Truly amazing stuff that I’ve used at times to “spiff up” my MIDI keyboard recordings! The Embellisher can add realistic performance nuances such as changing the timing of notes to add syncopation, changing duration to achieve staccato or legato playing, adding grace notes, slurs, extra notes, vibrato and other effects. There are tools to expand your keyboard (and guitar) performances too. And you can record your keyboard performances along with the backing instruments.
If you are a keyboardist, you can use BIAB to create realistic guitar parts in your compositions, as well as bass, drum and other background instruments.
I am not a guitarist, but over the years have learned a lot about guitar voicings and playing styles from this program. And you can switch a performance to alternate guitar tunings - 11 tunings are included including DADGAD, open G, drop D, double-drop D, and others. And it has a function to generate guitar chord solos based on single/monophonic notes in the Melody or Soloist track that both display and play the correct guitar fret positions. The fretboard displays accurate fingering with strumming and picking styles using correct guitar voicings. Woodshedding enables selecting a start tempo, a change per loop, and an ending tempo to help learn a part by starting slowly, then playing faster and faster. And if you are not an experienced guitarist, functions like the fretboard display and practice tools like woodshedding can help you learn your instrument. If you are a guitarist, and want to practice or compose your own songs, BIAB can provide drums, bass, and other instrument accompaniments to play (and record) along with. And you can specify style/sub-style changes within a song, set instruments to play or rest at a given bar, completely change instruments at any bar, change tempo within a song, change time signature, and control many other musical nuances.īIAB also provides musical education with a number of tools such as play-along features to help improve sight reading, guitar practice, ear training, jazz and chord exercises, and examples including over 1,000 piano/guitar master solos and riffs. I've obtained some of my best results by supplying my own chords, and trying compositions in various styles. You can specify as little as just the key and musical genre or as much as a complete chord progression and melody.
You can do this, and sometimes obtain something useful, but I’ve found that using more of its advanced features to “guide” a composition the way I want it to evolve can produce really excellent results. However, it’s not just a “select style and press go” tool. And with its “session musicians” it can create some pretty convincing productions. Over the years I’ve used BIAB to create music beds for later adding both instrumental parts and vocals. If you haven’t tried BIAB, or only heard what it could do years ago, you may be surprised. If you have the chops, you can even create your own RealTracks (called UserTracks) and RealDrums. And these “session players” don’t just play fixed riffs, but will play according to the style, key and chord progression that you have specified. These are not just sample sounds, but musical passages, 1 to 8 bars long, played by session players from Nashville and elsewhere. Over the years they added more comprehensive musical styles, more arrangement rules and moved beyond generating only MIDI data when audio was added with RealDrums in 2007, and instrument performances with RealTracks in 2008. I first used BIAB in 1990 when it was bundled with a sound card I bought (no idea which one that was!), and while it was fascinating, it could generate only very simple, “jingly” tunes similar to what a toy Casio keyboard demo sounded like.
And with the newest 2019 version, even more than seven musicians can play at once. and a powerful and creative music composition tool for exploring and developing musical ideas with near-instantaneous feedback.” BIAB can complete an arrangement in seconds based on a musical style and key signature, or a chord progression you have specified, then play it with a ‘band’ of up to seven musicians who “live” in your computer. It is easy to use its basic features, but there is tremendous depth, many functions and dozens of educational and practice tools that can keep you busy for at least months, and likely years.Īccording to PG Music, the creators of BIAB, “Band In A Box is an intelligent automatic accompaniment program. Band-in-a-Box includes thousands of styles, songs and sounds and can supply everything from inspiration to background accompaniments to complete musical productions.īIAB is not a digital audio workstation, but like most DAWs it is a very complex program.