User Guide

Chapter 6: Making Songs in Band-in-a-Box
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The Edit Settings for bar… dialog (F5 key) lets you use multiple
RealDrums styles within a song - either using the RealDrums from a
Band-in-a-Box style or specifying a RealDrums style to use at a particular bar. Note that changes at any
bar must be enabled in the RealDrums Settings.
Arranging Your Song
Note: The chapter titled The Main Screen has additional information on the settings described here.
Setting the tempo
The tempo is displayed under the title.
Tempo is set based on Style when choosing File | New. The tempo is set to the best tempo for the current style.
Let’s say you wanted to change the tempo to 160 beats per minute (bpm). Click the mouse on the
arrow buttons to adjust the tempo.
- LEFT mouse click to change by 5 beats per minute at a time.
- RIGHT mouse click to change by 1 beat per minute at a time.
You can quickly enter a specific tempo for the song by clicking on the tempo (hot key is Ctrl+Alt+T, or menu item
Play | Tempo | Set Tempo…), and a dialog will open up allowing you to type in a tempo.
Tap the tempo
Not sure of the tempo for your song? Tap it in real time on either the minus [-] key or the equals [=] key on your
computer keyboard. Four taps on the minus key sets the tempo, four taps on the equals key sets the tempo and starts
the song playing. You can also click the mouse on the on-screen [-] and [=] buttons to the right of the tempo box.
“Framing” the Song
Framing a song designates the first and last bars of each chorus and the number of choruses Band-in-a-Box will play
before playing the standard 2 bar ending.
Here we have selected bar one to be the first bar of the chorus and bar 32 to be the last.
The chorus will play
three times, jumping to the two bar ending the third time through.
With the “Loop” checkbox enabled the entire song will keep repeating until stopped. (This is a
different feature from the “LoopSec” checkbox, which loops a selected section of the song.)
The “Fake” checkbox is for a “fake sheet” style of chordsheet display with 1
st
and 2
nd
endings and repeats.
The [Memo] button allows you to put in a memo to a song. You can type in a memo or paste text
from the Windows clipboard. The song memo has a
“Close w/play” option to close the memo automatically when “Play” is pressed, and not reopen when stop is
pressed. This setting, in combination with the “Auto-open” setting, ensures that the memo opens when the song
opens, but closes, during playback.
The [S] button opens the Song Settings dialog for additional settings such as endings, tags, style
variations, pushes, rests, and chord embellishments.
Song Settings Dialog
As well as the [S] button in the Title window, the Ctrl+N keys or the Edit | Settings (for This Song)… menu
command brings up the Song Settings dialog.
Here, you can choose from song settings such as chorus variations, chord embellishments, tag jumps, and endings,
to make your song interesting and varied.