User Guide

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2007

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.

When you select a file to open you will see a series of Progress messages.

The Audio Chord Wizard is then launched, and more Progress messages will flash on screen as the file is analyzed

and imported. As well as interpreting the chords, the program is also inserting bar lines and setting the tempo.

The Audio Chord Wizard window shows an overview of the open wave file with the bar lines and chords as

interpreted by the wizard. Controls and settings are found in the toolbar at the top of the window, and the Audio

Piano Roll in the lower part of the window shows notes interpreted from the wave file.

The minus and plus zoom buttons at the bottom of the screen adjust the scale of the display. The minus

button shrinks the display to show more bars, the plus sign expands the display but shows fewer bars.

Now let’s move on to the Reharmonist.

This will generate a new chord progression for an existing melody, presumably one that you would like to have a

chord progression for. For example, let’s say that you like “Brandenburg Concerto #1 in F, 1st movement” by J.S.

Bach. This is a beautiful melody that adapts itself to many musical styles. Load in the song called “c:\bb\Tutorial –

BB2007\Bach Brandenburg - no chords present!” Now, let’s create a chord progression for this melody. We will

make it a Bossa Nova style song.

Press the Reharmonist button, and choose Auto-

Reharmonize for entire song.

In the dialog that appears, deselect “Show-All” and

then select the “Bossa Nova (Latin)” genre.

Note that the program has analyzed

the melody, and decided that the key should be F (this is independent of any key that was already set in the song).

Now press “OK – Reharmonize.” You will then have an entire chord

progression written for the song, in a Bossa Nova style.

The Chord Progression generated is different every time, so the one that you get will be different from this one that

we generated for the Tutorial. We saved this generated chord progression and it is found in the file “c:\bb\Tutorial –

BB2007\Bach Brandenburg - Bossa reharmonized.”