User Guide

Chapter 11: User Programmable Functions
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recorded patterns in terms of number of beats. For example, a 2 bar pattern would be = 8
beats.
Explanation of the numbers on the StyleMaker screen.
The StyleMaker screen is full of patterns, mostly empty indicated by a period (.). When a
pattern has been recorded, there is a number in place of the period for example (5).
These numbers indicate whether a pattern has been recorded at the location.
A period indicates no pattern and a number from 1 - 9 indicates that a pattern has been
recorded with the actual value corresponding to the desired weight the pattern is to be
given relative to other similar patterns. Patterns that you don't want to hear very often in
the style are given low weights. Usually you will use weights in the range of 0 - 8 where
0 = no pattern recorded
1 – 8 = pattern recorded
9 = special weight that is really given a much higher weight internally by the program. A
pattern with a weight of 9 will always be played (if not masked out by other options).
“a” and “b” refer to the 2 substyles available in the Band-in-a-Box program.
Explanation of the pattern lengths 8, 4, 2, and 1 beat.
You may ask, “Why would I need to have different pattern lengths in a style?”
Whenever Band-in-a-Box encounters a chord change in a song it will begin to playback a
new pattern, starting at the beginning of the pattern. It firsts scans the chord to see how
long that chord is going to last without a chord change. For example, let's look at these
chords:
| 1a Dm7 | 2 G7 C6 | 3 FMAJ7 | 4 (These chords are in substyle “a.”)
When Band-in-a-Box is playing back your style, it starts by looking at the Dm7 chord,
and counts that it lasts four beats before the next chord change to a G7 chord. It then
looks to the style that you have created and sees if you have any patterns created in the A
4 beat line – if so, you will get an appropriate pattern that you have recorded for chords
lasting four beats.
Note: If you don't want to classify patterns according to this method (don't worry), you can
just record all of your patterns on the A 8 beat line. When Band-in-a-Box sees that you
haven't any 4 beat patterns it will choose an eight beat pattern and then only use the first
four beats of it.
Then when Band-in-a-Box encounters the G7 chord, it sees that it lasts two notes before
the next chord change. So Band-in-a-Box will look for any A 2 beat patterns. There is
tremendous advantage to being able to record different length patterns. Eight beat
patterns might be blank for the first four beats for example; a situation that could not
apply for four beat patterns or the entire pattern would be blank!
Here is another example of chords with the durations of the chords displayed for you
underneath:
4 bar e.g. | F | Bb C7 | F6 | |
chord duration 4 2 2 8
Patterns may be entered for chord durations of 1, 2, 4, and 8 notes. The Band-in-a-Box
program sorts out everything else about determining the length of the chord durations in
the song and combining lengths for unusual lengths (3 = 2+ 1 etc.).
So now we know what the rows are for: they are for patterns of different lengths and
different substyles (A and B). The columns across the screen are used to contain multiple
variations of similar sounding patterns. The program will randomly pick between the