PG Music Band in a Box - 2010 Macintosh User Guide

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PG Music Inc. License Agreement

CAREFULLY READ THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS BEFORE COMPLETING THE INSTALLATION OF THIS SOFTWARE. USAGE OF THE SOFTWARE INDICATES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS.

A. The program may only be used on a single machine. B. You may transfer the program and license to another party if the other party agrees to

accept the terms of this Agreement. If you transfer the program, you must either transfer all copies, whether in printed or machine readable form, to the same party, or, destroy all copies not transferred. This includes all modifications and/or portions of the program merged into other programs.

C. You may receive the program in more than one media. Regardless of the type or size of

media you receive, you may install or use the media on a single machine.

D. The program (including any images, “applets,” photographs, animations, video, audio,

music, and text incorporated into the program) is owned by PG Music Inc. or its suppliers, and is protected by international copyright laws and international treaty provisions.

You may not use, copy, or transfer the program, or any copy, modification or merged portion of the program, in whole or in part, except as expressly provided for in this license. If you transfer possession of any copy, modification or merged portion of the program to another party, your license is automatically terminated.

PG Music Inc.'s entire liability and your exclusive remedy shall be:

A. The replacement of any media not meeting PG Music Inc.'s “Limited Warranty,” which

are returned to PG Music Inc., or an authorized PG Music Inc. dealer, with a copy of your receipt.

B. If PG Music Inc. or the authorized dealer is unable to deliver replacement media that is

free of defects in materials or workmanship, you may terminate this agreement, and your

money will be refunded. In no event will PG Music Inc. be liable to you for any damages, including but not limited to lost profits, lost savings, or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or the inability to use such program, even if PG Music Inc. or an authorized PG Music Inc. dealer has been advised of the possibility of such damages, or for any claim by any other party.

Band-in-a-Box®, CloudTracks™, CopyMe®, GuitarStar®, JazzU®, PG Music®, PowerTracks Pro®, RealBand®, RealDrums®, and RealTracks® are either the trademarks or registered trademarks of PG Music Inc. in the United States, Canada, and other countries. Microsoft® and Windows® are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Apple®, the Apple logo®, GarageBand®, Leopard®, Macintosh®, Mac®, Panther®, Power Mac®, QuickTime®, Tiger®, and TrueType® are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. IBM® is the registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. Roland® and “Roland” Logo, EDIROL® and “EDIROL” Logo, GS® and “GS” Logo, are registered trademarks and “MIDI2” Logo, EDIROL Virtual Sound Canvas Multi Pack, VSC-MP1™ are trademarks of Roland Corporation. ASIO is a trademark and software of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. VST is a trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. Other brands and their products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be noted as such.

Band-in-a-Box is protected under US Patent 5990407. The TC-Helicon Harmony feature in Bandin-a-Box and PowerTracks Pro Audio is protected under US Patents 5567901, 5641926, 5986198, 34583, 296.80.173.9, PI9603819.5, 0368046, 0750776, 6,046,395, and patents pending.

LIMITATION OF REMEDIES

PG Music Inc. License Agreement

LICENSE

TRADEMARKS

PATENTS

Printed in Canada

Table of Contents

PG Music Inc. License Agreement...............................................2

Table of Contents...........................................................................3

Chapter 1: Welcome to Band-in-a-Box! ......................................6

What is Band-in-a-Box? .................................................................................... 6

Chapter 2: QuickStart Tutorial ...................................................7

Step 1 – Enter the Chords.................................................................................. 7

Step 2 – Choose a Style ..................................................................................... 9

Step 3 – Play your song!.................................................................................. 11

More fun with Band-in-a-Box. ........................................................................ 12

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh ........................13

Summary of New Features .............................................................................. 13

New RealTracks PAKs!................................................................................... 15

QuickStart Tutorial.......................................................................................... 16

Chapter 4: The Main Screen .....................................................26

Main Screen Overview .................................................................................... 26

Status Bar ........................................................................................................ 27

Synth Window / Piano Keyboard .................................................................... 27

Toolbars........................................................................................................... 31

Title Window................................................................................................... 34

Chordsheet Area .............................................................................................. 36

Chapter 5: Guided Tour of Band-in-a-Box...............................38

Loading and Playing Songs ............................................................................. 38

View and Print Notation.................................................................................. 49

Play the Jukebox.............................................................................................. 53

Automatic Songs - “The Melodist”.................................................................. 54

Make Your Own Songs ................................................................................... 56

Chapter 6: Band-in-a-Box PowerGuide ....................................63

RealTracks....................................................................................................... 63

RealDrums....................................................................................................... 73

Song Settings................................................................................................... 81

The Chordsheet................................................................................................ 88

Chord Preview/Builder.................................................................................. 102

MIDI file “Chord Wizard”............................................................................. 103

Applying Styles ............................................................................................. 105

Table of Contents

The StylePicker.............................................................................................. 107

Playing, Pausing, and Stopping Songs........................................................... 112

Changing Volume, Panning, Reverb, Chorus, Bank...................................... 114

Freeze Tracks................................................................................................. 116

Saving Songs ................................................................................................. 117

Preferences – User Settings............................................................................ 119

Other Editing Features ................................................................................... 132

MIDI Setup .................................................................................................... 135

The JukeBox .................................................................................................. 140

Chapter 7: Notation and Printing............................................ 142

Notation ......................................................................................................... 142

Printing ..........................................................................................................152

Chapter 8: Automatic Music Features ....................................155

Automatic Songs - “The Melodist”................................................................ 155

Automatic Solo Generation – “The Soloist”.................................................. 162

Automatic Guitar Chord Solos – “The Guitarist” ..........................................167

Chapter 9: Recording Tracks................................................... 174

Real Time Recording..................................................................................... 174

Step Edit Notes .............................................................................................. 176

Entering Notes Manually in the Notation Window........................................ 177

Recording with the Wizard Feature ............................................................... 177

Importing Pre-Recorded MIDI Data .............................................................. 178

Record using The Melodist............................................................................ 179

Additional Options for Melody/Soloist Track................................................179

Chapter 10: Audio Features .....................................................186

Rendering Audio Files ................................................................................... 186

Render MIDI Track to AIFF File................................................................... 187

Chapter 11: User Programmable Functions........................... 188

The StyleMaker.............................................................................................. 188

The Harmony Maker...................................................................................... 213

The Soloist Maker.......................................................................................... 218

The Melodist Maker....................................................................................... 219

The Guitarist Maker....................................................................................... 223

Chapter 12: Wizards, Tutors, and Utilities.............................228

Audio Chord Wizard (“Chords from MP4”).................................................. 228

MIDI File Chord Wizard................................................................................238

The Reharmonist............................................................................................ 245

Chord Breaks .................................................................................................248

Table of Contents

The Guitarist.................................................................................................. 248

Guitar Tutor................................................................................................... 252

Chord Substitution Wizard ............................................................................ 254

Chord Builder ................................................................................................ 257

Animated Drum Kit....................................................................................... 258

Drum Kit Main Window................................................................................ 260

Chapter 13: CoreMIDI and Apple DLS Synth.......................262

CoreMIDI and Apple DLS Synth Tutorial .................................................... 262

Chapter 14: Reference ..............................................................267

File Menu ...................................................................................................... 267

Edit Menu...................................................................................................... 269

Song Menu .................................................................................................... 272

Styles Menu................................................................................................... 277

User Menu ..................................................................................................... 278

Melody Menu ................................................................................................ 280

Soloist Menu.................................................................................................. 285

Harmony Menu.............................................................................................. 289

MIDI Menu.................................................................................................... 291

GS Menu........................................................................................................ 295

Windows Menu ............................................................................................. 297

Help Menu..................................................................................................... 298

Keystroke Commands – “Hot Keys”............................................................. 298

Chord List...................................................................................................... 301

PG Music Inc..............................................................................303

Index ...........................................................................................304

Registration Form .....................................................................312

How to Register............................................................................................. 312

Chapter 1: Welcome to Band-in-a-Box!

Congratulations on your purchase of Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh, the favorite of musicians, students, and songwriters everywhere. Get ready to have fun!

What is Band-in-a-Box?

Band-in-a-Box is an intelligent automatic accompaniment program for your multimedia computer.

You can hear and play along to many song ideas and go from “nothing” to “something” in a very short period of time with Band-in-a-Box as your “on demand” backup band.

Band-in-a-Box is so easy to use!

Just type in the chords for any song using standard chord symbols (like C, Fm7, or C13b9), choose the style you’d like, and Band-in-a-Box does the rest, automatically generating a complete professional-quality arrangement of piano, bass, drums, guitar, and strings or horns in a wide variety of popular styles plus optional live audio tracks with RealDrums and RealTracks.

And that’s not all...

Band-in-a-Box is a powerful and creative music composition tool for exploring and developing musical ideas with near-instantaneous feedback. Over the years, many powerful and practical features have been added to Band-in-a-Box, earning it a reputation as the “one music program you can’t do without.” In addition to its basic ability to “think” like a musician, the musical intelligence of Band-in-a-Box has grown to include improvisation, harmonization, and even songwriting! Its musical content embraces literally thousand of musical idioms and styles, all taken to new levels of quality and professionalism with the addition of RealDrums and RealTracks - live recordings by top studio musicians that add the human element to Band-in-a-Box arrangements, bringing your work to life.

As well as essential features like on-screen notation and professional lead sheet printouts, Band-in-a-Box supports your music making with unique and powerful features of its own. The Audio Chord Wizard has the amazing ability to analyze, extract, and show the chords from audio recordings on-screen for play along, and then write them to the Bandin-a-Box chordsheet. The MIDI Chord Wizard does the same thing for MIDI files. The DAW Plug-in Mode makes it easy to drag and drop tracks from Band-in-a-Box into your favorite sequencer (GarageBand, ProTools, Logic, Nuendo, Reaper and more).

Output your Band-in-a-Box songs in print or as a graphics file for web publication or to e-mail to a friend. And when you're ready to let others hear your composition, you can quickly and easily render your song to popular audio formats for burning to CD or uploading to the Internet.

There are many, many more features for song creation, practice, study, and fun waiting for you in the one-and-only Band-in-a-Box.

Let’s get started!

A note about this manual. This book is your everyday reference and guide to the program and its features. See Help|View Band-in-a-Box Manual for the full manual.

Chapter 1: Welcome to Band-in-a-Box!

Chapter 2: QuickStart Tutorial

Creating music with Band-in-a-Box is as easy as 1-2-3! In this tutorial, you’ll see just

how easy it is to get Band-in-a-Box making music for you.

Step 1 – Enter 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

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.

Each of the numbered cells on the chordsheet represents a bar. In this example, you can see that there is an F6 chord in the first bar of this song. Similarly, one row down, you can see an F6 chord in bar 5, and later in the song, a G7 in bar 7.

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, if you wanted to add (or change) a chord in bar 20, you would highlight bar 20 on the chordsheet. Next, type in your chords. If you want an F7 at bar 2, type F and 7 on your keyboard and press Return. Notice that when you use the Return key, the highlight cell moves to the second half of the bar. You could then enter another chord at beat 3. Chords are commonly typed using standard chord symbols (like C or Fm7 or Bb7 or Bb13#9/E), but you can enter them in any of the supported chord symbol display formats like Roman Numerals, Nashville Notation, and Solfeggio.

Chapter 2: QuickStart Tutorial

Enter Chords Using a MIDI Controller Keyboard

If you have a MIDI controller keyboard, you can use it to enter chords into Band-in-aBox. First, you must make sure that your cables are properly connected and you have the correct input drivers selected.

If you play a chord on your MIDI keyboard, and then press Ctrl+Return, the chord will be entered into the chordsheet at the current highlight cell position.

Enter Chords Using the Chord Builder

Press the Chord Builder button.

This opens the Chord Builder dialog with a list of chord roots and extensions.

Chord Builder Dialog

To enter a chord at the current bar, select the chord root from the left pane, and then the extension on the right pane. Pressing [Enter Chord ___] enters the chord and advances the highlight cell to the next half bar.

Import Chords from a MIDI File

Band-in-a-Box can import chords from an existing MIDI file with the Chord Wizard.

Chapter 2: QuickStart Tutorial

Choose File | Import Chords from MIDI File on the File menu, or use the keystrokes Ctrl+Option+I, to open the Chord Wizard dialog.

When the Chord Wizard dialog opens, press the [Open (Change)…] button to choose the MIDI file that you want Band-in-a-Box to interpret the chords from.

To help Band-in-a-Box interpret the chords better, you can choose a preset for the song. Choose from among such genres as Pop, Rock, or Jazz Standard.

Loading an existing Band-in-a-Box format song

Press the [song] button. The first time you use this button, Band-in-aBox will offer to build a song list for you. We’ve included many demo songs for you to use, and they are listed in the song list.

You could also load a pre-existing song by using the File | Open song… menu item, or by pressing the F3 function key, which will launch the familiar Macintosh file dialog. Note that most songs will automatically load a “Style,” which we’ll learn about in the next section.

Going to the next step …

Now that you have chords on your chordsheet, you are ready to move on to step number two.

Step 2 – Choose a Style

Band-in-a-Box creates backing arrangements based on the chords you type in, applied to a particular Style.

What’s a Style?

A style is a set of rules that determine how Band-in-a-Box creates music using your chords. By adjusting the rules, we have created hundreds of styles that are appropriate for everything from Country to Bebop. Some style examples would be Jazz Swing, Blues Shuffle, Hip Hop, Country 4/4, Pop Ballad, Waltz and Medium Rock to name just a few. If you don’t find a pre-made style that suits your tastes, create one from scratch using the StyleMaker. Making custom styles with the StyleMaker is explained in detail in the full documentation.

Four Fast ways to Open a Style

Method 1: From Disk

To open a user style from disk, you can just type the F9 key. You will be presented with the familiar Macintosh file dialog from which you can select a specific style from the Styles folder.

Method 2: The StylePicker

You can use the StylePicker window to select your style. Select the [Style] button above the chordsheet, or type Ctrl+F9 on your computer keyboard.

Chapter 2: QuickStart Tutorial

Selecting a Style using the StylePicker.

This window shows styles listed by categories. RealStyles are styles entirely made with RealTracks and RealDrums. Styles with RealTracks use a combination of RealTracks and MIDI instruments. MultiStyles are styles with more variations than the standard “a” and “b” substyles.

Select a Set or genre from the left pane, and choose the specific style on the right pane. There are memos and examples for each of the styles. Styles with a similar feel and tempo range to the current selection (prototype) are marked with an (*) asterisk. These styles are possible substitutes for the prototype. Styles marked with a (^) caret symbol are similar in feel but have a different tempo range. The style of your song can be changed at any bar by pressing the F5 key to launch the Edit Bar Settings dialog.

Method 3: Favorites

Styles that you’ve used previously show up in the Favorite Styles dialog. Choose this from the menu User | Load Favorite Styles… or type Shift+F9 on your computer keyboard, or click on the [F] button to the left of the [Style] StylePicker button. You can choose to save a Favorites set for use later. You can also load a set of favorite styles this way.

Method 4: Quick Pick

You can choose from among the 24 “built-in” styles. This list provides a quick way to choose from among the most popular music genres.

Chapter 2: QuickStart Tutorial

Step 3 – Play your song!

We’ve entered chords on the chordsheet and chosen a style. Now it’s time to play the song! First we need to tell Band-in-a-Box how long our song is, how many times we want the program to play through the chords, in what key, and how fast.

Framing the Song

To tell Band-in-a-Box where the start and end of the song is, we look at the middle of the Band-in-a-Box main screen.

Locate the framing settings; there are three of them. The numbers (1-32) in brackets are the bar numbers for the beginning and the end of the Chorus. The number 3 to the right of the brackets is the number of times the Chorus repeats. In the example above, the Chorus starts at bar 1, ends on bar 32, and is going to play 3 times. You can change these settings to play more choruses, or make the Chorus start later, for example in the case where you want an intro to play.

Setting the Key

In the example shown, the key is set to C but you can choose any key by clicking on the key signature and choosing from a list. If you do change the key, Band-in-a-Box will

Chapter 2: QuickStart Tutorial

offer to transpose the chordsheet for you. If you’ve entered a progression that you intend for a particular key, and then choose the key afterward, you should say no when asked to transpose the chordsheet.

Setting the Tempo

If you know the tempo value of your song, you can enter it in the tempo box. The song example above has a tempo of 120. There is an even faster way to enter a tempo. Locate the minus key [-] and the equals key [=] in the number row of your computer keyboard, they are usually next to each other. If you tap the [-] key 4 times at your tempo, Band-ina-Box will set the tempo automatically for you. If you tap the [=] key four times, Bandin-a-Box will set the tempo and begin song playback!

Press Play

When you’re ready, just press the [Play] button or the F4 function key and Band-in-a- Box will immediately generate and play a professional arrangement of your song using the settings and the style you selected.

More fun with Band-in-a-Box.

It’s that easy to start making music with Band-in-a-Box, but there are many more powerful features for you to discover. For a start, you could add a human element to your arrangement with RealTracks and RealDrums.

Add RealTracks and RealDrums

RealDrums and RealTracks add accompaniment by top studio musicians to your songs. RealDrums replace the MIDI Drum track with real recordings of top studio Jazz, Rock, and Country drummers. These are not “samples,” but are full recordings, lasting from 1 to 8 bars at a time, and playing along in perfect sync with the other Band-in-a-Box tracks.

RealTracks instruments include guitars, piano, bass, saxes, trumpet, trombone, pedal steel, fiddle, banjo, mandolin and many more. These tracks replace the MIDI track for that instrument, and can be controlled just like the MIDI instrument (volume changes, muting etc.). Best of all, they follow the chord progression that you have entered, so that you hear an authentic audio accompaniment to your song.

Any track can be converted from a MIDI track into a Real track from the contextual menu on the main screen. Just right click (or Control+click or double click) on the part name to open the menu and then select “Generate RealTrack” (or RealDrums).

You will then be shown a list of all the available instruments and styles to make your selection.

Now it’s time to make music with Band-in-aBox…

Have Fun!

Chapter 2: QuickStart Tutorial

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

Summary of New Features

Overview

Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh is here with over 50 cool new features!

There are some exciting new features in Band-in-a-Box. We've added a new “Plug-in” mode, allowing you to simply Drag-n-Drop tracks between Band-in-a-Box and your favorite sequencer (GarageBand, ProTools, Logic, Nuendo, Reaper and more). RealTracks generate much faster now, typically 4X faster. RealTracks now support Shots, Holds, and Pushes. Time for generating MIDI arrangement is much faster - now “instantaneous” (less than 1 second). Endings are improved, and RealTracks endings are now 4 bars long, giving time for the natural decay of the instruments. Individual tracks (MIDI or Real) can be frozen now, so the arrangements can be saved and fixed, and will replay quickly without need for regeneration. Soloist RealTracks are now saved with the song. We’ve added Multiple Undo support, up to 999 levels of Undo. There are new Reverb and Bass/Treble controls for each track, allowing you to add these to individual RealTracks. All settings are now saved with each song. And many more!

The Details

The New Features in Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh are...

There is now a “Plug-in” mode for your favorite sequencer (GarageBand, ProTools, Logic, Nuendo, Reaper and more). With the new plug-in mode, Band-in-a-Box is open

as a small window, and acts as a plug-in for your favorite DAW/sequencer, so that you can Drag-n-Drop MIDI and audio (AIFF) tracks from Band-in-a-Box to your favorite sequencer. Work in your favorite sequencer, type a progression in Band-in-aBox, and then simply drag the track from Band-in-a-Box to your sequencer's track at the desired track and bar location.

No more long waits for RealTracks to generate! RealTracks generate much faster, 4X faster on average. A typical song with RealTracks that took 20 seconds to generate will

now generate in about 5 seconds. And if you freeze some or all tracks in the song (see below), playback of RealTracks is almost instantaneous.

Time for generating MIDI arrangement is much faster - now “instantaneous” (less than 1 second)!

Freezing (locking) MIDI tracks or RealTracks/RealDrums. Any track (MIDI or Real) can now be frozen. When frozen, it won't be changed or re-generated. This saves time when replaying previous songs, and allows you to freeze an arrangement that you like. If you freeze the whole song, you don't have to wait at all for the song to regenerate. Next time you play, it is ready to go.

All Tracks can be Edited and Saved. MIDI tracks for bass, drums, piano, guitar and strings can now be edited, and saved with the file. If you freeze a track, edits can be still made to it, because it is only frozen from Band-in-a-Box making changes to it (you can still edit it), so that the MIDI track will be saved to the file. So you can customize the bass part to match a certain song, and save it with a frozen bass part, so Band-in-a-Box won’t overwrite your edits. This includes RealCharts – if you wanted to edit the notation of a RealTracks solo for example.

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

Soloist generated RealTracks are now saved with the song, so you will hear the RealTracks play the same solo when you reload the song.

RealTracks now support new features, including Shots, Holds, and Pushes. Simply type in the chords as you normally would, adding periods (…) for shots and holds, and the RealTracks will play them. Note for this, you need the installer that creates a LibraryM/Holds folder in your RealTracks folder.

RealTracks endings have been enhanced, and are now 4-bar endings instead of 2-bar, allowing time for a natural decay of the instruments.

Multiple Undo support. Up to 999 levels of undo (configurable).

Always save all song settings. Now all settings are saved with songs, including patches,

reverbs, volume, etc., so that the song will play the same way each time, without having to set this in the Save With Patches dialog.

Reverb control added for individual tracks with RealTracks or RealDrums, so you can easily add reverb (0 to 127) for any RealTrack. Reverb type is also settable, and saved with the song.

Bass/Treble Tone Control added for individual tracks with RealTracks or RealDrums, so you can easily adjust the bass/treble EQ for any RealTrack. Settings save

with the song.

Band-in-a-Box window is now sizable, when size changes, chordsheet, notation, and other windows redraw in proportion to the new size. This allows you to have Band-in-aBox open as a small window on screen with other programs, and you still see a full chordsheet. The screen size is remembered between sessions.

New favorite songs/styles dialog, with separate lists of “recently played” and favorite songs or styles. The previous “favorite” songs/styles dialog was a list of recently used songs/styles. Now there are 2 tabs in this dialog, showing you both recently used songs/styles, and a new list of “favorites” that you select as a favorite songs or styles. You can add an unlimited number of favorites.

Double-time and half-time support for RealTracks added. Now you can play any RealTracks at half-time or double-time. This allows you, for example, in a ballad at a tempo of 70, to add a RealTracks Sax solo with tempo of 140, and play it as a doubletime, which will match the ballad tempo of 70. So now all of your existing RealTracks can be used at 3 different tempos (normal, half-time, double-time).

Tempo swapping of similar RealTracks. You can use this feature either automatically or manually. If you set “Auto RealTracks substitution based on tempo” to true in the RealTracks Settings dialog or Additional Song Settings dialog, Band-in-a-Box will automatically choose the best one to use. For example, if you have a ballad loaded, with an Acoustic Bass RealTracks at a tempo of 60, and you speed up the tempo to 140, and press [Play] button, Band-in-a-Box will automatically choose an Acoustic Bass RealTracks closer to the tempo of 140, if it is the same genre and feel. This means you can use a simple Jazz style, and play it at various tempos, without having to set the best RealTracks based on tempos. If you don’t want this feature to work automatically, then set “Auto RealTracks substitution based on tempo” to false. The RealTracks that support the Tempo Swapping are listed in the next to last column of the Assign RealTracks to Track dialog.

RealTracks Picker dialog enhanced:

- Opens up faster.

- New columns are added (tempo swappable, holds type).

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

RealDrums Picker dialog has been enhanced, with information about Artist name, Artist bio, and RealDrums Set number.

Rendering now has a Normalize option, to normalize individual tracks or the complete

arrangement. Normalizing boosts the volume to a maximum level without distortion. Most professional music tracks are normalized.

Songs that are “Saved-As” a different name now have the new name added to the Recently Played Song dialog.

Support enhanced for non-concert instruments (Bb/Eb sax, trumpet etc.). Now

when the chordsheet is transposed, you can type in chords in the transposed key, and they will show up as you have entered them, instead of requiring you to enter the chords in the concert key.

More Soloists are now available, up to 2000.

Many messages changed to “yellow alerts” at top right of screen, so you don’t have to

respond to the message, interrupting work flow.

Looped playback of any selected region. On the Chordsheet window (not the Notation window), select a region of bars, and press the [Loop] playback button on the toolbar. The selected region will loop. You can change the looped section during playback. Pressing [Loop] button again will turn off looping.

Mouse scroll wheel support added to the main window, notation window, and many dialogs.

Ability to have endings use a “held chord,” (like C...). (RealTracks and MIDI)

For songs with no ending, the last chord of the song can be a held chord (like C...).

(RealTracks and MIDI)

New RealTracks PAKs!

There are 101 new RealTracks sets available, with special packages for Jazz, Rock-Pop, and Country.

These new RealTracks add to a large existing library of Jazz, Country, Rock, Pop, Metal, Blues, and Bluegrass styles and more - all recorded by top studio musicians and recording artists. The total number of RealTracks available is now over 400, with more to come in a wide variety of popular styles and genres.

RealTracks sets are available separately for $29 each and they also come in specially priced PAKs for bundling with your favorite Band-in-a-Box package. They come included in the premium value versions of the Band-in-a-Box program.

RealPAK: Jazz 3

- 6 RealTracks Sets (34 styles)

- 1 RealDrums Set (3 style groups)

RealPAK: Rock-Pop 3

- 5 RealTracks Sets (33 styles)

- 1 RealDrums Set (4 style groups)

RealPAK: Country 3

- 5 RealTracks Sets (34 styles)

- 1 RealDrums Set (2 style groups)

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

QuickStart Tutorial

How to Use the New Features in Band-in-a-Box 2010

Band-in-a-Box 2010 is here with over 50 cool new features!

There are some exciting new features in Band-in-a-Box. We've added a new “Plug-in” mode, allowing you to simply Drag-n-Drop tracks between Band-in-a-Box and your favorite sequencer (GarageBand, ProTools, Logic, Nuendo, Reaper and more). RealTracks generate much faster now, typically 4X faster. RealTracks now support Shots, Holds, and Pushes. Time for generating MIDI arrangement is much faster - now “instantaneous” (less than 1 second). Endings are improved, and RealTracks endings are now 4 bars long, giving time for the natural decay of the instruments. Individual tracks (MIDI or Real) can be frozen now, so the arrangements can be saved and fixed, and will replay quickly without need for regeneration. Soloist RealTracks are now saved with the song. We added Multiple Undo support, up to 999 levels of Undo. There are new Reverb and Bass/Treble controls for each track, allowing you to add these to individual RealTracks. All settings are now saved with each song. And many more!

The New Features in Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh are...

DAW Plug-in Mode

There now is a “Plug-in” mode for your favorite sequencer (GarageBand, ProTools, Logic, Nuendo, Reaper and more). With the new plug-in mode, Band-in-a-Box is open

as a small window, and acts as a plug-in for your favorite DAW sequencer, so you can

Drag-n-Drop MIDI and audio (AIFF, M4A) tracks from Band-in-a-Box to your favorite sequencer. Work in your favorite sequencer, type a chord progression in Band-

in-a-Box, drag the track button to the drop station (blue rectangle) at top left of the screen, and then drag that to your sequencer's track at the desired track and the bar location.

The DAW Plug-in mode is a mode within the regular Band-in-a-Box program. This mode allows you to transfer tracks or parts of tracks, to other DAW sequencers or Finder.

You can enter and exit the DAW plug-in mode easily.

Press the [DAW Mode] button on the Toolbar, then choose the menu item “Start DAW Plug-in mode” (or go to Windows menu and choose Plug-in Mode for Sequencer-DAW).

When you do this:

1. Window size of Band-in-a-Box changes to a small size (you can resize it to the

size/position that you want, and it will remember that).

You can now easily drag tracks from Band-in-a-Box to your DAW in 2-steps. First, drag the track button to the drop station (blue rectangle), and then when it turns green, drag that to your DAW’s track.

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

You can also drag files to other programs, besides DAW’s, if they accept a drop of audio files (AIFF, M4A) or MIDI files. For example, Finder allows this.

Please see the DAW Plug-In Mode chapter for a full tutorial.

Freeze Tracks

Freezing (locking) MIDI or RealTracks/RealDrums

Any track (MIDI or RealTrack) can now be frozen. When frozen, it won’t be changed or re-generated. This saves time when replaying previous songs, and allows you to freeze an arrangement that you like. If you freeze the whole song, you don’t have to wait at all for the song to regenerate. Next time you play, it is ready to go.

You can make tracks Frozen by pressing the Freeze button (snowflake) on the toolbar, and then choosing which tracks that you want to freeze or unfreeze.

There are a number of reasons that you would freeze a track.

Reasons to Freeze a RealTracks track (audio):

- Frozen tracks will play back instantly, not requiring time to generate.

- They play back the same way each time, so if you like a solo, you can “freeze it.”

- If you send a song to a friend as “frozen,” they will hear the same performance.

- For the Soloist track, if you generate a solo, it can now be saved (by freezing the track).

Reasons to Freeze a MIDI track:

- You can edit the MIDI data, to customize the performance to match a certain song,

and this will be saved. Use the Notation window or Piano Roll to edit the track.

More reasons to freeze any track:

- Frozen tracks play back instantly, without requiring time to regenerate.

- They play back the same way each time.

- You can change the chord progression of the song, and have one part playing a

different chord progression than the rest of the band. For example, type a “blowing” chord progression, generate a solo, freeze the solo track, then type a normal chord progression and generate the rest of the instruments (bass, guitar etc.) that will play the normal changes.

- Have different instruments play different styles. For example, the Bass could be

generated using Reggae, then Frozen, and then the rest of the instruments generated using a Techno style.

Un-Freezing a Track(s)

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

This is also done by the Freeze button. Choose a frozen track to un-freeze it, or choose “Un-Freeze all tracks.”

Forcing Generation of a Song that is Frozen

Band-in-a-Box won’t touch tracks that are frozen. But if you want to change that, without having to Un-Freeze the tracks, you can do this easily.

Hold down the SHIFT key as you press the [Play] button (the fly-by hint will remind you of that),

or go to the Song menu and choose Generate (even if tracks are frozen).

When you do this, the song will regenerate, the tracks will be rewritten, and the song will stay frozen. So if you’re freezing songs to get the instant playback with RealTracks, but get tired of the “same-old” frozen arrangement, just press SHIFT-PLAY, generate a new arrangement, and press SAVE. Then the new “fresh-frozen” arrangement will play instantly, even with many RealTracks.

Tip: Obviously, you wouldn’t use this feature to force regeneration of a frozen song if you have made custom edits to the song that you don’t want to lose, unless you’ve saved the song and have a backup copy.

All Tracks can be Edited and Saved.

MIDI tracks for bass, drums, piano, guitar and strings can now be edited, and saved with the file. If you freeze a track, edits can still be made to it, because it is only frozen from Band-in-a-Box making changes to it (you can still edit it), so that the MIDI track will be saved to the file. So you can customize the bass part to match a certain song, and save it with a frozen bass part, so that Band-in-a-Box won’t overwrite your edits. This includes RealCharts – if you wanted to edit the notation of a RealTracks solo for example.

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

To edit a MIDI track (bass, drums, piano, guitar, strings), or the MIDI part of a RealTracks that has a RealChart (MIDI transcribed solo), simply open up the

Notation window (or Piano Roll window), and click on the track and edit it. Make sure to Freeze the track by pressing the Freeze button and choosing Freeze for that track, or right-clicking on the instrument at the top of the screen and choosing Freeze. Now your edited tracks will save with the song.

RealTracks Enhancements

No more long waits for RealTracks to generate!

RealTracks generate much faster, 4X faster on average. A typical song with RealTracks that took 20 seconds to generate will now generate in about 5 seconds. And if you freeze some or all tracks in the song (see below), playback of RealTracks is almost instantaneous.

This “speedup” feature works “automatically;” you should just notice that generation of RealTracks is much faster. This feature uses CPU resources during playback. If you have a multi-core machine, you may not notice this at all, since it will use different cores than the main Band-in-a-Box thread. If you have an old machine, low on memory, slow hard drive etc., you can disable this “speedup” feature. This will insure that your machine is doing less CPU work during playback. This is done in RealTracks Settings dialog.

Soloist generated RealTracks are now saved with the song, so you will hear the RealTracks play the same solo when you reload the song.

When you generate a solo using RealTracks, Band-in-a-Box will remember this, and when you go to save the song, Band-in-a-Box will ask you if you want to save that solo (and thereby freeze the Soloist track). If you say yes, then the solo will play instantly the same way when the song is reloaded. Of course, you can freeze the soloist track yourself at any time. Note that only one solo can be saved. You can’t generate a bunch of different segments of solos; only the last one will be saved.

Shots, Holds, and Pushes

RealTracks now support new features, including Shots, Holds, and Pushes. Simply type in the chords as you normally would, adding periods (…) for shots and holds, and the RealTracks will play them.

Note: You need the installer that creates a LibraryM/Holds folder in your RealTracks folder.

The “H” column of the RealTracks Assign dialog tells whether the

RealTrack styles supports Shots, Holds and Pushes. If the column is

blank, the selected RealTracks style has Holds, Shots and Pushes

available. If there is an “n,” holds are available from PG Music but not

installed. If there is a “-,” no holds are available for this style. The Holds

files are a free upgrade, so you can download them from our web site

pgmusic.com.

Assuming that you have the Holds files for the RealTracks that you are generating, then you just use Band-in-a-Box as you would normally, and type chords with shots (e.g. C..), holds (C…) or pushes (^C or ^^C for 8th or 16th note push), or combinations of push and hold (^C…).

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

4-bar Endings

RealTracks endings have been enhanced, and are now 4-bar endings instead of 2-bar, allowing time for a natural decay of the instruments.

By “4-bar endings” we are referring to a 2-bar ending that has additional two bars to allow for the natural decay of the audio instrument (instead of being quickly faded out). To add the 4-bar ending support, you need to have updated ST2 and XT2 files for the RealTracks. We are releasing many of these updated files with 2010 release, and will have free patches for the older RealTracks as they become available.

4-bar-endings are on by default. So if any of the RealTracks have 4-bar endings, then the arrangement will play as a 4-bar ending.

You can disable 4-bar endings:

- either globally using RealTracks Settings dialog,

- or on a song-by-song basis, using Additional Song Settings dialog (Song | Additional

Song Settings).

Currently, the only way to tell if a RealTracks has a 4-bar ending, is to either try it and see, or to look in the Select Soloist dialog (Soloist | Generate and Play a Solo), and see the name of the ST2 file (under the term database at the top right). Then check the date of the ST2 file. If it is Nov. 2009 or newer, then it should have a 4-bar ending. Check our pgmusic.com web site, as we are releasing free upgrade patches to add 4-bar endings to most of the RealTracks styles.

Audio Reverb

Reverb control are added for individual tracks with RealTracks or RealDrums, so

you can easily add reverb (0 to 127) for any RealTrack. Reverb type is also settable, and saved with the song.

At the top of the screen, there is an “A.REV” (Audio Reverb) control. Click on an instrument radio button, and then set the Audio Reverb for it.

Note that this only applies to RealTracks, since MIDI tracks have MIDI Reverb, which is set via a “REV” control.

The Audio Reverb varies from 0 to 127. Adjust the value by clicking a key on the onscreen piano keyboard. Or right-click (or control-click) the control to enter a value. See the RealTracks and RealDrums chapter for more about this feature.

There is also a feature that automatically adds reverb to RealTracks, according to instrument type. (No Reverb is added to Bass, for example, but most instruments get reverb.)

This feature defaults to on, but you can turn it off in RealTracks Settings or Reverb Settings dialog.

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

If you just want more or less added, you can adjust the “Strength %.” For example, the default adds a reverb of 40 to most tracks, but if you set the strength to 75%, then 30 will be added.

You can also set the type of reverb. The default is a “room” type of reverb.

To do this, press the Audio Reverb button, and adjust the various parameters.

You can then save your reverb types as presets, and the current settings will also be saved with the song. The presets all get saved to a PGReverbSettings.bin file in Band-in-aBox/Preferences folder.

You can enable/disable Reverb. If you disable it, this will save some CPU cycles, so this might be advisable on an older/slower machine, if you hear that the audio is clicking or not keeping up.

Bass/Treble Tone Control has been added for individual tracks with RealTracks or RealDrums, so you can easily adjust the bass/treble EQ for any RealTrack. The settings

are saved with the song.

Choose an instrument (bass/drums/piano/guitar/strings/melody) and then

use the “TONE” control to adjust the tone from -18 (maximum bass) to

+18 (maximum treble). Default is 0.

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

Timebase and Tempo Controls

Double-time and half-time support for RealTracks

Now you can play any RealTracks at half-time or double-time. This allows you, for example, in a ballad at a tempo of 70, to add a RealTracks Sax solo with a tempo of 140, and play it as a double-time, which will match the ballad tempo of 70. So now all of your existing RealTracks can be used at 3 different tempos (normal, half-time, double-time).

You can control over when/how RealTracks would play. To do this, open Assign

RealTracks to Track dialog and use “Timebase” combo box.

Tempo swapping of similar RealTracks

You can use this feature either automatically or manually. If you set “Auto RealTracks substitution based on tempo” to true in RealTracks Settings dialog or Additional Song Settings dialog, Band-in-a-Box will automatically choose the best one to use.

For example, if you have a ballad loaded, with an Acoustic Bass RealTracks at a tempo of 60, and you speed up the tempo to 140, and press [Play] button, Band-in-a-Box will automatically choose an Acoustic Bass RealTracks closer to the tempo of 140, if it is the same genre and feel. This means you can use a simple Jazz style, and play it at various tempos, without having to set the best RealTracks based on tempos. The RealTracks that support the Tempo Swapping are listed in the next to last column of the RealTracks Assign dialog.

For example, if we load in a Ballad Jazz style like _BALFRED.Style,

we can see that the name of the Bass RealTracks style has a tilde (~) symbol at the beginning. That indicates that it could be changed to a different RealTracks at a higher tempo.

Now let’s increase the tempo of the song to a higher tempo, like 115.

We will see that the name of the RealTracks switches to a different RealTracks, suitable for tempo=110. So when you press [Play] button, you’ll hear the RealTracks closest to your tempo, without having to do anything to make this happen.

If you don’t want this feature to happen automatically, then set “Auto RealTracks substitution based on tempo” to false. Then, if you have similar RealTracks available at different tempos, Band-in-a-Box will simply tell you there is a better one to choose.

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

The “T” column of the RealTracks Assign dialog shows which RealTracks are eligible for Tempo Swapping. The tempo swapping only occurs if you have the RealTracks in your installation.

RealTracks Picker dialog enhanced.

- Opens up faster.

- New columns are added (tempo swappable, holds type).

RealDrums Picker dialog has been enhanced, with information about Artist name, Artist bio, and RealDrums Set number.

New Favorite Songs/Styles Dialog

There’s a new dialog for these favorites with separate lists of “Recently Played” and “Favorite” songs or styles. The previous Favorite Songs/Styles dialog was a list of recently used songs/styles. Now there are 2 tabs in this dialog, showing you both recently used songs/styles, and a new list of “favorites” that you select as favorite songs or styles. You can add an unlimited number of favorites.

The “F” button launches the Favorites / Recently Played dialog.

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

The “Favorites” and “Recently Played” Radio buttons toggle between a list of your recently played songs (or styles), and your Favorite songs (or styles).

The favorites list will start off as an empty one, but you can add songs/styles as your favorites, by clicking the [Add Favorite] button. (This button is also found in the StylePicker.)

Technical Note: The list of songs/style favorites is stored in a text file called SongFavorites.txt (or StyleFavorites.txt) in the Band-in-a-Box folder.

Always save all song settings.

Now all settings are saved with songs, including patches, reverbs, volume etc., so the song will play the same way each time, without having to set this in the Save Patches and Harmonies with Song dialog.

If you keep the default setting of “Save all settings with Songs,” you will find that all settings are saved, and loaded with each song. You shouldn’t have to visit this dialog, unless you have some custom items that you don’t want to save with the song.

Note that if you set a MIDI patch for one of the bass/drums/piano/guitar/strings parts, that if you load in another style, Band-in-a-Box will overwrite your patches with the style patches. If it didn’t do that, you would be stuck with the same patches regardless of the style. So if you want a certain patch for a track, set it after you have loaded in the style that you want.

Songs that are “Saved-As” a different name now have the new name added to the Recently Played Song dialog.

Rendering Tracks

Rendering now has a Normalize option, to normalize individual tracks or the complete

arrangement. Normalizing boosts the volume to a maximum level without distortion. Most professional music tracks are normalized.

To enable this, in the Render to Audio

dialog, set the “Normalize Rendered Files” option to true.

Rendering songs to audio is now much faster for songs with no MIDI, such as RealStyles.

StylePicker Enhancements

Favorites and Recent styles now appear in this dialog as separate lists. It now has the

ability to add/remove styles as favorites. A Favorite Style indication (F) shows up for each style. You can filter any list by only showing favorite styles. You can build up a list of favorite styles, and only show them when needed.

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

The favorite styles are the ones that you’ve identified as favorites, either by pressing the

[Add Favorite] button in the Favorite Styles dialog, or the similar button in this StylePicker dialog. Note that an “F” appears beside the name of any style that is a

favorite.

You can make any style a favorite by clicking the [Add Favorite] button. If you want to remove it, click the button again. “Only Show favorites” will only show the favorite styles in any list that you have opened.

And much more…

Multiple Undo Support. Up to 999 levels of undo is supported (configurable).

The default number of undos is 99. If you need to change this, use Number of Levels of Undo in Preferences dialog. Range is 5 to 99. You can also choose Edit | Redo to redo an undo.

Band-in-a-Box window is now sizable. When size changes, chordsheet, notation, and other windows redraw in proportion to the new size. This allows you to have Band-in-aBox open as a small window on screen with other programs, and you still see a full chordsheet. The screen size is remembered between sessions.

To resize the window, just use the sizing control at the bottom-right corner of the window. Hold down the mouse button while you drag the sizing control.

Support enhanced for non-concert instruments (Bb/Eb sax, trumpet etc.).

Now when the chordsheet is transposed, you can type in chords in the transposed key, and they will show up as you have entered them, instead of requiring you to enter the chords in the concert key.

More Soloists are now available, up to 2000.

Many messages changed to “yellow alerts” at top right of screen, so you don’t have to

respond to the message, thereby interrupting work flow.

Have fun!

Chapter 3: Band-in-a-Box 2010 for Macintosh

Chapter 4: The Main Screen

Main Screen Overview

The main screen gives direct access to the major features and program settings of Bandin-a-Box for ease and convenience during a session.

There are five different areas on the main screen.

1. The Status Bar is used to show program running status messages and path names of

the currently loaded song.

2. The Synth Window is the area between the Menu Bar and the Piano Keyboard

where Instruments patches are set and levels are adjusted. It also includes buttons for adding harmonies to the Melody, Thru, or Soloist parts.

3. The Tool Bar area under the Piano Keyboard has buttons for direct access to

important program features and menus. Hold the mouse cursor on any button to see a pop-up hint that describes its function.

4. The Title Window shares the Tool Bar area. In addition to the song title, it includes

all the other settings for the song such as its Key Signature, Tempo, and Chorus settings.

5. The Chordsheet Area occupies the lower part of the screen. Chord changes for the

song are typed into the numbered bars (cells) in the sheet. Part markers (a, b, c, etc.) are entered here to switch between Band-in-a-Box substyles.

To resize the window, just use the sizing control at the bottom-right corner of the window. Hold down the mouse button while you drag the sizing control.

This allows you to have Band-in-a-Box open as a small window on screen with other programs, and you still see a full chordsheet. The screen size is remembered between sessions.

Chapter 4: The Main Screen

Personalizing the Main Screen

Macintosh themes are supported.

You can choose different colors for the chordsheet area of the screen, and you can also choose to use larger fonts for the chord display. These two settings are found in the Preferences 2 dialog.

Support for larger screen sizes allows the program to fill the entire screen. There are also options to restrict the screen size to a certain size. To force the screen size to a certain size, use the Preferences “Limit Screen size to” item.

Status Bar

The first thing to note is that the name of the song that is open is identified in the window title at the top of the screen along with the name of the style. This feature is handy when you want to know the status (and the title) of your song and the style in use at a glance. You'll also see the length of the song in minutes and seconds, this updates if you change the tempo and press the [Play] button.

The file name in the status bar will have an asterisk * added if the file has been changed.

Synth Window / Piano Keyboard

The Piano Keyboard

This keyboard displays the notes that are being played by all instruments on various parts of the piano keyboard during playback (except drums). The name of the currently selected part is shown just above the keyboard.

When playing along or recording on the MIDI Thru the notes are displayed on the keyboard.

Synthesizer Window

Part Settings

The Bass/Piano/Drum/Guitar/Soloist/Strings/Melody and Thru buttons are referred to as Parts. Settings that can be changed for an individual part include Reverb, Chorus, Pan, Bank, Volume, and Instrument. To change a setting for one of the parts:

- Select the Part by mouse clicking on the part name.

- Change the desired parameter to affect the new setting.

The Instrument Panel shows the current instrument for the selected part.

You can access your patches with ease through the “patches popup“ menu. To access this menu, simply click on the instrument box you would like to change (i.e. Piano, Bass,

Chapter 4: The Main Screen

Sol, etc.), move your mouse pointer over the instrument panel box (i.e. Piano: (1) Acoustic Piano), and click anywhere on the instrument name. Then select the new patch from the popup menu.

Clicking on the up ▲ and down ▼arrows will move up and down the list of instrument patches one at a time.

The Favorite Instrument Panel allows you to assign up to 10 of your favorite instruments for each instrument part.

Selecting Favorite Instruments (Patches)

To select a Favorite Instrument for a particular part, you need to select the instrument part by clicking on the desired part.

Then click on one of the 10 Favorite buttons.

The Favorite Instrument that was assigned

to one of the numbers between 1 and 10 will appear in the Instrument Panel.

Selecting Favorite Combos

To send one of the Favorite Combo patch changes, you need to select the “Combo” part by clicking on the Combo button. Then click on one

of the 10 Favorite buttons. The Favorite Combo that was assigned to one of the

numbers between 1 and 10 will appear in the Instrument Panel.

This section allows you to adjust the settings for Reverb, Chorus, Panning, Bank, and Volume, Audio Reverb, and Tone for instrument parts. Click on the top half of a number to raise it by one, and on the bottom half to reduce it by one. Or click on the vertical bars to the right of the number box to raise/lower the setting in increments of 5.

You can also select a control and assign it a number value by clicking a key on the piano keyboard.

The value will correspond to the MIDI note number, from 0 to 127, that you click on.

Higher Bank Patches

The [+] button on the instrument selection panel will give you easy access to patches on higher banks. These are selected from a .PAT file that corresponds to your synth or sound module.

We have included many .PAT files in the Synth Kits folder.

Press the [+] button to launch the Patches on Higher Banks dialog. To narrow your search you can do one or all of the following:

- Open the Patch list and select an instrument (i.e. Electric Bass, Acoustic Piano, etc.)

- Click on the “Include Family” checkbox to have other offerings of similar type

shown. (i.e., all Bass family patches, all keyboard family patches, etc.)

Chapter 4: The Main Screen

- Find a patch by keyword by clicking the [Search..] button and typing some letters

that you know are in the name, e.g., “mando” will find your mandolin patch and any others containing “mando.”

Note: You can open a new patch file by pressing the [Open *.PAT…] button. You can also customize the names and descriptions of the patch file list to suit your tastes by pressing the [Edit…] button and editing a small text file. Press the [Update] button for your changes to take effect. You can also open this window by selecting the M | Choose Patch from Higher Bank… menu item at the bottom of the menu.

Description of the Wizard

The Wizard is an intelligent play along feature that uses your QWERTY

keyboard to play along with Band-in-a-Box. This also allows you to

record to the melody or soloist track without an external MIDI keyboard, and can even be used to trigger the Soloist Wizard. Also, play along using the Wizard can use the harmony feature, so you can play along live from your QWERTY keyboard in 4-part Saxophone harmony for example.

Turning the Wizard On/Off

Click on the [Wz] box to turn the Wizard feature On/Off, or select the

Wizard Playalong option from the Song menu, or press Option+W. The

Wizard is only active during playback.

Playing the Wizard

The Wizard keys are active during playback. The active keys are the lower 2 rows of the keyboard.

Changing Instruments / Settings For The Wizard

The Wizard is a play along instrument, so is treated just like the THRU instrument. Changing Instruments/Volume/Reverb etc. for the Wizard is therefore the same as for the THRU instrument. (i.e., Click on the THRU button, then select instrument etc.) You can record the Wizard and it will use THRU harmonies if selected.

Play Regular Notes

There is now an option to play regular “non-smart” notes, for those of you up to the task of poking out actual melodies on your QWERTY keys.

In the Song menu, toggle Wizard Uses 'Smart' Notes “Off” (unchecked) to have the Wizard provide you access to a chromatic scale, and toggle “on” to have Band-in-a-Box provide you with notes based on the chord/key of the song.

Soloist Wizard

Additionally, you will find another great Wizard feature in the Soloist menu; the Solo Wizard. Toggling this option “on” enables the Soloist Wizard. As you play notes on the

MIDI or QWERTY keyboard, the program will play “correct” notes in the style of the current Soloist! This means that you can play a perfect solo every time, simply by pressing any key on your MIDI keyboard or QWERTY keys.

Beyond impressing your friends with your newfound improvisational prowess, this feature has practical implications as well. For example, you can concentrate on practicing your solo phrasing and playing “in time” without concerning yourself with

Chapter 4: The Main Screen

which notes to play. (Band-in-a-Box will supply the correct notes; see the next section for details.)

Recording Using the Wizard

To record the Wizard, press the [Record] button to record, and play the Wizard. This will be recorded. You can use the feature of recording the Wizard to enter music without a MIDI keyboard that doesn't sound as stiff as most music entered in step time. This is how it works:

- Press [Record] to record.

- As the song plays, play the melody that you want on any Wizard key, using the same

key for each note, in the rhythm of the melody. The Wizard notes won't be the exact melody, but don't worry about that as you record.

- When you're finished, go to the Notation window. You now have the notes with the

correct durations and times, but the wrong pitches.

- One by one drag the notes up to the correct melody note, holding down the Shift,

Control, and Command key for sharps, flats, and naturals respectively. You'll then

have entered a melody that sounds like it was recorded from a keyboard, without the stiff sound of a melody entered in step time!

Note: If you have the wizard on, the SPACEBAR won't stop playback. You need to press ESCAPE to stop playback if the Wizard is on. This is because people mistakenly hit the spacebar while playing the wizard, which would stop the song inadvertently.

The Embellisher

When musicians see a lead sheet that has a melody written out, they would almost never play it exactly as written. They would change the timing to add syncopation, change durations to achieve staccato or legato playing, add grace notes, slurs, extra notes, vibrato, and other effects.

Click on the Embellisher checkbox to enable live embellishment of the Melody or Soloist part during playback.

If you enable the Embellisher, any Melody will get embellished as it is played so that you hear a livelier, more realistic Melody - and it's different every time.

Click on the Embellisher toolbar button to open the Melody Embellisher dialog.

The Memo shows the current embellishments that have been applied. You can change settings and redo the embellishment, or you can make the current embellishment permanent.

Chapter 4: The Main Screen

+ 282 hidden pages

PG Music Band in a Box - 2010 Macintosh User Guide

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual