User Guide

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 (up to 25,000 songs). From then on, the song list opens when the

[Song] button is selected. “Play when selected” automatically plays the song you pick.