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Table of Contents PG MUSIC INC.
CHAPTER 7: JAZZ FONTS ADDED 42 CHAPTER 8: AUDIO RENDERING ENHANCEMENTS 43 “Direct-to-Disk” Audio Rendering Audio Rendering Enhancements Windows Media Player 8 Support 43 44 45 CHAPTER 9: ROLAND VSC3 SOFTWARE SYNTHESIZER 46 CHAPTER 10: STYLEMAKER ENHANCEMENTS 48 Style Checker Style Summary Pattern Velocity Adjust More Enhancements 48 48 49 50 CHAPTER 11: MIDI FILE ENHANCEMENTS 51 CHAPTER 12 : OTHER NEW FEATURES 53 File Associations. File Selection Dialog Enhancements.
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This documentation covers the new features in Band-in-a-Box 11. 9 Chapter 2 is a summary of the new features. 9 Chapter 3 is a QuickStart Tutorial. 9 Chapters 4-12 and Appendix A describe the new features in detail. The latest version of Band-in-a-Box adds 50 more features. First off, you'll get the “MIDI File Chord Wizard” that reads any MIDI file and interprets the chords for you to be displayed in Band-in-a-Box.
that allows you to quickly hear a part of the notation by moving the mouse over the notes. And much more … People familiar with the previous versions of Band-in-a-Box will be pleased to know that we have kept the same functionality of our previous releases. The new features are optional and don't interfere with familiar methods of using the program. All songs, styles, etc. are completely compatible with previous versions, so that you can upgrade without losing any of your existing work.
Chapter 2: Summary of New Features Band-in-a-Box 11 adds 50 new features and enhancements to make your music look and sound better, to make it easier, and to make it more fun! “Thank you” to all of the Band-in-a-Box users who have made suggestions in the PG Music forums and/or posted to the Band-in-a-Box wish list on our web page at www.pgmusic.com. It’s great to hear from you! The New Features in Band-in-a-Box Version 11 are ...
Multiple Tracks of Notation Previous versions of Band-in-a-Box only allowed you to view one track of notation at a time. Now you can view multiple tracks. Just click on the tracks that you want, in the order that they should appear from top to bottom, and they appear on a single staff system. Display the tracks on the Leadsheet Window, or print them out. All of the tracks highlight with the notes in red.
Melody Embellisher When a musician sees a lead sheet that has a melody written out, he/she would almost never play it exactly as written. They would change the timing to add syncopation, change durations to achieve staccato or legato playing, add grace notes, slurs, extra notes, vibrato and other effects. Now you can have Band-ina-Box do these automatically using the Embellisher.
- Pattern Velocity Adjust - This function adds or reduces the velocity of a single pattern, row of patterns, or all patterns in an instrument. It is useful for reducing or increasing the volume of an entire instrument, or fine tuning the velocities in a style. - The Pattern “Trim” function has been enhanced. - The windows for the StyleMaker now open up so that the Notation and the main StyleMaker window don't overlap. - The Column and Row number for the current pattern is now displayed onscreen.
Audio Rendering Enhancements In addition to the “Direct-to-Disk” Audio Rendering, there are other enhancements to the Rendering function. You can specify a number of seconds of silence at the beginning of the file and specify a number of seconds to wait at the end to accommodate the decay of the final sound. You can also choose to exclude the 2 bar count-in from the file.
Melodist Enhancements The Melodist feature creates songs with chords and melodies. We've enhanced it so that it can now create Bebop tunes and Jazz Ballads. You can also specify the note range for a created Melody. Main Chordsheet Enhancements You can now select the number (#) of rows to display for the main chordsheet. You can now select any font to use, and select the font size too. This allows you to read the chordsheet window from “across the room.
- The “Patch File” (.PAT) file limit has been expanded to include 2,000 patches, and we include a .PAT file for the SC-8850 with 1,800 patches! - The Style Aliases now work if the style is not found, also can set up aliases for styles that you don't have. - There is a Replay Button (and hot key Ctrl A). This replays the song without regenerating the arrangements. - There are handy hot keys for transposing the Melody or Soloist up or down one octave (Ctrl-Alt-1, 2, 3, 4).
Chapter 3: QuickStart Tutorial QuickStart Tutorial for the Version 11 Upgrade The full description of the new features in Version 11 of Band-in-a-Box is provided elsewhere. This tutorial is a quick-start tour of the new features in Version 11. It is assumed that you are somewhat familiar with the previous release of Band-in-a-Box.
Let's switch between the regular music font and the new Jazz font for the music display. Open up the notation window. To see the new Jazz font, you might need to open the Options dialog and select “Use Jazz Music Font.” Also, select the “PG Chords” for the Chord Font display, or any other font that you'd like. You should see this: You can also select “PG Jazz Text” for the Titles, and open the Leadsheet window to view them. Let's view multiple tracks of notation.
Let's check out the new MIDI file “Chord Wizard.” This feature allows you to read in the chords from any MIDI file, with the “Chord Wizard” figuring out the chord symbols from the MIDI file, and writing them onto the Band-in-aBox chord screen. If you don't have a MIDI file handy to try, you could load in the supplied MIDI file called “Violet Song.MID.” - 16 First- Blank the song by Choosing File | New Choose File | Import Chords From MIDI file.
Press the Choose button, and select “Violet Song.MID.” Since “Violet Song.MID” is a Jazz Swing song, press the “Jazz Standard” preset. Press the [INTERPRET CHORDS NOW] button. You'll then see the Chords interpreted and written onto the BB Chord Sheet. Here they are… If you exit the dialog, and examine the Melody track, you'll notice that the Melody has been written to the Melody track. This is because the dialog has options to read channels into the Melody and/or Soloist channels.
Let's associate File Types With Band-in-a-Box. Once set, this means that you can double click on a song or style in Explorer and Band-in-a-Box will open up with that song or style. Choose the new menu items File | File Utilities | Associate Files to associate the Band-in-a-Box file types, and Remove Associations to remove the associations. Let's hear a song playing with the new Roland VSC3. First off, make sure that you have installed the Roland VSC3 – it is a separate install from Band-in-a-Box.
Let's use the Direct-to-Disk Render to convert our Band-in-a-Box to a WAV file directly. Press the [.WAV] button on the main Band-in-a-Box screen. Press the Direct Render using VSC3 button. This launches the Roland VSC3 Virtual Sound Canvas. If the program doesn't launch, either you haven't installed the VSC3, or you haven't installed it to the default directory, which is c:\Program Files\roland\vsc30\. Once launched, you'll see the 2 panes of the Roland VSC3.
Let's check out Styles Set #27 … Jazz, Pop n’ More! Note: If you ordered Band-in-a-Box 11 as an upgrade, the package includes Styles Set #27. (This is not one of the styles disks that is included in the first time purchase unless you order the MEGAPAK.) If you have the first time version of Band-in-a-Box and don't have a \bb\styles27 directory, instead use the \BB\SOLODEMO directory of BB for this example.
Chapter 4: MIDI File Chord Interpretation Wizard Overview Many people who play music by ear think of songs in terms of “Chords and Melody.” However many MIDI files lack chord symbols, so they become difficult to learn without the user having to figure out the chords in a time consuming process. Now you can open up any MIDI file in Band-in-a-Box, and Band-in-a-Box will automatically figure out the chords of the song for you.
Press the [Change] Button to select the MIDI file that you'd like to import. Once you've selected the file, you can press the [INTERPRET CHORDS NOW] button. When you do that, the chords will be interpreted from the MIDI file, and written onto the chord sheet. Prior to pressing the [INTERPRET CHORDS NOW] button, you might want to make some custom settings. When you load in the MIDI file, Band-in-a-Box interprets many things from the MIDI file for you automatically.
The settings that are determined automatically for you are: - The Key Signature of the song (MIDI file). Some MIDI files contain a special event that states the key signature of the file, but most don't. For the ones that don't, Band-in-a-Box analyzes the tracks and makes a “best guess” at the correct key signature for the song. It usually gets it right, but if its wrong its likely out by a 4th or 5th interval.
It has automatically determined that the “Violet Song.MID” file - has 2 bars of lead-in. - has 103 bars of chords. - is in the key of F with a 4/4 time signature, and a tempo of 120. - has the Bass Part on channel 2.
- has the chording (comping) parts on Channels 3, 6 and 7. - has the Melody on Channel 4. - has no other parts like the Melody that should be put on the Soloist track. Presets for Chord Options Now, after loading in the MIDI files, you'd normally have a look at these settings above, to see if they seem reasonable for your MIDI file. If they are not, you can change the settings. For example, if you know that the key signature of the song is not F but is C, then you would set that.
These include: Chord Resolution: (default = 2 beats) This is the minimum number of beats for a chord. For example, if you set it to '2 beats', then the Chord Wizard will never attempt to come up with different chords that are only a beat apart. If you have a song that has a short section that does include chords every 1-beat, you can redo that section of the song with a 1-beat resolution. Include Slash Chords: If set, the Chord Wizard will include “slash chords” like F7/A or Cm/G.
Allow Sus Chords: The setting for “Allow Sus chords” determines if chords like Csus or Bbsus7 will be included. The “Allow 7th chords” specifies if 7th chords like C7 or Bbm7 would be allowed. Simple Rock songs might not have 7th chords or Sus chords. Allowing chords with no thirds should be set in a hard rock song, or similar song with “power chords” that might not contain the 3rd of the chords.
Once we've pressed the Interpret Chords Now button, we can see the results, by looking at the chord sheet. Here are the chords that were interpreted. Chord Wizard Results – interpreting from “Violet Song.MID. So that we can see how well the Chord Wizard did, we can compare it to the “correct chords” of the song, input by a musician listening to the song. The next example shows the “correct chords” for the song “Violet Song.
If you've read in the entire MIDI file, you have 103 bars of chords on the Chord sheet. This actually contains 3 choruses of the song. You might want to reduce that to a single chorus by setting the chorus end of the song to bar 36 and then erasing the excess bars (after bar 36) by choosing Edit | Erase. Examining the song that has been interpreted by the Chord Wizard. You'll notice that the title (Violet Song), key (F) and tempo (120) have been set to the values found in the file.
Other Settings for the Chord Wizard Band-in-a-Box and PowerTracks Pro Audio songs contain special events that write the exact chord names into the MIDI file. So if the Chord Wizard sees these events, it will use them instead of interpreting the chords, since they are likely to be completely accurate. If you'd prefer the Chord Wizard to ignore these chord events, set the “OK to use PG Music Chord names from MIDI File” to false.
Chapter 5: Melody Embellisher Overview When a musician sees a lead sheet that has a melody written out, he/she would almost never play it exactly as written. They would change the timing to add syncopation, change durations to achieve staccato or legato playing, add grace notes, slurs, extra notes, vibrato and other effects. Now you can have Bandin-a-Box do these automatically using the Embellisher.
Normal (unembellished) Melody… Embellished Melody… As you can see in the notation examples, the Embellished melody adds an anticipation in bar 9, and in bar 10 adds extra notes, timing changes, and grace notes to “spice up” the melody. Using The Embellisher If you disable the Embellisher, by de-selecting the Embellisher checkbox, the Melody will function as normal with no changes. There is an Embellisher Settings Dialog.
The Live Auto-embellish during every playback is the same setting that is on the main page checkbox. If enabled, embellishment will occur during every playback. If disabled, embellishment will not occur unless you choose the [Embellish NOW] button in the dialog. Embellisher Presets The presets allow you to quickly choose a combination of common settings for the Embellisher. The Embellisher Memo describes the current embellishment, with statistics counting the number of embellished notes.
Normally the embellishment occurs live when the song is playing, and doesn't affect the Melody permanently. But if you like the Embellishment, and want to apply it permanently to the Melody, you can choose the “Make Current Embellishment Permanent” option. If the song is not currently playing, you can still create an embellishment and have it apply permanently by pressing the [Embellish NOW – Permanent] button.
Anticipations An anticipated note is playing a note early (“ahead of the beat”). Unembellished notes Embellishment with ANTICIPATIONS on beat 1 and 3 Less Anticipations This is the opposite of anticipations. This finds notes that are anticipated, and “embellishes” them by playing them later (on the beat). Grace Notes The grace notes are brief notes played just before, and a semi-tone below the original note. The grace notes intentionally don't show on the notation, so that it will remain easily readable.
Extra Notes Extra notes are added between melody notes. In this “before and after” example, and Eb and E note are added between the D and F. Unembellished… With Extra Notes added… Note Turns With a note turn, a single note is replaced by a group of notes that include the original note and semitone or scale tones above and below the note. In this “before and after” example, the C note is replaced by a turn of 3 notes with a note a scale tone above the C.
There are additional settings, in the “Embellisher Additional Settings “ dialog box. This allows you to set advanced settings for the Embellisher. These include: - - - Vibrato Depth: This is the amplitude of the vibrato, and ranges from 0127. Vibrato Speed: This is the speed of the vibrato (slow-fast) range 0-127. Only use Vibrato if Note is this many ticks: e.g. If set to 120 ticks (one quarter note), then only notes of duration at least 120 ticks will get vibrato.
Chapter 6: Notation Window Enhancements Multiple Tracks of Notation Previous versions of Band-in-a-Box only allowed you to view one track of notation at a time. Now you can view multiple tracks. Just click on the tracks that you want, in the order that they should appear from top to bottom, and they appear on a single staff system. Display the tracks on the Leadsheet Window, or print them out. All of the tracks highlight with the notes in red.
There is an option in the Leadsheet Window Options to allow you to display the chords above each track, or just the top track of the notation. To revert to a single track of notation, simply click on a track without holding the [Ctrl] key down. Section Text and Boxed Text You can now add custom text messages at any position in the notation track, with optional box to appear around the text.
Scrub Mode To enable the scrub mode, from the notation window, press the [Scrub] button. Then hold the mouse and drag it over the notes that you want to hear. Selection of Font for Chords, Lyrics, Text and Titles From the Notation Options Dialog, you can set various Fonts. The Title font gets used for the Titles, Composer and Styles names that appear on the Leadsheet Window and Printout. You can choose from selected fonts, or use the “other…” selection to use any font.
Groups of 5 notes will automatically display as groups of 3+2 or 2+3, and can be set this way manually as well. A group of 5 notes will display as 3+2 (as in the example above) or 2+3. If you'd prefer to see them as a group of 5 notes, you can right mouse click on the timeline, and set the resolution to 5 for the beat.
Chapter 7: Jazz Fonts Added Jazz Music Fonts for Notes, Symbols, Chords and Titles Rich Siegler's Jazz Music fonts have become popular notation fonts, especially for displaying and printing Jazz and Pop music. Rich has designed customized “Band-in-a-Box” versions of his Jazz Music, Chords and Title Fonts, and they are included in Version 11. You can easily switch back and forth between the Regular fonts and the Jazz fonts. The Jazz fonts have the “handwritten manuscript” look.
Chapter 8: Audio Rendering Enhancements “Direct-to-Disk” Audio Rendering “Audio Rendering” means converting a song to audio format, usually to a WAV file. In previous versions this was done by recording the song as it played, which took several minutes (i.e., the length of the song).
Once launched, you'll see the 2 panes of the Roland VSC3. If you only see one of the panes, then you need to open up the “Player” section by pressing the Player button. Then you'll see the “Player” section, which has the MIDI file already prepared and ready to be converted to a .WAV file. Press the [AUDIO-CONV] button, and then choose the location and name for the wavefile (.WAV) to save.
From the WAV render dialog, you can specify a number of seconds to be padded to the beginning and/or end of the WAV file. You can elect to include the 2 bar lead-in for the WAV file, and include the Drum Count in sound using these settings. Windows Media Player 8 Support Band-in-a-Box has enhanced Audio Support for saving in Windows Media Player Version 8 format Once you've saved a WAV file, you can compress the file for Internet use, using the Windows Media Player format (.WMA).
Chapter 9: Roland VSC3 Software Synthesizer Roland VSC3 Sound Synthesizer Included An important part of “Band-in-a-Box” is the band that you actually hear – this is determined by the MIDI driver that you use for output. Most people use either an FM or Wavetable sound card or a software synthesizer. Roland has been making, in our opinion, the best quality software synthesizer – the Roland Virtual Sound Canvas (VSC).
The VSC3 has a latency of 430ms, which means that it takes 430 milliseconds for the VSC3 to produce the sound after instructed to do so by Band-in-a-Box. So you should set the latency to 430ms on the Options-Drivers dialog. Bandin-a-Box will likely do this for you. In addition to using the Roland VSC3 for output, remember that you can use it for the Direct-to-Disk rendering feature of converting a Band-in-a-Box song to a WAV file (described elsewhere).
Chapter 10: StyleMaker Enhancements The StyleMaker is a powerful Band-in-a-Box feature that gives you control over your own styles and arrangements. Now it’s even easier to edit and personalize Band-in-a-Box styles for the way you play. Style Checker Analogous to a “Spell Checker”, this function analyzes your style-in-progress and identifies possible problems. The results are output to a text window, allowing you to examine the patterns and fix them if required.
Time Signature: 4/4 Jazz Style? : No Tempo : 165 Resolution (drums) : Triplets Guitar Part uses intelligent Guitar voicings Guitar Chording type : Jazz Chords Total Patterns: 173 Drums 20 [A Sub]= 6, Bass Piano Guitar Strings [B sub] = 6, Fills = 4, Ending = 4 50 [A sub] 7/ 5/ 2/ 1 [B sub] 12/11/ 9/ 1 [ending] 2 70 [A sub] 7/21/ 5/ 1 [B sub] 3/21/ 9/ 1 [ending] 2 29 [A sub] 3/ 3/ 4/ 4 [B sub] 3/ 3/ 3/ 4 [ending] 2 4 [A sub] 1/ 0/ 0/ 0 [B sub] 1/ 0/ 0/ 0 [ending] 2 Patches Drums 1 Standard Drum Kit Bas
Choose the new menu item Pattern | Velocity Adjust (for 1 pattern, 1 row or whole instrument), and input the velocity change to make for the pattern(s). This will add or subtract a certain velocity value to the patterns. Tip: There is another velocity command “Volume adjust”, but it works differently. It will change the velocities to a certain value, useful for “smoothing out” the velocities. More Enhancements • The Pattern “Trim” function has been enhanced.
Chapter 11: MIDI File Enhancements MIDI File support has been enhanced to support both Type 0 and Type 1 MIDI files as well as Karaoke files and General MIDI lyrics. There is also more control over what is saved to your MIDI file. • “Save as Type 0 MIDI” file is now supported. You can save in Type 1 or Type 0 MIDI files.
• Choose which tracks get written to the MIDI File. By muting tracks right mouse clicking on the track name at the top of the screen – you can decide which tracks get written to the MIDI file. Any track that is muted is excluded from the MIDI file. • Option to eliminate 2 bar count-in from the MIDI file. If you don't want to create a MIDI file containing the first 2 bars of the 1—2—1-2-3-4 count-in you can select this option, and the MIDI file will begin directly at bar 1 without the count-in.
Chapter 12: Other New Features File Associations. New menu items have been added to Associate (or remove Associations for) the file types for Band-in-a-Box songs and styles in Explorer. Once set, this means that you can double click on a song or style in Explorer and Band-in-aBox will open up with that song or style. Choose the new menu items File | File Utilities | Associate Files to associate the BB file types, and Remove Associations to remove the associations. File Selection Dialog Enhancements.
Guitar Styles Enhanced We've added a new database for the Guitar Styles. This allows styles to be made using the Jazz Guitar “highest-4-strings-comping mode.” This plays chords usually on the 4 highest strings, and it plays several chords over a single chord. For example, for 2 bars of Cmaj7 it might play Cmaj7-Dm7-EbdimEm7, all played as half notes. This database plays with some new styles on Styles Set 27, and can also be played with any song using the Guitar Tutor.
If you choose a Custom font, you can choose the size as well. If you choose one of the preset fonts, the size will be set automatically to fit into the height of the chordsheet row. If you want to revert to the “old look” that used a small System font, and lots of rows, you can choose that as the type of font “Small font (system).” Big Lyrics Window Enhancements When there are no lyrics for a few bars, the Big Lyrics window displays the chords in a line divided by bars so that they are easy to read.
To access this, press the JukeBox button, and select the Preview option. Set the number of bars to use for the preview. Set it to 99 if you'd like one chorus of each song to be played. • The “Patch File” (.PAT) file limit has been expanded to include 2,000 patches, and we include a .PAT file for the SC-8850 with 1,800 patches! • The Style Aliases now work if the style is not found, also can set up aliases for styles that you don't have. • There is a Replay Button (and hot key Ctrl A).
Appendix A: Styles Sets #27, #28, #29 Please see the on-line documentation for detailed descriptions of the styles disks. (e.g. for Styles Set #27, see the file c:\bb\styles27\StyDsk27.DOC.) • • • • Styles Sets #0-26 are documented in the full Band-in-a-Box manual. Styles Set #27 is included with an upgrade package to Version 11 of the Band-in-a-Box program (not with first-time purchase of the program). Styles Sets #0-3 are included with the Pro version of Band-in-a-Box.
PG Music Inc. Information Band-in-a-Box Information Band-in-a-Box® is copyrighted and is the property of PG MUSIC INC. All rights reserved. Address for correspondence: PG MUSIC INC. 29 Cadillac Avenue Victoria BC V8Z 1T3 Canada E-mail: info@pgmusic.com Phone: toll-free 1-800-268-6272 or (250) 475-2874 Fax: toll-free 1-877-475-1444 or (250) 475-2937 Technical Support (250) 475-2708 support@pgmusic.com Visit our web site at www.pgmusic.com. 58 PG Music Inc.
Index Audio rendering burn to CD, 44 conversion rate, 44 convert to WMA, 44 count-in, 45 delay, 45 direct-to-disk, 43 VSC3 installed, 43 Windows Media Player 8, 45 Audio Rendering Enhancements, 43 Band-in-a-Box main screen, 14 boxed text, 8, 17 chord builder, 12 Chord Builder, 55 chord wizard, 16 Chord Wizard 3-step process, 27 automatic settings, 22 bass part, 26 chord options, 25 compare results, 28 delay bass root, 27 example, 23 import bars, 29 importing files, 21 interpret chords dialog, 22 other setti
MIDI file enhancements, 10 MIDI File, 51 chord interpretation, 21 chord wizard, 21 count-in, 52 eliminate count-in, 10 GM lyrics, 10 Karaoke, 51 track selection, 10 type 0, 10 Type 0, 51 multiple notation tracks, 8 new features, 7 Notation boxed text, 39 chord font, 40 colored notes, 13 multiple tracks, 15, 38 music font, 40 scrub mode, 12, 40 section text, 39 select fonts, 40 Text Event dialog, 39 title font, 40 PAT file, 13, 56 pattern velocity adjust, 10 PG Music Inc.
