Technical information

Chapter 12: Tutors and Wizards
211
MIDI File Chord Interpretation Wizard
Many people who play music by ear think of songs in terms of “Chords and Melody.” However many MIDI files
lack chord symbols, so they become difficult to learn without the user having to figure out the chords in a time
consuming process. Now you can open up any MIDI file in Band-in-a-Box, and Band-in-a-Box will automatically
figure out the chords of the song for you. It automatically analyzes the MIDI file, figures out where the bass, piano,
melody and other tracks are, and then works out the chord changes for the song. The chords are written onto the
Band-in-a-Box chordsheet like any other song. This allows you to quickly learn how to play a song from a MIDI
file - just read it into Band-in-a-Box and you'll see the chord symbols, and then learn the Melody! You can also read
tracks into the Melody and Soloist tracks.
Importing Chords
You can import the chords from a MIDI file. To do this, first blank the chordsheet, by choosing File | New. Then
select the menu item File | Import Chords from MIDI file to launch the Interpret Chords from MIDI file dialog.
Press the [Open (Change)…] Button to select the MIDI file that you'd like to import.
Once you've selected the file, you can press the [INTERPRET
CHORDS NOW] button.
When you do that, the chords will be interpreted from the MIDI file, and written onto the chord sheet. Prior to
pressing the [INTERPRET CHORDS NOW] button, you might want to make some custom settings.
When you load in the MIDI file, Band-in-a-Box interprets many
things from the MIDI file for you automatically. Normally you'd want this to happen, but if you'd prefer to make the
settings yourself, you can set the Auto Interpret settings from MIDI file to false.