select MIDI Chord Detection… and play any chord on your MIDI keyboard.
Help Menu Index Lists all of the Help topics. Type in a keyword under the “Index” tab to go to the topic you want. Topic Search Opens the Help file where you can search the Table of Contents or the Index, or use the Search feature to find your topic. Using help Has Windows tips for using Help files. How to… Opens a categorized list of topics. It’s a fast way to find out about a particular feature or operation.
Basics Goes directly to the “Basics” introduction to Band-in-a-Box. Tutorials Provide detailed, step-by-step instructions for Band-in-a-Box. Show help hints Band-in-a-Box has comprehensive fly-by hints that appear when you move over an item. These include hints for the dialog boxes and various windows. You can set the hints to display none, basic, or detailed information. Update, Add/On and other Product info Other Band-in-a-Box add-ons, PG Music Inc. products, and contact information.
Keystroke Commands - Hot Keys It’s often faster to use keystrokes instead of using the mouse. For example, there are keystroke “hot keys” to mute instruments or to adjust volume, panning, reverb, chorus, or bank of instruments.
Looping / Song Navigation Keystrokes NUMPAD 1 Toggle looping on/off. NUMPAD 2 Open Loop Section Settings dialog. Ctrl+NUMPAD 1 Play with last chorus looped. Ctrl+NUMPAD 2 Play with middle choruses looped. Ctrl+NUMPAD 3 Play with middle and last choruses looped. Ctrl+NUMPAD 4 Jump to last chorus. Ctrl+NUMPAD 5 Jump to ending. Ctrl+NUMPAD 7 Loop Notation screen. NUMPAD [DEL] Advances the notation, lead sheet, and guitar window by one chord (group of notes).
F8 Play pattern on chord F10 Edit pattern options F6 or Shift+F6 Change instrument Cursor Keys Move around screen Alt+F4 Quit the StyleMaker StyleMaker Drum Screen Hot Keys F5 Drum alternate notes Bottom row (ZXCVBNM,. /) Drum note entry F6 Time base F10 or Alt+F4 Exit Additional Keystrokes There are additional keystrokes available, listed on the pull down menus beside the function.
Select Melody Harmony Alt+F10 Favorite Melody Harmonies Ctrl+F10 Allow Melody Harmony Shift+F10 Select Thru Harmony Alt+F11 Favorite Thru Harmonies Ctrl+F11 Allow Thru Harmony Shift+F11 Turn song Embellisher on/off. Ctrl+Alt+E Import chords from MIDI file. Ctrl+Alt+I Send GM mode on message. Ctrl+Alt+Q Set tempo. Ctrl+Alt+T Open the Preferences dialog. Ctrl+E Open the Song Settings dialog. Ctrl+N Launch Chord Builder. Ctrl+Shift+B Edit current bar options. F5 Save MIDI file.
C7susb5, C13susb5, C7susb5b13, C9susb5, C9susb5b13, C7susb5b9, C13susb5b9, C7susb5b9b13, C7susb5#9, C13susb5#9, C7susb5#9b13, C7sus#5, C13sus#5, C7sus#5#11, C13sus#5#11, C9sus#5, C9sus#5#11, C7sus#5b9, C13sus#5b9, C7sus#5b9#11, C13sus#5b9#11, C7sus#5#9, C13sus#5#9#11, C7sus#5#9#11, C13sus#5#9#11, Notes: - It is not necessary to type upper or lower case. The program will sort this out for you. - Any chord may be entered with an alternate root (“Slash Chord”) e.g.: C7/E = C7 with E bass.
PGJAZZ_.TTF PG Music Jazz font. PGMUS.TTF PG Music notation font. PGTEXT.TTF PG Music text font. ZZ*.STY Band-in-a-Box needs Style Files for the built-in Styles. A_PGMUSIC.DS Lists the RealDrums styles to use. Transferring Files Among Computer Platforms (IBM to Mac) Many of the Band-in-a-Box song/style and patch map files are directly compatible. Any Macintosh file automatically gets a 128-byte header added on to it by the Macintosh system.
PG Music Inc. Band-in-a-Box ® is protected by copyright and is the property of PG Music Inc. and its licensors. Copyright © 1989-2007 PG Music Inc. All rights reserved. PG MUSIC INC. 29 Cadillac Avenue Victoria, BC V8Z 1T3 Canada Contacts: E-mail: info@pgmusic.com Phone: toll free in the United States and Canada 1-800-268-6272, 1-888-PG-MUSIC (746-8742), Or 1-250-475-2874 (tolls apply) Universal International Freephone Service: Outside of the United States and Canada (where available).
Index 1st/2nd Endings, 353, 354 notes display, 324 A2 Transpose, 195 special cases, 320 drastic tempo changes, 323 Alias substitutions, 385 odd length bars, 323 Alternate Guitar Tunings, 86 zoom, 324 Guitar Tutor, 88 Audio Features selecting, 87 Applying Plugins, 240 ASIO, 13 Audio Harmonies, 102 control panel, 14, 411 driver dialog, 13, 410 harmonize to chords, 237 resampler, 14, 411 harmonize to MIDI, 235 melody pitch tracking, 237 audible drum count-in, 395 Audio Harmony Pitch Styles,
Extensions, 335, 336 patch changes, 152 Outputting to external device, 147 QWERTY keys, 151 uses, 153 preview, 110 Convert patch lists shortcuts, 56, 452 Cakewalk to BB, 118 Tutor, 335 PowerTracks to BB, 117 Chord Breaks, 348 Copyright, 454 Chord Builder, 346 custom file selection, 106 enter chords, 346 Chord Entry, 55 Descriptive hints, 106 Chord List, 451 Digitech Vocalist, 147 Chord Substitution DirectX Plug-Ins PG Real Time Analyzer, 371 example, 345 Display Options, 46 Chord Wizar
Dialog, 208 Favorite Songs, 92 File Associations, 106 Harmonize to Chords, 237 file selection Harmonize to MIDI Melody, 235 Harmony, 48, 65 no extension, 107 creating, 304 Files octave essential, 452 doubling, 304 transferring to Mac, 453 filter styles, 129 selecting, 48 Forced Rests, 159 test chord, 306 form markers, 353 velocity boost, 305 Fourths Harmonies, 307 Harmony Menu, 440 General MIDI 2, 118 Held chords options, 138 Global overrides, 107, 416 Help Menu, 446 GM Menu, 437 sho
Lyrics, 183 soft synth adjust, 11 document window, 184 understanding latency, 14 Event List, 181 Lead sheet line-based lyrics, 423 Options, 175 Menu, 180, 182 Lead Sheet, 187 Notebased Lyrics, 181 Fake Sheet Mode, 177 Lyrics enhancements memo, 178 show title, 175 Karaoke file lyrics, 185 text block, 178 MIDI file lyrics, 185 multiple lines, 81 Lead sheet options Lyrics Menu, 182, 422 convert harmony, 176 line-based lyrics, 183, 423 Harmony display, 176 Lyrics options, 184 Lead Sheet o
Number of Choruses, 195 Minimize Rests, 159 Replace Thru Form, 196 Music Replay, 338 Solo in Middle Choruses, 195 Mute All, 62, 119 Song Form, 195 New features embellisher selective humanize, 212 Tempo, 195 New Features Write To Track, 196 summary, 24 Melodist Maker, 311 tutorial, 37 choose unusual chord progressions, 312 Not’n Menu, 442 Melody Notation edit track, 223, 365 channel numbers, 166 Melody Embellisher courtesy brackets, 159 selective humanization, 64 editable, 158 Melody
Panic Button, 50 window, 72, 225 Panning, 400 zoom button, 79 Pitch Invasion, 337 Parameters, 222 Pitch Styles, 236, 238 Song, 142 presets, 239 Part Markers, 139 Pixel, 189 drum fills, 139 Play Menu, 420 Part Settings, 48 looping, 421 Patch list converter Cakewalk to BB, 118 step advance, 421 PowerTracks to BB, 117 tempo, 421 PowerTracks, 270 Patches Practice Window, 332 Allowing, 399 Patents, 2 chord breaks, 348 PG Music Inc.
text hints, 390 Reset to factory, 385 Transpose THRU Part, 407 Resolution, 158 TranzPort, 418 Rests, 159 Print voice, 180 right-mouse menus, 59 Printing Roland RA Series, 147 Chords Only, 190 Roland VSC graphics file, 189 install, 356 Lead Sheets, 186 Notation, 186 Roman Numeral Notation, 111 printer setup, 189 Root, 336 range, 188 Sample level, 233 Saving Song with Patches, 142 Pushes, 139 Scale tones, 337 Keystrokes, 139 Quantize, 222 Select region, 110, 162, 233 QuickStart, 16 Se
enhancements, 57 Soloist Maker, 308 Songs 10 steps, 310 phrasing, 308 loading, 57 Soloist Menu, 430 playing, 57 SoundBlaster Edit Soloist Track, 432 AWE32 Editor, 365 Soloist Maker, 430 track type, 430 Soundcards, 359 Utilities, 433 SoundTrack Generator, 198 Soloist note density, 207, 310 generate song, 199 Song how to use, 198 premade songs, 199 automatic intro, 197 automatic title, 198 Spacing, 222 Chorus Staccato, 169 Staff Roll Notation Begin and end, 54 Window, 163 drum fills, 13
drum patterns, 257 preview, 236 hot keys, 449 voices, 236 hybrid styles, 279 Technical Support, 454 making RealDrums, 285 Tempo Change at bar, 126 overview, 253 Tempo Control, 54 patterns Thru editing, 277 erasing, 256 Setting, 398 recording, 262 Thru velocity boost, 60, 399 velocity adjust, 278 Ticks, 221 Patterns Time line, 217 Time Signature, 123, 126, 381 Sliding, 282 piano, guitar, string patterns, 267 Timeshift, 222 toolbar, 256 Title Window, 53 StylePicker, 128 chorus setting
RealDrums, 38 Allowing Changes, 399 Reharmonist, 41 Changes, 118 Setting, 400 understanding latency, 14 VST unmute drum count-in, 395 Velocity Lines, 168 add plug-ins, 9 visual metronome, 395 control panel, 10 Vocal Wizard, 338 select, 9 Window Menu, 443 auto-transpose, 341 Chord Builder, 445 key, 340 range of song, 340 Windows Media/WMA, 249 transpose, 341 Wizard, 54 MIDI keyboard, 60, 67, 217 vocal range, 339 Voicings, 270, 347 Worksheet, 55 Volume Zoom, 233 464 Index
PG Music Registration Form Please register your program. Registering your PG Music software entitles you to free, unlimited technical support, advance notice of product upgrades, and news about new product releases. If you haven't registered your PG Music software yet, please take a few moments and do so now. How To Register Mail to PG Music Inc., 29 Cadillac Avenue, Victoria, BC V8Z 1T3, Canada Fax to 1-250-475-2937 or toll-free to 1-877-475-1444. On-line at www.pgmusic.
