User Guide

Chapter 5: Playing Songs in Band-in-a-Box

The examples above are for DADGAD tuning, but apply similarly to all 11 alternate tunings included.

Some of the tunings are “Nashville High Strung.” These tuning have the lowest 3 strings tuned up an octave, to

achieve a close sound. So a DADGAD High Strung tuning would have the lowest 3 strings “DAD” tuned up an

octave. Listen to some style examples that use this tuning.

One of the tutors uses 3 note Jazz voicings to simulate the famous Big-

Band chord guitar comping styles. If you use this tutor you'll only see 3 notes in the chords of course. Since it

sometimes helps to see the entire 4 chord voicing in this case, there is the option to show the muted note as well.

The Tutor normally just shows the guitar part without

writing it to any track. If you want to see the track in notation copy it to the Melody or Soloist track.

Guitar Window Toolbar

At the bottom of the Guitar window is the toolbar.

The [Set…] button opens the Guitar Settings dialog, which allows you to set the guitar

options.

These buttons will chord step advance, or note-step advance. The chord step advance is the

most commonly used function. It is also accessible by the hotkeys Ins and Del on the

numeric keypad and will advance or go back one chord at a time, leaving the chord displayed on the guitar.

This is the name of the current note that the mouse is over. If you click on the guitar at that position, the

note will sound.

If the Notation Window is open (in Editable Notation or Staff Roll mode), that note will get inserted on the notation

at the current position on the timeline – you can disable that option to insert notes.

When you open the Guitar Window, the first thing you'll want to do is choose the track

that you want to display. Usually this will be a Melody track or a Soloist track.

In the diagram here, the Melody track is the current track, and it has a red rectangle around it to indicate this.

To get to the Soloist track, you would click on the [S] button or use the hotkey Ctrl+F5, which toggles between the

Melody and the Soloist. Similarly, you can display other tracks like Bass, Piano, or Strings.

The “position” button. This toggles between the two popular positions displayed with note names.

There is a Guitar Tutor button.

Generate a guitar chord solo based on the existing Melody track using correct guitar fret positions.

When you have a note or chord highlighted press the [Ch-] or [Ch+] (insert guitar chord) button on the

guitar, or 7 or 8 on the NUMPAD keypad. Each time you press the [Ch-] or [Ch+] you'll see that the

guitar chord changes to a different voicing, cycling through the available 5-10 voicings possible for each chord.

(Some notes won't have any chord voicings, for example a C# note on a Cmaj7 chord, because it is always a passing

tone.)

In a similar manner, you can convert a chord to a guitar note using the insert guitar note button.

Pressing the [N+] (or 3 or 4 on the NUMPAD keypad) repeatedly cycles through playing the

same note on all 6 strings.

Big Piano Window

The Big Piano window can display the notes of any track on a resizable piano keyboard. You can also set the range

of the piano and number of octaves to display. Additionally, you can display notes names or guide notes --showing

the scale notes of the current key. Notes can be displayed using a different color for each note. There's an “Auto-

Octave” setting that will scan the track to be displayed and auto-size the piano to the largest size that would display

all of the notes. This 'Big Piano' makes it easier to learn piano parts from within Band-in-a-Box.

The Big Piano window is launched (or closed) by pressing the piano icon on the toolbar at the right-middle

of the screen, or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+N, or choosing Window | Big Piano Window.