User Guide

Chapter 5: Guided Tour of Band-in-a-Box
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Chapter 5: Guided Tour of Band-in-a-Box
You can arrange, record, save, and print your own song ideas with Band-in-a-Box. Just type in the chords to any
song; choose a style and press [Play] to hear the “band” play a full arrangement. Have some fun by changing to
different styles. For even more fun record a MIDI Melody – or have Band-in-a-Box write a Melody for you. Add
Harmony, an automatically improvised Soloist, an Intro, and print out a lead sheet and play along.
Loading and Playing Songs
Band-in-a-Box has a number of menu commands to open song files, such as the File | Open song, with several
different filters, or Song | Go (Open and Play). The SongPicker opens with the File | Open Song by Title menu
command, which launches the Select Song by Title dialog.
Band-in-a-Box songs with the .SGU file extension are backup arrangements with no melodies. Songs with a MIDI
melody track have the file extension .MGU.
Select a folder and open a song in the Open Song dialog. It’s even more convenient to just
click on the main screen [Song] button to Select Song by Title from the list of songs in the
current folder. This SongPicker list can include up to 25,000 songs.
Use the [Folder] button to select another folder, for example, to select from all of your RealTracks demo songs.
The first time that you select the [Song] button Band-in-a-Box automatically writes the song list for the folder.
From then on, the song list opens when the [Song] button is selected.
If you’ve added some new songs to a folder just click on [Rebuild List] and the
SongPicker will add their titles to the list.
Check “Play when selected” to automatically play the song selected.