User Guide

Chapter 2: QuickStart

Step 3 – Play your song!

You’ve entered chords on the chordsheet and chosen a style. Now it’s time to play the song! You’ll need to tell

Band-in-a-Box how long your song is, how many times to play it through, in what key, and how fast.

Framing the Song

To tell Band-in-a-Box where to start and end the song, take a look at the middle of the main screen.

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.

Setting the Tempo

If you know the tempo value of your song, you can enter it in the tempo box. The song example above has a tempo

of 120. There is an even faster way to enter a tempo. Locate the minus sign key [-] and the equal sign key [=] in the

number row of your computer keyboard, they are usually next to each other. If you tap the minus sign key 4 times at

your tempo, Band-in-a-Box will set the tempo automatically for you. If you tap the equal sign key four times, Band-

in-a-Box will set the tempo and begin song playback at the tempo you tapped.

Shortcuts for song formatting

Typing special words, instead of chord names, will make the following settings:

begin + Enter sets the beginning of the chorus to the current bar

chorusend + Enter sets the end of the chorus to the current bar

end + Enter sets the end of the song to the current bar

tkc + Enter sets key signature to c, tkbb would set it to bb

trc + Enter transposes song to key of C

t125 + Enter sets tempo to 125

More fun with Band-in-a-Box…

That’s how easy it is to start creating music with Band-in-a-Box. Band-in-a-Box has many more features and user

options, which are discussed in later chapters. Have fun making music with Band-in-a-Box!