User Guide

Chapter 14: User Programmable Functions
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The other special case is a 0 weight. This is only used for fills. When Band-in-a-Box finds possible patterns, if a
particular pattern is going to end where a fill is required due to the part-marker placement, then the pattern will only
be included as a possibility if that bar in the style wave file has been designated as a fill at some point in the text file.
Likewise, a pattern that ends with a fill will not be considered a possibility if the fill doesn’t match up in the Band-
in-a-Box song.
For example, let’s say that Band-in-a-Box is searching for a pattern to place at bar 5, where bar 6 will need to be a
fill:
Example 6: Pattern needed for bar 5.
It will be looking for a normal pattern, and it can use a normal pattern that is 1 or 2 bars long. However, if it picks a
2 bar pattern, it needs to make sure that in the style wave file, the second bar is designated as a fill.
Let’s assume that this pattern is entered in the text file:
• Normal,A,5,0,2,15
This is a 2-bar normal pattern beginning on bar 15 of the style wave file. This pattern could only be picked in this
instance if there was another line somewhere in the text file defining bar 16 of the style wave file as a fill:
• Fill,A,5,0,1,16
However, it may be that this fill would not work well as a stand-alone bar (perhaps there is a cymbal decay that
crosses over bars 15 & 16 that you do not wish to break up – see “Duration” for more information on this). In this
case, you would still want to define the bar as a Fill, so that multi-bar patterns ending in this fill would be used at the
right place, but you would never want the fill to be picked on it’s own. In this case, you could give it a weight of 0:
• Fill,A,0,0,1,16
4. Mask
A Mask can be used to specify that a pattern should only be used a certain number of bars after a part marker. It
only applies to Normal patterns, and all other patterns should be given a weight of 0 (0 means no mask).
Here is a list of the possible masks, and what effect they will have:
• 0 – No mask: This pattern can be used anywhere
• 1 – Odd bars only: 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, etc. bars after a part marker
• 2 – Even bars only: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, etc. bars after a part marker
• 3 – 3, 7, 11, 15, etc. bars after a part marker
• 4 – 4, 8, 12, 16, etc. bars after a part marker
• 5 – 5, 13, 21, etc. bars after a part marker
• 6 – 6, 14, 22, etc. bars after a part marker
• 7 – 7, 15, 23, etc. bars after a part marker
• 8 – 8, 16, 24, etc. bars after a part marker
• etc.
Many drum beats use 2-bar rhythms that then repeat, so it’s very common for the “1” and “2” masks to be used. If
you have assigned a “1” mask to several Normal patterns, and a “2” mask to several others, you will always be sure
that the 2-bar grouping remains consistent. Just remember that you have to make sure that there are enough patterns
to cover all possibilities. If you have only patterns with “1” masks, and no patterns with “2” masks, then Band-in-a-
Box will not be able to find any patterns for even bars. The safest thing to do is to use a mask of “0,” but this may
not be the most musical approach. A mask of 4 is often used for more subtle fills that would highlight 4 bar phrases.
Masks higher than 8 are not commonly used, as it would mean that the pattern would be played very rarely.