Technical information

Chapter 2: QuickStart

Creating music with Band-in-a-Box is as easy as 1-2-3! In this chapter, you’ll see just how easy it is to get Band-in-

a-Box working for you.

Step 1 – Typing in the Chords

There are numerous ways of entering chords into Band-in-a-Box. We’ll discuss five fast ways of entering chords:

1. Using the computer keyboard.

2. Playing directly on a MIDI controller keyboard.

3. Using the Chord Builder feature.

4. Importing chords from a MIDI file.

5. Loading an Existing Band-in-a-Box format song.

On the main screen of the program, you’ll see an area called the chordsheet.

Band-in-a-Box main screen showing chordsheet.

Each of the numbered cells on the chordsheet represents a bar. In this example, we see that there is an E chord in

the first bar of this song, an A chord in bar 5, and later in the song, an E7 in bar 12. Notice the box in the first half

of bar 1. This is the highlight cell, and it represents the bar you are currently working on. You can move the

highlight cell around using the cursor keys, or select a specific bar using the mouse.

Enter Chords Using the Computer Keyboard

To enter a specific chord, move the highlight cell to where you want to place the chord. For example, to add (or

change) a chord in bar 10, you would highlight bar 10 on the chordsheet. Next, type in your chords. If you want an

E at bar 10, type the [E] key on your keyboard, and press [Enter]. Notice that when you use the enter key, the

highlight cell moves to the second half of the bar. You could then enter another chord at beat 3. Chords names are