User Guide

Chapter 6: Making Songs in Band-in-a-Box
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This is the screen for step-entry of a melody or for editing existing parts. There are checkboxes for different note
entry modes.
The Note or Rest checkboxes determine whether a note or a rest will be
inserted when the mouse is clicked.
When the Mono checkbox is selected, the notation is entered as monophonic (one note only). This is useful for
melodies that only have one note playing at a time. Mono mode is a faster way to enter notes, because the Notation
window will automatically delete a note that is present at the same location that you are putting a new note on. So if
you have mistakenly put a B note on as a C, you just click on the B note, and if in mono mode the C note will be
deleted automatically.
The notation has confirmation dialogs to prevent accidental entry of a duplicate note (same pitch near same time) of
a very high or very low note (large # of ledger lines).
Clean Notation
When music has been played in from a MIDI keyboard, there are frequently effects like grace notes, glitches, and
notes played off time. The Clean Notation mode is an intelligent feature that “cleans up the notation” for you. It
does this by eliminating the display of grace notes and glitches, and also simplifies the Notation display so it is more
readable. Clean Notation doesn’t affect the actual track it just controls how it is displayed. In general this should be
on, since it improves the display. But if you want to see every grace note or glitch that was played, then turn it off.
Beat Divisions
In the Editable Notation mode each beat is sub-divided by either 3 or 4 broken vertical lines.
- Swing styles use 3 lines to divide each beat into eighth note swing triplets.
- Straight styles use 4 lines to divide each beat into sixteenth notes.
Example of swing (triplet) resolution.
Example of straight (16ths) resolution.
Tip: The edits you make to Band-in-a-Box accompaniment parts will be overwritten when the [Play] button is pressed and the
program generates a new arrangement. To hear the song play as edited, use the [Replay] button found next to the [Play] button.
Edited songs can be permanently saved as a MIDI file with the [.MID] button.