User Guide

Chapter 5: Playing Songs in Band-in-a-Box
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Thru channel MIDI keyboard will be played through the Wizard. C, E, G, and Bb will be mapped to chord tones
while D, F, A, and B will be passing tones.
Changing Instruments / Settings for the Wizard
As a play along instrument, the Wizard uses the Thru instrument part. To change the instrument patch, volume,
reverb, etc. for the Wizard select the Thru instrument in the synth window.
MIDI Normalize
If performing a live set, or at a jam session, it helps to have the volume of all of the songs be similar. Now, with a
MIDI Normalize feature, you can level the volumes to a setting in the program options. For example, you can set all
volumes to be 70 and the program will make each song play within those levels. This is done in the Preferences
[Arrange] tab.
When you have set the normalize to “on” the title window at the top of
the screen reports that Normalization is set to 70, and that the velocity of
the currently playing song has been increased from 49 to 70.
The normalization will affect bass, drums, piano, guitar and strings. If you select the “Including melody and
Soloist” option, the normalization will also affect the Melody and Soloist parts.
Outputting MIDI to an External Device
Some external music hardware devices require chords played in root position to drive them in real time.
An example of this is the Digitech Vocalist. It will let you sing into a microphone and harmonize your voice
according to the chords that are input to the device. Band-in-a-Box has the capability of outputting a separate
channel with the chords in root position to support such external devices automatically.
There are also settings such as complexity of chords, output channel, velocity, and note range. It will also drive
“Real time Arrangers” like the Roland RA series. The best way to accomplish this is to access the Opt. |
Preferences and select the [OutputCh.] button. You will then be given a window like this:
Click on the [Vocalist] button if
you have such a device connected
to your MIDI system. Band-in-a-
Box will then send it the
appropriate chord information
automatically as your song is
playing (e.g., root position triads).
Add Real Instruments – RealDrums and RealTracks
Your songs, styles, and solos can use live audio tracks recorded by studio musicians. These live recordings can be
substituted for the Band-in-a-Box tracks in the RealDrums Settings or RealTracks Settings dialogs.
RealDrums
There are several ways to hear RealDrums with new or existing Band-in-a-Box songs.
We provide many styles that already have RealDrums. These styles can be identified by the style name beginning
with a minus sign. For example “-ZZJAZZ.STY” is a version of the ZZJAZZ.STY that uses RealDrums.