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. Live audio tracks can be created using 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 features have been added to Band-in-a-Box - Notation and Lyrics, Piano Roll, 16-channel MIDI Multitracks, Harmonization, the StyleMaker and StylePicker, a live performance Conductor window, Medley Maker, and 24 -substyle Multistyles. The Soloist and the Melodist are popular "intelligent" features that generate professional solos or even create whole new songs from scratch. RealDrums adds the human element of a live drummer while RealTracks add even more live session musicians, bringing the entire Band-in-a-Box arrangement to life. The Audio Chord Wizard has the amazing ability to analyze, extract, and show the chords from audio recordings on-screen and then write them to the Band-in-a-Box chord sheet.
The inclusion of digital audio features makes Band-in-a-Box the perfect tool for creating, playing, and recording your music with MIDI, vocals, and acoustic instruments. Band-in-a-Box for Windows(R) can also record an acoustic instrument or voice to add to the composition, with processing through its own DirectX audio effects. Its built-in TC Helicon audio harmonies will turn your audio track into multiple harmony parts or adjust its pitch, with vibrato and scooping effects for realistic vocal styles and up to sixteen choral parts. You can print out your finished creation with lyrics, chords, repeats and endings, DC markings and codas, or save it 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 burn it directly to an audio CD. Or save your composition as a Windows Media File (or in any other compressed formats you have) for a file that's "Internet ready."
You'll have even more fun making automatic medleys, playing your favorite song lists in the Band-in-a-Box Jukebox, and singing along to your Karaoke files with CDG graphics.
New Features in Band-in-a-Box 2008.5 for Windows
Faster Generation of RealTracks. The time it takes to generate the RealTracks is now 3x's faster.
"Waveless" and Much smaller size, only uses 1/8 of the hard drive space compared to previous! RealTracks and RealDrums no longer need WAV files - they can use WMA natively. This frees up huge amounts of your hard drive, so that the RealDrums and RealTracks take up only 1 /8 of the space that they used to take! The handy "Archive" function will remove the no-longer-needed WAV files with a single-click. This means that the new version uses up much less hard drive space than previous versions.
Tempo stretching quality enhancements. Now the RealTracks sound great over a much wider tempo range, typically -15 and +40 beats per minute.
Stereo panning is now available for the RealTracks.
Automatic prevention of audio clipping. (New Float mixing and Peak Limiter added.)
RealStyles(TM) available - these are styles that include all "Real Instruments," with no MIDI. Up to 7 Real Instruments all at once in a single style!
Improved transitions for RealTracks eliminating Pops/Clicks.
Right click menu is available for each part in Band-in-a-Box (bass, drums, piano, guitar, strings), allowing you to quickly assign RealTracks, (or RealDrums) to that part along with other functions like mute, solo, save single track, etc.
RealTracks browser dialog shows comprehensive information about the RealTracks, including name, genre, feel, tempo, type, demos, and preview. Lists can be sorted or filtered by any column.
Easily save a style (.STY) with RealTracks, directly from the main screen ("save what you hear" as a style).
RealTracks work for Rests and Shots.
Endings are now present in RealTracks.
Name of RealTracks or RealDrums display at the top of the screen for each part.
Right click on a part to save that single track to disk as a WAV file.
RealTracks demos now present in RealTracks - demos folder, and can be opened from the StylePicker.
RealTracks Preview function to hear how a RealTracks will sound, without losing your current song.
Ability to time shift a RealTracks by certain amount, to achieve more laid-back playing for example.
Variations of RealTracks can be made, for things like a simpler type of soloing, or certain variations.
RealTracks can have multiple substyles. For example, the Jazz Acoustic Bass plays "2"' feel in "a" substyle, and "4" in "b" section.
Soloists can solo over different chords than the chords of the song. For example, the Metal Guitar Soloist can have a tonal center controlled by the user, different than the song chords. So that the Metal Guitar can be soloing over a G chord, while the chords of the song are G F G Bb, for example.
"Crescendo" Soloing can be generated for some RealTracks that have the intensity of the solo building up with the flashiest part of the solos played as the solo builds.
Musicality of the solo phrasing improved, phrasing much closer to human.
RealTracks button added to Soloist dialog, with color coding to allow quick access to RealTracks.
RealTracks folders now have descriptive names. Instead of cryptic names like RacG001, they have names like "Guitar, Electric, Soloist Cowboy Ev 165"
Bass track can now play RealTracks.
StyleMaker lists RealTracks names on the main screen.
Non English versions will work with the newest RealTracks without a new translation of the Soloist list (Default.SOL file).
Archive and Install WAV buttons to control the use of the WAV files for RealDrums and RealTracks. WAV files are no longer needed as the program can use the much smaller WMA files. If you prefer to use WAV files (slightly higher fidelity and slightly faster operation), these commands provide the option to install or archive the WAV files on a global or folder by folder basis.
RealTracks.
With the previous release of Band-in-a-Box, we added RealDrums. Now we've added three additional "Real" instruments, including Real Pedal Steel, Real Acoustic Guitar, and Tenor Sax soloing (RealSax). 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. These are not "samples," but are full recordings, lasting from 1 to 8 bars at a time, playing along in perfect sync with the other Band-in-a-Box tracks. RealTracks can be built in to the style, and would replace either the bass, guitar, piano, or strings part, or they can be generated to the Soloist (or Melody) track using the Soloist feature.
MultiStyles.
We've added MultiStyles to Band-in-a-Box. These are Styles that can have anywhere from 4 to 24 substyles! Previous Band-in-a-Box Styles were limited to 2 substyles ("a" and "b"). Now, for example, a MultiStyle with 4 substyles (First Verse, Verse, Chorus, Break) can be used, and you select the various sections using "a"/"b"/"c"/"d" part markers. Some of our newest Styles Sets are MultiStyles, typically with 4 substyles, but some Techno Styles have 24 substyles. You can easily make your own MultiStyles, either from scratch, or combining parts from existing Styles to make a MultiStyle. For example, if you have 10 favorite Country Styles, you can quickly make a single MultiStyle that has 20 substyles available within the same song.
Audio Chord Wizard Enhancements.
The Audio Chord Wizard is the amazing feature that automatically figures out the chords from MP3 files (or other audio files like WAV, WMA, and audio CD etc.). Using the Audio Chord Wizard is a great way to learn and practice popular songs, as you play along and see the chords.
- 1. We've added a Lead Sheet window that shows the chords for the whole song on a single screen. This allows you to click on a bar on the lead sheet to jump to that area of the song.
- 2. You can mark sections of the song using part markers, and the sections begin on a new line with a line space between, so are clearly seen. So you can then also learn the form of the song, as you can see the various intro/verse/chorus/break sections at a glance, or quickly jump to the break simply by double clicking on that part of the lead sheet.
- 3. Chord editing
Change of Key Signature at any Bar.
Now you can have multiple keys in a song! The new key signature is shown on notation.
The GUI has been enhanced.
- 1. Support for Windows(R) 'Themes'- Band-in-a-Box will use the current theme that you have selected in Windows Control Panel to use for Windows and dialogs.
- 2. Copying of sections or selections can be done using drag-and-drop, simply drag regions around the chord sheet to quickly rearrange your song. Hold down the ctrl key for finer control about insert/overwrite/ etc.
Section Paragraphs.
When you're reading a book, a new section begins on a new line, with space between; now we've done that for chords too! Whenever a new section occurs (a part marker), Band-in-a-Box starts the new section on a new line, and draws a grey line above to clearly mark the new section. For example, if you have a song with a 7 bar section, followed by 8 bar sections, the previous version of Band-in-a-Box wouldn't start the other sections on a new line. The result there was that it was hard to delineate the sections, as if an entire story was told within one paragraph. With the Section Paragraphs feature you'll see all of them on a new line so that the form of the lead sheet is easier to see. This feature is configurable and optional.
Medley Maker.
Would you like to make a Medley using Band-in-a-Box, of various BB songs (MGU)? This is easily done with the new MedleyMaker. Inside the MedleyMaker, simply select the songs that you want, and Band-in-a-Box will make the medley for you. A medley is not simply joining songs together -a good medley uses a "transition" area between songs, to introduce the new style, key, and tempo. The MedleyMaker automatically creates a nice transition area for you, writing in chords that would smoothly transition to the next song/style/key and tempo!
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