Technical information

Chapter 6: Band-in-a-Box PowerGuide
102
Allow Embellishment of Chords
The Jazz styles include embellishment of chords. This means that if you type a C7 chord, the piano part may play a
C13 or a C7b9, a common practice in Jazz.
Tip: If you are hearing b9 and b13 embellishments on a C7 chord that is clashing with the melody, you should rename the
chord C9 or C13, which will ensure natural 9 and 13 embellishments.
Tag Settings
A tag (also referred to as a coda) is a group of bars that are played in the very last chorus of a song. If you select the
“Tag Exists?” check box then the tag will play during the last chorus of the song. After the bar you specify as the
“Tag Jump After Bar #” the song jumps to the “Tag Begin At Bar #” and plays through the “Tag Ends After Bar #”
and then plays a 2 bar ending as usual.
Generate 2 bar Ending for this song
You can disable the ending for a certain song. You can disable the endings for all songs regardless of this setting
from the Opt | Preferences dialog. (Allow Any Endings checkbox.)
Sliding Tracks (Play | Slide Tracks…)
This allows you to move any of the Bass, Drums, Piano, Guitar, Strings, Melody, or Soloist track ahead or behind by
a definable amount. For example, slide the Bass track a little ahead of the rest of the band to make the bass player
“drive the band.” To slide tracks, select the Slide Tracks option from the Play menu. The values are measured in
“ticks-per-beat” with 120 ticks being the equivalent of a quarter note. The musically useful range is from -10 to 10.
Allow Any Slides
If you want the slides to occur, then set this to YES.
Humanize Slides
If set to YES, the slides will be humanized to slide the track a different amount for each note. Humanizing the slide
makes the track sounds more alive.
Saving Songs
Once you have made a song (or have made changes to a song), you will probably want to save the song
by clicking on the [Save] button. Or choose Save from the File menu, or press [F2], or Ctrl+S.
Use [Save As] to save a song with a different name or in a different location. Shift-clicking on the
[Save As] button will allow you to choose a favorite folder prior to seeing the Save As dialog.
Songs will always be saved with last file extension letter of “U,” regardless of whether they are made with a built-in
style or not. For example, if you make a song with ZZJAZZ.STY as the style (i.e., one of the 24 built-in styles)
earlier versions of BB would save the song as MySong.MG1, where the “1” indicates Style #1 – ZZJAZZ. Now it is
saved as MySong.MGU. Older songs loaded in with .MG1 will still be re-saved as MG1 to prevent duplicate song
files.
Note: Make sure you remember to save your songs as Band-in-a-Box song files (not only as MIDI files). The Band-in-a-
Box song files contain the names of the chords, etc. and are much smaller than MIDI files.
If you have an audio file associated with the song, the audio portion will be saved separately, and will be called
MySong.WAV.
Saving Song With …
Patches, Volume, Reverb, Chorus, Panning, Bank, Harmony (both Melody and Thru), and the Soloist may be saved
with your songs. This is done by selecting the Save Song with Patches & Harmony option from the File menu.
If you would like to save certain patches with a song:
a) Type in the number of the patch (instrument) that you would like. Leave the other instruments at = 0 for no
patch change. Remember that the General MIDI numbering system is always used for instruments.
or
b) Press the [Fill w/Patches] button. This will fill the patch number boxes with the current patch settings showing
on your main screen instrument panel.