User Guide

Chapter 14: User Programmable Functions
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half of the drum bars, and then the groove can change and should remain basically the same through to the end.
Keep in mind also when you either record or piece together your wave file, that in each “substyle”, there need to be
examples of fill, normal bars, and post-fills (bars specifically designed to come after fills, often containing a crash
cymbal which completes a fill). You also need at least one 2-bar ending.
After the bars of drumming should be a short section of single drum hits. These will be used to mix in with the bars
of drumming to emulate pushes and shots.
Example 1 shows an entire RealDrums style wave file. You can see that the first two bars contain the count-in, then
the majority of the file is taken up by regular drumming (you can see that halfway through the pattern is different –
this represents the ‘B’ subsection), then at the end there are 4 “shots” (single drum hits).
Example 1: Wave form of an entire RealDrums style wave file
Elements of the Text File
The text file contains three main portions, global settings, pattern definition, and shots definition. We’ll examine
each one separately.
Global Settings
Wavename=x.wav
The first line of the text file must be “wavename=x.wav”, where “x” is the name of the filename. For example, the
first line of the JazzBrushes_120 text file is “wavename=JazzBrushes_120_Style.wav”. This file usually is in the
same directory as the text file, but does not have to be. For example, you could make an alternate style that used
JazzBrushes_120_Style.wav called JazzBrushesAlternate. The text file would have to reside in
C:\bb\Drums\JazzBrushesAlternate\JazzBrushesAlternate_120_Style.txt, but the first line would still be
“wavename=JazzBrushes_120_Style.wav”.
ForceWavTempo=x
This is only used if the tempo of the style in question is different from the tempo that is in the filename of the wave
file being used. These are called “reduced” or “expanded” styles, and will be discussed further below.
TimeSig=3
This would be used if you are making a waltz style. The line can simply be omitted when making 4:4 styles.
OFFSET=x
Often a drummer will hit a drum or cymbal slightly before a beat so that the actual peak of the sound occurs on the
beat itself. The offset determines how many ticks (1 beat =120 ticks) before the downbeat a bar of drums will be
taken from the style wave file, which is intended to compensate for any occurrence of this early playing on the drum
track. It is important to note that iv a bar is taken 10 ticks early from the style wave file, it is also placed 10 ticks
early on the Band-in-a-Box drum track, so there will be no shifting of the actual groove.
If no offset amount is entered, the program defaults to an offset of 0.
To determine a good offset amount for a particular wave file, you can use an audio editor (such as PowerTracks Pro
Audio) to zoom in on the downbeats of all (or a sampling) of the bars. You can then measure the number of ticks