Band-in-a-Box is an intelligent automatic accompaniment program, which means that you can go from nothing to complete song arrangements in as little as a few seconds. Simply enter chords to a song, choose a style of music, and Band-in-a-Box does the rest, generating a full band arrangement complete with Bass, Piano, Drums, Guitar, Strings, and more. You can arrange, listen to, or play along with songs in hundreds of musical styles. The MIDI and audio tracks that Band-in-a-Box creates are automatically played out through your computer's built-in sound card or synthesizer, and the music notation is displayed in a lead sheet window.

Band-in-a-Box is a unique and flexible program with a broad range of uses. It is a powerful and creative music composition tool for exploring and developing musical ideas with near-instantaneous feedback. Amaze friends and family by coming up with your own original songs in as little as a few minutes! Band-in-a-Box is also an excellent educational tool, used both by professional musicians to sharpen their skills, and as a learning aid by people with little or no musical background. It's also an essential program for practicing your instrument in a full band setting - you play your instrument while Band-in-a-Box takes the place of the other members in your band. And of course, people use Band-in-a-Box just to have fun!

While the basic concept behind Band-in-a-Box has remained the same since it was first conceived over 20 years ago, hundreds of innovative features have been added. The list of things that you can do with Band-in-a-Box is endless! The Soloist, Melodist, and Audio Chord Wizard are examples of amazing "intelligent" features; the Soloist generates professional quality solos over any chord progression, the Melodist can create entire songs from scratch with Chords, Melodies, Intros, and Solos (even a Title!), the Medley Maker can combine songs to create interesting medleys, and the Audio Chord Wizard can figure out the chords in any audio file (wave files, MP3, WMA, etc.).

In addition to these and many more amazing features, over the years Band-in-a-Box has expanded from originally being a Jazz oriented program, to encompass a diverse range of musical genres including Pop, Rock, Latin, Country, Classical, World, Blues, Bluegrass, New Age, Techno, Metal, and much more. There is something for everyone! Over 1700 styles are currently available from PG Music and more are always being developed, many based directly on customer requests. Moreover, since each style is a large database of musical patterns and ideas, the song arrangements will always be fresh, never sounding exactly the same each time.

It's easy to get started using Band-in-a-Box. Here are the basic steps you might use to put together a song from start to finish...

• Input chords for your song. Choose a key/tempo and set the number of bars/choruses/loops,etc. You can type in the chord symbols using the computer (qwerty) keyboard, however it's also possible to enter chords in other ways: You can play the chords from a connected MIDI keyboard and use MIDI Chord Detection, you can use the built-in Chord Builder, and you can even have Band-in-a-Box figure out the chords in any MIDI or audio file. The chords that you input can include common chord symbols such as C7, Cm, and Cmaj7, or more complex chords such as Csus#5#9 and C7#5b9#11. Over 100 chords are supported, plus you can enter an alternate root for any chord (slash chord).

• Choose a style of music using the StylePicker Window. You can quickly and easily preview your song in many different styles, or you can listen to original demo songs for any of the PG Music styles available. Styles will use up to five tracks for the accompaniment, depending on what is suitable for that specific style. For example, a Classical style might only use the Piano track, while a Rock style may use Bass, Drums, and Guitar. You can also choose a style made entirely of RealTracks and you wont hear any MIDI at all... your song will sound like it was recorded by professional studio musicians!

• Arrange your song using automatic intros, 2-bar endings, substyle variations, drum fills, intelligent chord substitutions, pushes, shots, rests, and more!

• Press Play to have Band-in-a-Box instantly develop an original arrangement for your song, which is played back through the sound card or MIDI synthesizer of your choice. For playback, you can use a software synth (stand-alone/DXi/VSTi) such as the VSC-DXi included with Band-in-a-Box, or a hardware synth (sound card synth/MIDI keyboard/sound module). In addition to MIDI tracks, Band-in-a-Box also generates original audio tracks called RealDrums and RealTracks.

• Input your own instrumental melody/solo track using an external MIDI keyboard, or by using your computer mouse and keyboard in the Editable Notation window. Or, have Band-in-a-Box create the solo and melody for you using the Melodist and Soloist!

• Record an audio track. You could use a microphone to record yourself singing, then harmonize your vocal track using the built-in audio harmonizer.

• Make an audio CD of your music! Render your song to a wave file and burn a CD, then play the CD in any standard CD player.

You can use Band-in-a-Box on virtually any computer, and you don't need any special equipment! We work hard to make sure Band-in-a-Box remains compatible with older computers, while also working flawlessly with the newest systems available.

You can get the most out of Band-in-a-Box by having a fairly up-to-date computer, a good quality sound card, and even a MIDI keyboard, but these are not requirements. Here are some more details that you may want to consider, depending on how you will be using Band-in-a-Box.

• General system requirements (Band-in-a-Box for Windows). Band-in-a-Box runs on Windows 98 (98SE preferred), NT, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, and 7, and requires a minimum of 256MB available RAM. For best performance, you should have fairly recent computer with Windows XP or higher, and at least 1GB RAM. A minimum of 400 MB free hard disk space is required to install the basic program and MIDI styles. This doesn't include the RealDrums and RealTracks, which require more hard disk space - about 100 MB per RealDrums set and 800 MB per RealTracks set. Packages that include a large number of RealTracks are usually shipped on a USB hard drive. If you are planning on recording digital audio tracks with your songs (e.g. vocals), this will also require more hard disk space, about 10 MB per minute of audio recording.

• Sound card and MIDI sound source. Band-in-a-Box is partly a MIDI program, and therefore requires a MIDI sound source (MIDI synthesizer). As mentioned, you don't need any special equipment; your computer most likely has a sound card and MIDI sound source built-in. In addition, we include a high quality software MIDI synthesizer with Band-in-a-Box - the Roland VSC-DXi. Other software synthesizers are also available.

  There are different types of MIDI synthesizers, and as you might expect, they vary greatly in price and quality. A MIDI synth might be built into your sound card, it might be a software MIDI synth such as the VSC or widely available GS Wavetable, or it might be an external hardware unit that you connect to your computer. External MIDI synthesizers include compact sound modules such as the SD-20, or full MIDI synthesizer keyboards. These may be connected to your computer with MIDI cables and/or a MIDI interface that connects to the USB port on your computer.

• External MIDI controllers. As mentioned above, you can use an external MIDI synthesizer as your sound generator. You can also use a MIDI keyboard, MIDI guitar, or MIDI wind controller to record or play live along with Band-in-a-Box. This is certainly not a requirement to use Band-in-a-Box, but it can augment your experience and aid in practicing and composition. For example, you could enter chords using MIDI Chord Detection, or record melodies and edit them in the Notation Window. The most inexpensive and convenient MIDI keyboards are simply MIDI controllers which don't generate sound by themselves. Most are simple to use - simply connect them to a USB port on your computer and select the MIDI Input Driver in Band-in-a-Box. Other synths you connect with MIDI cables and/or a MIDI interface.

• Audio playback and recording. For audio playback and recording, advanced users can benefit from having a dedicated sound card or audio interface - in other words, a sound card that is separate from the one that might have come as part of your computer's motherboard. If you will be doing audio recording, you can plug in your equipment directly to the sound card (often stereo 1/8" jacks), or for better results with "built-in" soundscards, use a pre-amp or mixer and plug that into your sound card's line-in jack. You may wish to have headphones for monitoring.

• Speakers. This may sound obvious, but it is often overlooked... A good set of amplified speakers or headphones can make a world of difference, especially if you are using a laptop computer.

• Other software programs. You certainly don't need any other programs to use Band-in-a-Box. We include our multi-track audio sequencer called RealBand with any Band-in-a-Box purchase. This program can be used to fine-tune your performance, record extra audio tracks, add digital audio effects, and so on. Some people also use their favorite third party sequencer in conjunction with Band-in-a-Box, to import their songs for further editing.

• Using the Melodist, you can compose a new song in the style of your choice in a few seconds, complete with intro, chords, melody, arrangement, and improvisation.

• The songs generated by the Melodist are yours to use however you want. Use the songs "as they are", or add your own touches by editing the chords and melody. You can generate as many new tunes as you want until you find one you want to work with.

• Enter your own chords from scratch and instantly hear how they sound in many different styles. This is a great way to experiment with new song ideas!

• Use the SoundTrack Generator to quickly create original royalty-free music of a specified duration and tempo, for corporate videos, home movies, jingles, etc.

• Designate any chord as a rest, hold, or shot. This can be applied to any or all of the instruments. You can also push the chord (anticipate the beat) by an eighth or sixteenth note, add pedal bass, and more.

• Enter chords by typing them in, by using the Chord Builder (which allows you to choose and audition different chord types), or by using MIDI Chord Detection from an external keyboard.

• Styles have at least two variations (substyles), and you can switch them at any point in your song by adding part markers. For example, often people use a livelier variation for the middle choruses. A typical style has two variations, however you can also use "Multistyles" with many more variations.

• Automatic Intro generation! This is a chord progression that gets inserted as an intro in the song. Choose Jazz or Pop style chords, Intro length, Pedal Bass, and more. Re-generate the Intro as many times as you like and get a fresh one each time. Band-in-a-Box will also automatically generate a 2-bar ending pattern for your song.

• Record your melodies using a MIDI keyboard, or enter them using the mouse and computer keyboard in the editable notation window.

• Use the Melody Embellisher to automatically add notes and effects to the melody track - for example grace notes, slurs, vibrato, etc. - making it more lively and realistic.

• If you have written a melody but are having trouble coming up with the chords, use the Reharmonist. The Reharmonist creates a chord progression based only on the melody, in any genre that you choose

• "Jazz up" or "Jazz down" the chords, converting a typical jazz chord progression into one more suitable for pop/rock genres, and vice versa.

• Play your song using RealDrums. These are real drum recordings of top studio Jazz/Rock/Country drummers that Band-in-a-Box plays in perfect sync with the other parts of your song. These are not just "samples" or "drum loops", but are full recordings lasting from 1 to 8 bars at a time. Band-in-a-Box can play the drum patterns in an endless variety of ways.

• Play your song using RealTracks to add a new dimension of realism. Your song will sound just like it was recorded by top studio musicians! These tracks feature real audio recordings of acoustic fingerpicked and strummed guitar, pedal steel, and tenor sax, acoustic and electric bass, fiddle, rhythm and lead electric guitar, resonator guitar, and much more. RealTracks can be assigned to play on any Band-in-a-Box track (guitar, bass, etc.), and you can select up to seven different RealTracks in one song. RealTracks can also be built in to the style, replacing the MIDI bass, guitar, piano, or strings part in that style. In addition, you can use the Soloist to generate RealTracks.

• Save your song as a MIDI file for further editing in a sequencer such as PowerTracks Pro Audio, easily render your song to MP3 or WMA for use on the internet, or burn an audio CD of your music.

• MultiStyles are Styles that can have anywhere from 4 to 24 substyles! A typical Band-in-a-Box style will have two substyles (e.g. chorus and verse), but with MultiStyles you can make a Band-in-a-Box style or song that uses 4 substyles (e.g. First Verse, Main Verse, Chorus, Break). You can select the various sections (substyles) using "a"/"b"/"c"/"d" part markers. Some of our newer 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. 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.

• The Band-in-a-Box Medley Maker allows you to combine multiple Band-in-a-Box songs into one song for a continuous performance. But 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 Medley Maker automatically creates a nice transition area for you.

• Enter songs into Band-in-a-Box (chords and melody), aquire completed Band-in-a-Box songs from other sources, import MIDI files using the MIDI File Chord Wizard which can figure out the chords and import the melody from MIDI files, or use the Audio Chord Wizard, which can interpret a chord progession from an audio file.

• Typically, it would take 2-5 minutes to enter the chords to a song, so you could enter chords for 20 songs from a fakebook in about an hour!

• Use the StylePicker window to choose an appropriate style for the song - there are over 1700 PG Music styles currently available, and you can get them all in the MegaPAK, SuperPAK, and UltraPAK packages. For popular songs and standards, you can often find a suitable style quickly by searching by song title or artist.

• Enter melodies either by recording them with a MIDI keyboard (or Guitar controller), or by entering them manually using your mouse in the editable notation or graphical Piano Roll window. Band-in-a-Box offers one of the quickest methods of notation entry available.

• Listen to the song in Band-in-a-Box, and practice it to learn chords and melody. Learn the melody by focusing in on it - mute all tracks except for the melody, loop sections of the song, watch the notation in the Lead Sheet window, watch the on-screen guitar fretboard and piano keyboard, and step-advance through the song note-by-note or chord-by-chord.

• Piano players can learn the voicings being used in the song by looking at the Notation and Lead Sheet Window, or by watching the Big Piano Window.

• Guitar players can learn the guitar part by watching the guitar tab in the Notation and Lead Sheet Windows, or by watching the on-screen Guitar Fretboard Window.

• For transposing instruments such as saxophone, trumpet, and clarinet, you can set a visual transpose so that the chords and notation are written in the correct key for your instrument.

• Use keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys) to easily step-advance forward and backward in the notation window, one chord or note at a time.

• Start with a slow tempo, and gradually increase the tempo as you learn the song.

• Lyrics can be entered and displayed karaoke style in the Big Lyrics Window, making Band-in-a-Box a great way for Vocalists to learn tunes.

• Save all of the songs that you are learning in a single folder, and use the Jukebox to play them, either alphabetically or in random order.

• Band-in-a-Box is the perfect practice companion because you can input a song, play your instrument of choice and let Band-in-a-Box take care of the rest. Band-in-a-Box takes the place of all the other members of your band!

• If you plan on playing one of the instruments that is already in a style, you can mute that instrument.

• You can define a favorite key and "each time a song is loaded" Band-in-a-Box will optionally transpose all loaded songs to that key. This is a great feature for practicing in a certain key.

• It is essential to practice in many different keys, and there are advanced Transpose features that will automatically change the key every chorus by a regular or random interval, and much more!

• The Chord Breaks feature is great for practicing tempo control. Select the # of bars, and Band-in-a-Box will play for, say 4 bars, and then will rest all instruments for the next 4 bars. During the silence, you keep playing (comping, drums, melody, etc.), trying to stay in tempo.

• A useful feature for aspiring improvisational musicians is the Soloist trade 4's function: Band-in-a-Box will create a solo every 2, 4, or 8 bars and stop soloing after each interval is complete, allowing time for you to try your hand after hearing what Band-in-a-Box has to offer.

• To be proficient at any song you should be able to play it at practically any tempo; with Band-in-a-Box, you can start practicing the song at a very slow speed and gradually increase the tempo.

• The Practice Window allows you to quickly and easily access any of your PG Music tutorial programs and add-ons from within Band-in-a-Box. This is also a central location where many Band-in-a-Box features useful to learning can be launched.

• With the loop functions in Band-in-a-Box it's easy to go over the tough section of any song until you can nail it every time!

• Band-in-a-Box is a sight-reading practice tool as well. The Melodist will create an infinite number of unique songs for you, so you'll never run out of new songs to practice with.

• If you can't take your computer with you to your practice space then you can burn a CD of your song and practice as much as you want away from the computer!

• You can print out notation for all of the instrument parts from the Lead sheet window, so you and your band can practice away from the computer.

• The Audio Chord Wizard will detect the chords in your favorite Audio files (MP3s, CD tracks, etc.) and display them on-screen. You can then practice playing along using the chords detected by Band-in-a-Box.

• Band-in-a-Box can play up to 40 choruses for those extra long practice or jam sessions.

• Use the song exercises in the 'Practice' folder to practice frequently used chord progressions. These songs have typical chord progressions in swing and straight 8th feels, and range from very easy to quite difficult. This is a great way to practice improvising.

• Improve your improvisation using the Soloist. It is good practice to analyze and learn parts of the solos.

• For vocal practice, the Big lyrics Window will show lyrics karaoke-style as the song is playing, and the Vocal Wizard will transpose any song to the best key for a singer's vocal range.

• Guitar and keyboard players can practice different comping techniques in a variety of styles. You can vary the tempo, mute the other instruments, and watch the notes play on the on-screen keyboard and guitar fretboard.

• To make a song easier or harder to practice, you can automatically reduce chord and note durations by 1/2, or expand them by 2.

• Import an MP3 or an audio CD track and slow down the music to 1/2, 1/4, or 1/8 of the original speed - great for practicing transcription, or trying to learn a tune.

• Practice playing or singing in harmony - generate a melody harmony type, for example 'Trumpet/Sax 3rds' or 'Barbershop QT close harmony' (choose from over 200), then use the Lead Sheet window to view the notation and mute the part you want to play.

• Easily loop any section of the song. The program will start playback at the first loop point and play the looped section until stop is pressed or looping is turned off. This feature is handy for looping a full chorus or other section of a song for practice or performance.

• Band-in-a-Box is great for one-person live performances - you play your instrument and Band-in-a-Box is the rest of your band.

• The Conductor Window allows complete control over a song while it is playing, by pressing keys on your MIDI keyboard or computer keyboard. For example, if the last chorus is playing you can easily extend the length of the song. You can also set loop points "on the fly". The loops happen seamlessly so are suitable for the "dance floor".

• When you use the Wizard Playalong feature, you can play either your computer (qwerty) keyboard or MIDI keyboard, and Band-in-a-Box will intelligently transpose each note you play so that it is "correct" (i.e. so it sounds good with the song). This means that you can solo along to a song without ever hitting a wrong note!

• Use the Soloist's "Solo Wizard" during live playback. This instructs the Soloist to play only when you press a key on your computer or Piano keyboard.

• The Vocal Wizard transposes the song to the best key for a singer's vocal range, and it can do this automatically for every song loaded, based on your preferences.

• For karaoke style performances, use the Big Lyrics Window - this will display chords and/or lyrics as the song is playing, with a customizable size, color, and font.

• Audio Karaoke files are popular using several formats; the most common is CDG format, which includes the lyrics in graphical format on Audio CD's. Since a computer doesn't typically use audio CD's, there is a format that combines MP3 (containing the music) and CDG (the graphical lyrics). You can open up MP3/CDG files inside Band-in-a-Box and see the scrolling lyrics from your Karaoke files, using the Karaoke Window. Best of all, you can use the Audio Chord Wizard to figure out the chords as well, making Band-in-a-Box a great choice to play your Karaoke files!

• Use the Jukebox to play a folder of songs, or use the Favorite Songs window to play saved sets of songs.

• With realtime MIDI harmonies, you can play a MIDI keyboard, and Band-in-a-Box will harmonize the notes you play in real-time according to the chords of the song.

• Band-in-a-Box supports the TranzPort control surface, which is a hardware device that allows you to control Band-in-a-Box remotely, through walls from up to 30 feet away! The TranzPort unit (purchased separately) has a backlit LCD screen that shows you chords, and a number of buttons that allow control of many Band-in-a-Box functions.

• You can use simple keystroke commands to loop sections of a song. For example, live performers can loop middle and last choruses so that the music will continue while the dance floor is full, or jump to the last chorus or ending if it's time for the tune to end!

• When performing live or at a jam session, it helps to have the volume of all of the songs be similar. With the MIDI Normalize feature, you can level the volumes to a range set in the program options. For example, you can set all volumes to be between 65 and 75, and the program will make each song play within those levels.

• The Band-in-a-Box Medley Maker allows you to combine multiple Band-in-a-Box songs into one song for continuous live performances. Inside the Medley Maker, 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 Medley Maker automatically creates a nice transition area for you, writing in chords that would smoothly transition to the next song/style/key/tempo!

• You can quickly choose a Fadeout ending, just press the Fade button in Song Settings, and Band-in-a-Box will fadeout the last "X" bars of the song (you can specify how many bars). Or customize the fadeout with precise values for each bar.

• Ear training is an important exercise for all musicians, and you can practice and sharpen your ear training with help from Band-in-a-Box. In addition to the common interval exercises (perfect 4th, minor 2nd , etc.), learning to "play-by-ear" for Jazz and Pop music is further enhanced by ear training exercises to recognize common chord types (e.g. Major, Minor, Dominant).

• Using the Ear Training window's "Interval Tutor" module, Band-in-a-Box will play an interval and it's your job to guess what it is. To guess an interval, you click on the appropriate up or down interval. You can have the interval replayed if you didn't get it the first time.

• There are a number of settings that you can use to determine the key that you want the intervals to play in, the difficulty level of the interval, or what type of interval you want to practice. For example, you can have the first note be the root of the key (easier) or it can be any tone (harder).

• Band-in-a-Box keeps track of your score, and displays it in the dialog, allowing you to monitor your progress.

• Use the Ear Training Window's Chord Tutor module for practice learning and recognizing different chords. Band-in-a-Box will play a chord and you will have to identify the chord type (for example, major, maj7, minor). A more advanced option will have you guessing the both the chord type AND root.

• Optionally show the notes on the on-screen piano keyboard while you are guessing the chords. If you are an advanced musician, seeing the notes on the piano during the guessing game would be "cheating," since you'd probably quickly recognize the chord. However, a beginner would benefit from this.

• Other options in the Chord Tutor include "types of roots and chords to use", "extensions to include", and "voicing types" (open, closed, etc.), allowing you to customize the ear training exercises for beginner through to advanced.

• Pitch Invasion is a full-featured arcade-style game included with Band-in-a-Box. "Aliens" descend upon your home planet, intent on destroying your prized collection of musical instruments. It's your job to blast them out of the sky by recognizing the pitch that they are playing!

• In Pitch Invasion, you can customize the number of different notes that the aliens will play, as well as the speed at which they travel. Develop perfect pitch with this amazing ear training tool!

• Music Replay is another great arcade-style game included in Band-in-a-Box. This game is designed to teach you how to recognize and play back melodies and rhythms. The program will play a melody, and it's your task to play the same melody back, either using a MIDI keyboard (if you have one) or your mouse and computer keyboard.

• Music Replay features 3 different games that focus on developing three different musical skills. "Replay Note" is a game where you need to play back an ever-increasing series of notes. It's primary function is to develop the player's pitch-recognition skills. In "Replay Rhythm" a series of 1 bar rhythmic phrases are played and you try to play them back as closely as you can. This develops the player's ability to recognize and play different rhythms. "Replay Melody" is a combination of the two. 1 bar melodies are played, and you need to play them back with correct pitches & with the correct rhythm.

• Generate a Solo, then mute all tracks except for the solo track. At a slow tempo, try to copy everything the Soloist is playing without looking at the screen. Band-in-a-Box can generate an endless number of different solos, so you'll never run out of material for this exercise.

• There are many ways to use Band-in-a-Box for ear training, including interval and chord tutor modules, and arcade-style games to develop specific musical skills.

• With the Soloist and Melodist, a huge amount of sight-reading material can be generated. You can select the key you want the songs to be generated in, the style of music, the song form, and much more.

• An excellent way for a horn player to practice sight-reading is to start with a single line melody, use the MIDI harmony feature to add a harmony (over 200 different harmony types are available), then view the track in the Lead Sheet window. You have control over each individual harmony voice, for example you could mute the voice that you want play.

• The Harmonization features give you a great opportunity to study how harmonies are made. Once band-in-a-Box has generated a harmony, convert it to the melody track (so you can see the notation) and analyze each of the voices.

• Band-in-a-Box is a huge knowledge base of styles, especially if you have the MegaPAK, SuperPAK, or UltraPAK. Use Band-in-a-Box to analyze and learn about different styles of music.

• Teachers could have a group of people read from the lead sheet window - increase the font size, reduce staves per page, and turn on the scroll-ahead feature. With scroll-ahead you can see what's coming up, which simulates what people do naturally when reading music from a "real" book.

• By listening and watching different instrument tracks in the notation window, you can learn how the different instruments in the band, and different voices of a harmony, work together.

• One of the most import sections is the rhythm section - Band-in-a-Box offers a great way to see how things are put together in the rhythm section. For example, open a FreddieG style and study the guitar part by muting the other instruments and watching the fretboard and tab. Or, use the Guitar Tutor which will show you rhythm guitar chords for any song.

• Reharmonizing a song with the Chord Substitution Wizard is a fun and educational way to perform or practice a familiar song in a brand new way. For example, if you had chords such as "Dm7 G7 Cmaj7", a list of substitutions including the tritone substitution "Dm7 Db7b5 Cmaj7" would be offered to you. There are also helpful comments associated with each substitution, showing you why a given substitution might work in each case.

• In the Notation Window, notes can be displayed in different colors, and/or with the note names inside them. The colors and names can be 'absolute', or relative to chord or key. The default color scheme is the one introduced by the Russian composer Scriabin.

• In the Chords Window, you can set the chords to be displayed in Roman Numeral (ex. IIm7, V7, Imaj7), Nashville (ex. 2m7, 57, 1maj7), or Solfeggio (ex. Rem7, So7, DoMaj7) notation.

• You can display a visible metronome on-screen during the entire song (or just the lead-in). Seeing a metronome on-screen is a great way for a student to learn to keep on the beat, and with a settable size, students can view this from across the room.

• Guitar and Bass: The animated Guitar Fretboard Window displays any track playing on an on-screen fretboard. The fretboard can be set to one of over 10 different guitar tunings (for example DADGAD, Double Drop D, and Nashville High-Strung), as well as Bass, Mandolin, Banjo, and Ukulele.

• Guitar: Use the Guitar Chord Tutor to analyze any song. This feature will play rhythm guitar chords for any song on the guitar fretboard, in your choice of a Jazz, Pop, or Folk perspective.

• Guitar: The Guitarist allows you to generate a guitar chord solo for any melody. Band-in-a-Box will intelligently arrange the melody to a guitar chord solo by inserting real guitar voicings throughout the piece. Learning a guitar chord solo can be intimidating, however with Band-in-a-Box you can slow it down, and loop each screen while watching the fretboard and tab.

• Guitar and Bass: The Notation and Lead Sheet windows will display tab on the Guitar and Bass tracks, and optionally the Melody and Solo tracks. Guitar Chord Diagrams can also be displayed, with your choice of Pop, Folk, or Jazz style voicings. Guitar Chord Diagrams for Ukulele, Banjo, and Mandolin are also available.

• Guitar and Bass: A Guitar Tuner is included with Band-in-a-Box. The Guitar Tuner includes a tone generator to give you an audible tuning reference, as well as a pitch meter, fine-adjustment controls, a hum filter, and more.

• Guitar: Band-in-a-Box Add-ons like the Master Jazz Guitar Solos, 101 Essential Riffs for Bluegrass Guitar, 101 Essential Riffs for Country Guitar, and 101 Essential Jazz Guitar Phrases allow you to learn exactly how the pros play.

• Piano: The on-screen Big Piano Window can display the notes of any track on a sizable piano keyboard. You can set the range of the keyboard and number of octaves. Also, you can optionally display the note names or guide notes - showing the scale notes of the current key.

• Piano: Band-in-a-Box Add-on products like the Master Swingin' Jazz Piano Solos, 101 Essential Riffs for Blues Piano, and 101 Essential Phrases for Jazz Piano allow you to learn the techniques of the pros.

• Piano: Study harmonies, for example "Nat Cole Piano (drop 2)", or focus on the piano track of various styles to learn different piano voicing techniques.

• Drums: When learning drum technique, start by using the Band-in-a-Box metronome at a slow speed. This keeps your tempo steady and gives you an indication of your progress as you are able to increase the tempo. Then try muting the drum track and playing along with Band-in-a-Box songs. There is a sizable visual metronome that can be used as well, and you can choose to still hear the count-in even if the drums are muted.

• Drums: The Chord Breaks feature is great for practicing tempo control. Select the # of bars, and Band-in-a-Box will play for, say 4 bars (selectable), and then will rest all instruments for the next 4 bars. During the silence, you keep playing (comping, drums, melody, etc.), trying to stay in tempo.

• Drums: You won't be able to get enough of the RealDrums - choose a style, then solo the RealDrums track and hear precisely how a professional musician plays the drums in any style. Listen to how the drum technique changes at different tempos. Get ALL of the RealDrums styles in the SuperPAK or UltraPAK!

• Horns: For transposing instruments such as saxophone, trumpet, and clarinet, you can set a visual transpose so that the chords and notation are written in the correct key for your instrument.

• Horns: An excellent way for a horn player to practice sight-reading is to start with a single line melody, use the MIDI harmony feature to add a harmony (over 200 different harmony types are available), then view the track in the Lead Sheet window. You have control over each individual harmony voice, for example you could mute the voice that you want play. The Harmonization feature also gives you a great opportunity to study how harmonies are made.

• You can easily make and print out a custom fakebook of all of your tunes with selectable margins, portrait or landscape (sideways) views, and paper size. You can also transpose parts to print out for trumpet /sax players, etc.

• Band-in-a-Box can print out full Lead sheets of all of the instrument parts within a song for practicing or performing away from the computer. You can print only chord and melody in a typical lead sheet style, or print multiple tracks of Notation on the same sheet.

• If you've got a song with lyrics, Band-in-a-Box can print out a multiple chorus lyrics sheet or print out the lyrics along with the notation. You can add "section text" throughout the song (e.g. statements like "Solo starts here").

• There are many other customizable options for Lead sheet printouts including: Title area, Style, Composer, Tempo, Copyright, Bars per Line, Staves per page, Clefs, Chords, Bar #'s, Guitar/Bass Tab, Guitar Chord Diagrams, and Lyrics. You can even print out a blank sheets of music paper.

• You can choose the fonts you want to print with. Band-in-a-Box includes an excellent Jazz music font - this font has a "handwritten manuscript" look, and it's a great alternative to music fonts that look too "computerized." Also, Jazz and Pop music often use certain non-alphabetic symbols for chord types, and these can be printed out as well. These include a delta (triangle) for major chords, a circle for diminished, and a circle with a slash for half-diminished.

• Band-in-a-Box will automatically make adjustments to attempt to fit your song on 1 page if possible (similar to fakebooks).

• A typical lead sheet printout contains 1st/2nd endings, repeats, coda, tag, and sign markings. You can add these repeats to an existing Band-in-a-Box song that has already been entered in "linear" fashion (i.e. without repeats).

• You can save your lead sheet as various types of graphics files, including BMP, JPG, and PNG. Choose a BMP file to have an exact rendition of the screen to paste in another application, or choose a compressed format such as JPG or PNG for internet use or emailing.

• Gigging with Band-in-a-Box: Charlie is a piano player who uses his MIDI keyboard with Band-in-a-Box. He has Band-in-a-Box on his laptop computer, and he's playing a one-man-band show at a local restaurant. He would like to play his keyboard along with Band-in-a-Box (Band-in-a-Box will play the rest of the instruments), but also use the keyboard to control the flow of the song. Using the Conductor, he can control song playback by looping sections, extending choruses, and so on - all "on-the-fly".

  He sets the conductor to allow his MIDI keyboard lowest note B to turn the Conductor mode on. When he's not pressing the low B note, he can play his keyboard normally. If he wants to pause the song, he holds down the low B note as he presses the MIDI key for pause. The song will pause, and the conductor mode turns off as he lets go of the low B key, so he can resume his piano playing.

• Composing songs with the Melodist: Tom is using the Melodist to come up with jingles for a radio commercial. He opens the Melodist dialog, chooses a Melodist from the genre "Light Rock 8ths", and lets the Melodist generate a song with chords and melody. This takes a couple of seconds. He then re-generates a few tunes using the same Melodist until he finds one he likes. This song is royalty-free and he can use it however he pleases.

  Next, he goes through the song and adds some of his own touches by changing a few of the melody notes in the editable notation window, and uses the Chord Substitution window to change a few of the chord progressions. To finish up, he Direct Renders the tune to a wave file.

• SoundTrack production: Allison is a yoga instructor, and is also working on putting together a 30 minute video with an introduction to yoga techniques. Using Band-in-a-Box, she selects the SoundTrack style "Healing1 - Meditative Soundtrack", then uses the SoundTrack Generator to create a soothing soundtrack for her video, rendering it to an audio file.

• Learning chords in MP3's or audio CDs: Justin is 15 years old, and learning to play guitar. He is learning chords, and likes to figure out rock and country songs by listening to his MP3 files (or audio CD's) while he plays along on guitar. With Band-in-a-Box's Audio Chord Wizard, Justin can load in the songs, and it will automatically figure out the chords. He can then play along instantly to his favorite songs. Sometimes he'll display the chords in the Band-in-a-Box chord sheet window, where he can print out a chord chart for the whole song - other members of his band can then learn the tune as well.

• Practicing piano comping: Jacques is learning Jazz piano, and has a fakebook with 5 standards that his instructor wants him to practice for next week. He enters the songs into Band-in-a-Box in 1/2 hour (about 3 minutes per song), selecting appropriate Jazz styles for each of them. He then mutes the piano track and plays along on his piano while Band-in-a-Box accompanies him on Drums, Bass, and Guitar. He usually starts off fairly slowly, then gradually increases the tempo. Before his next lesson, to test himself, he sets the Jukebox to play his songs in random order.

• Learning to improvise: Xavier is learning tenor sax, and is practicing improvising over common chord progressions in all keys. He loads in the file "2-5-1 progression - cycle of 4ths" from the Jazz Practice folder, selects the Soloist "JHenderson Tenor Sax", and lets Band-in-a-Box create an original solo over the whole song. Then he opens the notation window, slows the tempo right down, and analyzes the solo track, learning parts of it by looping the screen. As part of his routine, he'll practice other 4 bar chord progression by typing the chords in himself in a single key and then have Band-in-a-Box transpose them to all 12 keys. Using the Practice Window, he can keep a special 'Practice Folder' of the exercises he creates, and easily transpose the notation for tenor sax.

• Learning Rhythm Guitar: Greg is interested in learning some rhythm guitar techniques, so he loads in a FreddyG Rhythm Guitar style and demo song, and opens the Guitar Fretboard window. Step-Advancing chord-by-chord while watching the on-screen fretboard is an easy and intuitive way for him to learn the guitar chords.

• Recording a song from a MIDI keyboard: Danielle has a MIDI keyboard. She has never learned to read music, but has composed a complete song on her keyboard that she wants to put on her website. Using Band-in-a-Box, she selects a blank style (so Band-in-a-Box doesn't play an accompaniment), and records her song from her MIDI keyboard using the metronome.

  After recording, she uses the graphical (no music notation) Piano Roll window to correct a few wrong notes. She finds a (third party) VSTi synth with an amazing piano sound, so she uses this synth in Band-in-a-Box to play her recorded song. She then directly converts her song to a WMA (Windows Media Audio) file and uploads the file so that it streams from her website.

• Practicing tunes with any instrument: John (age 57), wants to practice his trumpet, rehearsing for 20 tunes that he will be performing with his band at a show. So he types in the chords for the songs (a typical song can be entered in 3 minutes, so that takes him an hour). Then he transposes the notation for his Bb trumpet so he can see the notation in the correct key. He has a 3 year old desktop computer and doesn't have any special soundcard or MIDI keyboards. For sound output, he chooses the Roland VSC DXi software synthesizer (included with Band-in-a-Box) which gives him great sound to practice along with.

• Sight-reading Classical tunes: Eileen is learning to play classical flute. She has the Band-in-a-Box Classical MIDI Fakebooks, containing hundreds of classical tunes. She mutes the Melody track, and with the Lead Sheet window open, plays the melody part herself. She loops and slows down difficult sections of the song so she can learn them.

• Full production of your own audio CD: George sings and plays guitar for country songs that he loves to write. He wants to make a CD of his songs. He selects a country style, then records a vocal track using a microphone connected to his computer. He then uses the Audio Harmonizer to add audio harmonies to his vocals during the chorus sections. Next, he overdubs his vocals with a guitar track, and adds a touch of reverb to the audio track. Finally, he renders his song and burns an audio CD using the included CD burning software... all done entirely within Band-in-a-Box.

• Learning to play drums: Tracy is learning drums. Her technique is to start by using the Band-in-a-Box metronome at a slow speed. This keeps her tempo steady and gives her an indication of her progress as she is able to increase the tempo. She'll then mute the drum track, playing along with regular Band-in-a-Box songs. She sometimes uses the Chord Break feature to practice keeping time, or isolates the RealDrums track (mutes all other tracks), allowing her to hear precisely how a professional musician plays drums in any style.

• Learning new guitar riffs: Carlos (age 32) has been playing Bluegrass guitar for many years, and wants to add some great sounding generic riffs to his arsenal. Using the Band-in-a-Box add-on 101 Essential Riffs for Bluegrass Guitar (which was included in his UltraPAK), he learns each 4-bar riff by looping, watching the fretboard, and slowing it down.

• Practicing vocal harmonies: Arron (age 48) has started a Barbershop group with some friends and wants to practice singing the tenor part in a Barbershop 4-part harmony. He has some MIDI files of songs that he wants to practice, and so he imports the melody and chords into Band-in-a-Box. He selects the Melody Harmony "Barbershop Qt. close harmony", and opens the lead sheet window so he can study each of the harmony voices independently. First, he listens to all of the harmony voices together - then he mutes the tenor voice and practices singing along. He has also purchased the Barbshop Quartet, and he uses the Practice Window to open this program directly from Band-in-a-Box.

   

• Use standard symbols to enter chords for your song into the Chord Sheet window - it only takes 3 minutes to enter chords for a typical song!

• Arrange and edit your song using automatic intros, endings, style variation, drum fills, and much more!

• Choose styles from a wide variety of genres using the searchable and informative StylePicker window.

• When you play your song, Band-in-a-Box generates an original, professional quality arrangement using the style of your choice. Loop parts of the song, transpose each chorus, play along with your keyboard, and much more!

• RealDrums can replace the MIDI Drum track in any style with real recordings of top studio Jazz/Rock/Country drummers! RealDrums play in perfect sync with other Band-in-a-Box tracks.

• RealTracks can be added to any song giving it an ultra-realistic feel, since RealTracks use audio recordings of actual musicians.

• The Melodist can create an entire original song from scratch, including chords, melody, arrangement, solo, intro, and title.

• The Band-in-a-Box Medley Maker allows you to combine multiple Band-in-a-Box song files into one continuous performance.

• Using the Soloist, Band-in-a-Box will automatically create and play original, professional quality solos in the genre and style of your choice.

• Automatic harmonization of Melody track, Soloist track, or live playing on Thru channel. Select from over 200 included harmony types, with 2 to 5 part harmonies like SuperSax, 5 part trumpets, etc.

• Render your songs to wave/MP3/WMA for further editing in other programs, for use on the internet, or to make audio CDs of your music.

• The Audio Chord Wizard automatically figures out chords in MP3/WAV/WMA files and CD-Audio tracks, and displays them in Band-in-a-Box!

• Record your own MIDI part to the Melody or Soloist track from a MIDI keyboard, MIDI guitar, or MIDI wind controller.

• The full-featured Notation Window displays chords and lyrics, as well as musical notation for all instrument tracks.

• The Notation Window's 'Editable' and 'Staff Roll' modes allow you to quickly and easily enter or edit notation and lyrics.

• You can view and edit all MIDI and lyric events in the Melody and Soloist tracks using the Event List Editor.

• The versatile Lead Sheet window allows you to view multi-line, full page notation, lyrics, and chords in typical lead sheet style.

• Your Band-in-a-Box songs can be printed, producing a lead sheet style printout, or you can save the song as a graphics file (e.g. bmp, jpg).

• The Piano Roll Window allows you to edit your tracks using an intuitive graphical window similar to the type found in many sequencer programs.

• The Sequencer Window allows you to control multi-channel Melody or Soloist tracks (i.e. tracks with than one instrument), selecting the patch and volume for each channel, and more.

• Record an audio track along with your Band-in-a-Box song, then edit the track, adding audio effects and harmonies.

• If you've recorded vocals or another audio part, use the TC Helicon Harmonizer to automatically create up to 4 part audio harmonies.

• Band-in-a-Box can load and save many different types of files, including standard files like MID, KAR, WAV, WMA, MP3, and CD-A.

• The SongPicker window provides an easy way to organize, search, and open all of your Band-in-a-Box songs.

• You can export your songs as standard MIDI files, enabling you to play or edit them with other software, etc.

• The intelligent MIDI File Chord Wizard will analyze any MIDI file, figure out the chords, and import chords and melody into Band-in-a-Box!

• Reharmonizing a song with the Chord Substitution Wizard is a fun and educational way to perform or practice a familiar song in a brand new way!

• The Melody Embellisher automatically adds notes (e.g. grace notes) and effects (e.g. vibrato) to the Melody track, making it more lively and realistic.

• Use the Reharmonist to automatically develop chord progressions in the genre of your choice, based only on the melody.

• The Jukebox will load and play an entire folder of songs, great for listening, practicing, and live performances.

• The Conductor Window allows complete control of your song while it is playing by pressing hotkeys on your computer or MIDI keyboard - excellent for live performances.

• Band-in-a-Box supports the TranzPort hardware device, which allows you to control and-in-a-Box remotely through walls from 30 feet away!

• The SoundTrack Generator will create royalty-free music of a specified length, for you to use in home videos, presentations, jingles, etc.

• There's a Big Piano window in Band-in-a-Box which can display the notes of any track on a resizable piano keyboard.

• The animated Guitar Fretboard window displays any track on Guitar and Bass. It can also display Ukulele, Mandolin, Banjo, and Violin fretboards!

• The Guitarist can intelligently create a Guitar Chord Solo based on an existing Melody track, using correct guitar fret positions.

• Band-in-a-Box's Guitar Tuner includes a tone generator, a pitch meter, fine-adjustment controls, a hum filter, and much more!

• Improve your ear using the Interval and Chord Tutor modules in the Ear Training Window.

• Pitch Invasion is an easy and fun to play, arcade-style music game, designed to teach you to recognize specific pitches from a variety of instruments and octave ranges.

• Music Replay is another ear training game included with Band-in-a-Box, which is designed to teach the player to recognize and play back melodies and rhythms.

• The convenient Practice Window is "practice central", where many Band-in-a-Box features and add-ons useful to learning can be launched.

• The StyleMaker is a powerful component of Band-in-a-Box that allows you to create your own new styles from scratch, or edit existing styles.

• The Hybrid StyleMaker allows you to easily make a new style by combining instruments from different styles.

• The StyleWizard automatically creates a Band-in-a-Box style from a MIDI file - no knowledge of the StyleMaker is required!

• While a typical Band-in-a-Box style has two substyles, MultiStyles can also be used which have anywhere from 4 to 24 substyles!

• MIDI Monitor displays a listing of data received from computer MIDI Input and/or Band-in-a-Box output, useful for educational or diagnostic purposes.

• The Animated Drum Kit Window is a cool, animated, 3D display of a complete drum kit.

• Use the Big Lyrics Window for a Karaoke style display of chords and lyrics while your songs are playing.

• Band-in-a-Box will play through an internal or external MIDI synthesizer of your choice, including DXi and VSTi synthesizers.

• Many specialized MIDI options are available, which can help you customize Band-in-a-Box to make the most of your specific MIDI setup.

• The look of Band-in-Box can be customized with various chord sheet fonts, colors, floating/dockable toolbars, and more.

• Use the Vocal Wizard to transpose any song to the best key for your vocal range - ideal for vocal practice, karaoke, and live performances.

• The Chord Builder allows you to hear and build chords up by clicking on the root, extension, and alternate slash root if applicable.

• Using MIDI Chord Detection, play any chord on your MIDI keyboard, and Band-in-a-Box will recognize it instantly and insert it onto the Chord Sheet.

• The Transpose dialog has options that will automatically transpose live playback to a different key, transpose a song every chorus, and more.

• Band-in-a-Box will automatically add a smooth fadeout to the end of your song.

• The Find File feature is a "Swiss Army Knife" that allows you to search for Band-in-a-Box files using keywords.

• Band-in-a-Box supports entry, display, and printout of song forms using repeats, 1st/2nd endings, and DC/DS al coda.

• The Track-to-Track Copy dialog allows you to freeze Band-in-a-Box generated tracks by copying them to the Melody track, and more!

• There are many options to customize the count-in and metronome sounds according to your preferences.

• Descriptive hints and keyboard shortcuts throughout the program, a comprehensive help file and manual, and dedicated customer support help make it easy to use Band-in-a-Box.

• Input common chords such as C7, Cm, and Cmaj, or more complex chords such as Csus#5#9 and C7#5b9#11. Over 100 chords are supported, and you can specify an alternate root for any chord (slash chord).

• One keystroke shortcuts are available for the most common chords. For example, type J to enter a maj7 chord. You can also define custom keystroke shortcuts for chord entry. For example if you enter the chord. C7#5b9#11 frequently, you can define a single-letter keystroke to enter that chord.

• Make your song more interesting by designating any chord as a held chord (all or some of the instruments are sustained), a shot (where the chord is played and a rest follows), or a rest (all or some of the instruments are muted).

• You can "Push" any chord (anticipate the beat) by an eighth or sixteenth beat.

• Pedal Bass is a repetitive figure played by the bass on the same root note. At any bar, you can have pedal bass play with a root, pattern, and duration of your choice.

• Use keyboard shortcuts to enter push, rest, hold, and shot symbols for any chord, or use the convenient Chord Options dialog to select these options for all of the chords in each bar.

• You don't need to type your chords in - other options for chord entry include the Chord Builder and MIDI Chord Detection Wizard.

• Choose any major or minor key for your song, song tempo, title, style, and number of bars/chorus. You can have an optional tag ending play after the last chorus of your song.

• You can enter information about your song in the Song Memo window, and this is saved with the song file. The memo window can optionally auto-open each time a song is loaded, and automatically close when the song starts playing (so you can watch the chords/notation).

• Band-in-a-Box can analyze the song and automatically create a descriptive Song Summary, with information such as tempo, key, style, instruments used, and RealDrums used; the summary is optionally displayed in the Song Memo window.

• � 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.

• � Whenever a new section occurs (a part marker), Band-in-a-Box starts the new section or "Section Paragraph", 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, Band-in-a-Box will start the other sections on a new line. This feature is configurable and optional.

• Easily import part or all of an existing Band-in-a-Box song to your current song, with options to specify source and destination range, type of information to import (chords, melody, lyrics, etc.) and more.

• In Italy, and parts of Europe, chords like C7 are always referred to by the Solfeggio name ("Do 7" for C7) regardless of the key signature. Band-in-a-Box supports entry and display using "Fixed Do" (in addition to the Normal, Solfeggio, Nashville, and Roman numeral types.

• You can specify bar change to happen for every chorus and/or a specific chorus. This applies to bar settings like: tempo changes, Style changes, RealDrums changes, patch changes, volume changes, and Harmony changes.

• Double Lines || are drawn on chord sheet at each bar before a part marker.

• Each style has two variations (substyles), and you can switch them at any point in your song. For example, you may wish to use a livelier substyle for the middle of your song. Or, you can switch to a different style altogether at any point in your song.

• For each track, you can choose a custom patch (instrument). Choose from any available patch/instrument on your synth, whether it's a General MIDI (GM) patch, or a higher bank patch. You can also set your volume levels, reverb, chorus, and stereo panning.

• In addition to style changes at any bar, you can change patches, styles, harmony, and tempo at any point in your song.

• To make your song more interesting and varied, you can choose from a variety of song settings such as chord embellishments. Jazz styles typically include embellishment of chords. This means that if you type a C7 chord, the piano part may play a C13 or a C7b9, a common practice in Jazz playing. With this feature, you don't need to input these types of extensions into your arrangements, since they will turn up automatically.

• The middle choruses of a song often have a different feel, and you can specify whether to vary the style or allow rests, pushes, and pedal bass in the middle chorus. For example, you might want to not allow pushes to, for uninterrupted soloing in the middle choruses.

• If you have a song with multiple choruses, Band-in-a-Box can automatically "unfold" it to a single large chorus, useful for customizing a song (e.g., changing chords, styles, and patches in only one of your choruses). You can also do the opposite and "fold" your song into multiple choruses.

• Choose whether or not you want Band-in-a-Box to automatically generate a 2 bar ending pattern for your song.

• Automatic Intro generation! This will create a chord progression that gets inserted as an intro in the song. Choose Jazz or Pop style chords, Intro length, Pedal Bass, and more.

• Re-generate the Intro as many times as you like to find your favorite intro.

• Band-in-a-Box can automatically "Jazz Up" the chords by changing chords like C and CMaj to 7th and 6th chords, and allowing chord embellishments - this produces a lead sheet more suitable for jazz. The "Jazz Down" feature does the opposite, making the song more suitable for Pop/Rock.

• Band-in-a-Box supports entry, display, and printout of song forms using repeats, 1st/2nd endings, and DC/DS al coda.

• Part markers are placed on the Chord sheet to indicate a new part of the song, and when a drum fill should occur. They typically occur every 8 bars or so, but may be placed at any bar.

• You can transpose your entire composition to any key simply by selecting the key from a menu, or you can transpose a range of bars.

• "Copy from..to.." functions allow you to copy and paste chords/rests/holds/shots/bar settings/melody/soloist/lyrics for a range of bars, and give you the option of repeating the paste a number of times, transposed with each paste. You can also have the first chorus of your song automatically copied to your whole song. The "Nudge Chords" feature is an easy way to move a range of chords by any number of bars/beats.

• 'Search and replace' chords throughout your song, and you can use asterisks (*) as wildcards. This feature can also convert complex Jazz chords to simpler chords - for example, C13#11#5 to C9.

• The StylePicker allows easy selection of styles by Category, full style title, memo, and examples of songs that work in that style. For example, you can select the category 'Jazz' and you will see all the Jazz styles displayed. Then you can select a specific style (e.g. GARNER.STY), and see a full title, description of the style, and examples of appropriate popular songs that the style could be used for.

• Choose styles from a wide range of genres: Jazz, Pop, Rock, Latin, Country, Classical, World, Blues, Bluegrass, New Age, and much more!

• Over 1500 styles are currently available from PG Music, and more are always being developed! Get all of the currently available styles in the MegaPAK, SuperPAK, and UltraPAK!

• The StylePicker window is a useful and fun way to audition new styles. If you load up a song in a Jazz Swing style, you can quickly find out what Pop/Rock/Classical etc. styles would also work in that feel and tempo, and preview how they would sound without leaving the dialog. What starts out as a Jazz tune can quickly change to another genre, complete with new style, new tempo, and new patches for Melody.

• Styles will use up to five tracks for the accompaniment tracks, for example Bass, Piano, Drums, Guitar, and Strings, or whatever instruments are suitable for the style.

• Quickly and easily preview your song in many different styles, or load in a song demo for any style available from PG Music.

• The StylePicker window shows you which styles would work best in your song, highlighting all styles that have a similar feel, similar tempo, or both. The window remembers the style and genre that you've used, and will return to it the next time you visit it.

• Information displayed for each style includes the feel (even/swing, 16th/8th note), suggested tempo, which Styles Set it's included on, long (descriptive) style name, description of what the style is useful for, and popular song examples.

• The Search function lets you find a word or phrase in any of the StylePicker fields.

• Filters allow you to only have certain styles displayed - for example, you can display only those styles that have a similar feel to a chosen prototype style, or you can only show styles from specific Styles Sets.

• When you choose a style that has a different feel than your song, Band-in-a-Box will automatically offer to expand/reduce the chord durations, change the swing/even feel of your melody and solo, and even convert 4/4 songs to 3/4 (and vice versa)!

• You can copy the stylepicker list to the clipboard, then paste it into a word processor and print out the entire list of styles.

• There is also a function to export the style list in Comma Separated Values (CSV) format, which can be opened in a spreadsheet program like Excel.

• If you have made a Hybrid Style, used the StyleWizard, or created a new style from scratch using the StyleMaker, you can add your style to the list by using the StylePicker Editor.

• Third parties making Band-in-a-Box styles can create their own files that will allow their styles to show up in the StylePicker list.

• You can select styles using the Favorite Styles window, which displays the most recently used styles, and allows you to save and load sets of styles that might be useful for specific projects.

• The Style Alias feature is extremely useful. Let's say you've got a new style for Jazz called "Dizzy". You can create an alias so that when Band-in-a-Box looks for a Jazz Swing style, it will load in "Dizzy" instead. So if you have found a new favorite style, you don't have to make tedious changes to all of your songs - just change the alias! There are options to have Band-in-a-Box confirm the substitutions, or disable the aliases all together, and you can have hundreds of different style aliases!

• When you open a song, and the style is not found (perhaps it's a song that your friend sent you, and she used a style that you don't happen to have), Band-in-a-Box will intelligently substitute the best style that you DO have. This feature is available for every style that PG Music has made, and also can be customized by third-parties or any user making styles.

• Styles have a convenient, memorable short filename as well as a long descriptive filename. The short filename is displayed on screen when you load a style, but you can also see the long file name and info by pointing to it with your mouse.

• Do you have Styles that don't appear in the StylePicker (because you've just made them, or got them from a 3rd party)? The StylePicker will automatically find those Styles and add them to your list in an "Other Styles" category. The information regarding Style name, Even/Swing, 8ths/16ths, and time signature are filled in for you.

• Long Style names appear on the main chord sheet screen beside the short Style name

• You can also specify a long Style name (up to 32 characters) when saving a Style from the StyleMaker or Hybrid Style, and the 32 character name will appear in the StylePicker and on screen.

• RealDrums selection is possible from the StylePicker.

• 20,000 StylePicker entries are supported.

• Depending on the style you choose, Band-in-a-Box will generate up to five instrument tracks, for instance Bass, Piano, Guitar, Strings, and Drums. The arrangements are always fresh and original, because each PG Music style contains a large database of possible patterns it can play.

• You can set the tempo for your song manually, OR you can tap a hotkey or button to start the song playing at the speed you are tapping!

• When an overall loop is set for the song, you can practice continuously without interruption.

• Play along with Band-in-a-Box live using your MIDI keyboard. Additionally, if you want to be sure that you never hit a wrong note, use the MIDI keyboard wizard - then Band-in-a-Box will automatically make sure that every note sounds good with the song, transposing if necessary! Even beginners can solo like a pro!

• If you don't have a MIDI keyboard, not to worry - you can play along using your computer (qwerty) keyboard. The Wizard will still work, with the bottom row of keys being chord tones, and middle row of keys being passing tones.

• When playing live, you can have Band-in-a-Box automatically transpose your live part to any other key!

• You can define a favorite key and "Each time a song is loaded" Band-in-a-Box will optionally transpose any and all loaded songs to that key. This is a great feature for practicing in a certain key.

• The Chord Breaks feature is great for practicing tempo control. Select the # of bars, and Band-in-a-Box will play for, say 4 bars (selectable), and then will rest all instruments for the next 4 bars. During the silence, you keep playing (comping, drums, melody, etc.), trying to stay in tempo.

• Band-in-a-Box plays an audible or visual count-in at the beginning of your song, and can also play a metronome throughout, for playback or recording.

• Hotkeys can be used to start/stop/pause playback, open next/previous song, and much more. You can also play a song from any bar and chorus by using hotkeys or right-clicking and using a context menu.

• During playback, any instrument track can be muted, allowing you to practice playing that instrument while Band-in-a-Box plays the rest. There are quick keyboard hotkeys that you can use to control every aspect of muting, soloing, and adjusting the volume of each track.

• You can loop a single screen in the notation window.

• Double-click on any part of the chord sheet to play from that bar, or highlight a series of bars and press a button or hotkey to loop the selection. There are also extensive looping/live playing features such as the conductor that allows you to control nearly every aspect of playback - useful for practicing, jamming, and performing.

• Live playback through a DXi or VSTi software synthesizer is possible with hardly any latency because Band-in-a-Box supports ASIO drivers.

• During playback, you can have Band-in-a-Box boost the velocity (loudness) of pushes, shots, and holds. There are also settings for dealing with too-low guitar notes and late notes in patterns that could conflict with the next pattern.

• While the song is playing, Band-in-a-Box displays information in the status bar at the top of the screen. This includes the name of the song file, the style, RealDrums used, the current bar and chorus number, and length of the song.

• These are not "samples," but are full recordings, lasting from 1 to 8 bars at a time

• Choose a brushes style (for example), and you will hear lush REAL Jazz brushes. The results are dramatically better than MIDI. They sound like a real drummer, because they are made up of recordings of a real drummer, while at the same time being varied and unique on each play. Adding a real instrument to the mix makes all of the Band-in-a-Box parts sound more authentic - the realism of the drum part has the effect of improving the overall sound.

• As well as improved drum sounds, you are hearing the exact rhythms played by the drummer, including features not seen in MIDI (subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills etc.). And the tracks intelligently play differently at faster/slower tempos, so you hear appropriate playing for the current tempo (not seen in MIDI drums)! Change tempos or volumes during playback using the same tempo/volume controls as MIDI.

• RealDrums are seamlessly integrated into Band-in-a-Box, so you just use the program normally and you will hear RealDrums instead of MIDI drums, according to your preferences.

• If you want to, you can fully control when you hear RealDrums versus MIDI drums. (1) You can substitute RealDrums for MIDI drums rarely (only if RealDrums are WAY better than MIDI drums), always (even if MIDI drums would likely be a better fit for the style), and so on. (2) You can assign specific RealDrums styles and variations to specific songs. (3) You can assign RealDrums to specific Band-in-a-Box styles in the StyleMaker. We also provide these types of styles for all of the RealDrums, and they can be accessed directly from the StylePicker window.

• We include a library of RealDrums in the Pro and MegaPAK packages, but you can get all the currently available RealDrums sets in the SuperPAK or UltraPAK!

• If you prefer MIDI drums (which is unlikely!), you can disable RealDrums all together. We make MIDI drums for every Band-in-a-Box style.

• Most RealDrums styles (starting with RealDrums set 5) contain may instrument variations ("brushes vs. Sticks", "HiHat vs. Ride Cymbal" "Percussion only" etc.). You can have Band-in-a-Box automatically choose different variations with each play, so the song sounds fresh each time. One time you'll hear it with "brushes", the next time with sticks and ride cymbals, etc.

• Favor Brushes", "Favor Sticks" settings: When selecting RealDrums styles to use for a style, Band-in-a-Box will use your preferences for brushes or sticks.

• There are RealDrums "Compatible song/style finders." For a chosen RealDrums style, these features enable you to (1) play the RealDrums demo song (we include multiple demo songs for each style), (2) show a menu of Band-in-a-Box styles that would work with the RealDrums style and (3) play a song demo of various Band-in-a-Box styles that work with the RealDrums style.

• RealDrums are provided as compressed audio files (with no loss of quality) so they can install quickly and take up less hard disk space. They can be decompressed during installation, or only as you use them in Band-in-a-Box. You can also have Band-in-a-Box search for any compressed files and convert them to wave.

• If you choose a RealDrums style, and it's tempo range is out of the recommended range for the style, Band-in-a-Box will inform you of that.

• The RealDrums styles use standard wave files which can be used in other programs.

• When you export to MIDI files, Band-in-a-Box will automatically create a wave file for the RealDrums - this allows you to easily import your entire song - MIDI and RealDrums - into a sequencer like PowerTracks Pro Audio for further editing. When you render your song to wave, MP3, or WMA, the RealDrums are automatically merged into the file.

• Anyone can make their own RealDrums from scratch, and we include extensive documentation and templates that you can use to do this. There is also a Developer Mode that you can toggle on - this gives you detailed information about the style, (which patterns were picked, the number of possibilities at any one bar, etc.) and informs you when you have made a mistake.

• A text file defines which styles should be substituted, so third parties making RealDrums can have their RealDrums substituted for certain styles, just like PG Music styles are.

• The normal place to keep the RealDrums files is in your Band-in-a-Box folder, however you can also define a custom location for your Drums folder. So for example you can have the RealDrums on a separate hard disk if your primary hard disk is low on space.

• A Global Volume Adjust allows you to adjust the level of the RealDrums in relation to the MIDI parts, if you are finding they are too loud or soft.

• You can RealDrums style changes within your song, either using the RealDrums from a Band-in-a-Box Style, or specifying a specific RealDrums style to use at any bar.

• We have "artist" support; this allows you to choose among different drummers playing the same style. For example, we have multiple artists playing the "Jazz Brushes" style. You can set Band-in-a-Box to favor the "artists" all the time, or sometimes.

• You can select RealDrums styles within the StylePicker. Highlight a MIDI style that you like, and press the RealDrums "Best" button, to see a list of the most compatible RealDrums styles for that Style, or the "RD" button to select from all available RealDrums.

• There is a hot key to turn RealDrums on/off (Control+Shift+F6). This also works while the song is playing.

• RealTracks 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. For example, with a simple right-click, you can turn your MIDI guitar into a beautiful finger picking guitar part, and turn those MIDI strings into a real violinist playing a real violin!

• These are not "samples," but are full recordings, lasting from 1 to 8 bars at a time.

• RealTracks feature real audio recordings of acoustic fingerpicked and strummed guitar, pedal steel, and tenor sax, acoustic and electric bass, fiddle, rhythm and lead electric guitar, resonator guitar, and much more!

• RealTracks can be assigned to play on any Band-in-a-Box track (guitar, bass, etc.), and you can select up to seven different RealTracks in one song. RealTracks can also be built in to the style, replacing the MIDI bass, guitar, piano, or strings part in that style. In addition, you can also use the Soloist to generate RealTracks.

• These tracks are all much more realistic than MIDI tracks of the same instrument because subtle changes like breathing, strumming, phrasing, and glissando's do not translate well to MIDI. Your song will literally sound like it was recorded in a studio by the best musicians around!

• Adding a real instrument to the mix makes all of the Band-in-a-Box and PowerTracks MIDI parts sound more authentic - add up to seven and the results are phenomenal.

• RealTracks add an exciting human element to your Band-in-a-Box and PowerTracks Pro Audio arrangements, but that's just the beginning. They can be used for all kinds of recordings. Record the live audio output of RealTracks through a mixer, or export RealTracks tracks as wave files for use with most popular audio programs.

• RealTracks are seamlessly integrated into Band-in-a-Box, so once you've added a RealTrack to your song you can use the program normally. If your song as more than one RealTrack, you can re-generate an individual track while keeping others the same.

• Select a Melodist from the wide range of styles available, for example "Swing Garner", "StanG - BossaUp". You can select specific genres such as 'Latin', 'Pop 8ths', and 'Bebop' to narrow your search. The window will also (optionally) show all Melodists available, even ones you don't have. Get all of the Melodists in the MegaPAK, SuperPAK, or UltraPAK!

• After generating a song with the Melodist, you can customize the song to your liking, regenerate any of the elements (chords, melody etc.) or any part of the song until you 'get it right'. Either way, the end product is a complete song.

• You can control which aspects of the song should be generated, for example, chords/melody/intro/title. Below are some examples.

• Auto-generate, regenerate, or remove an intro for an existing song. You can learn from the intelligent chord progressions that are generated as a lead-in to the first chord of the song.

• Auto-generate pedal bass patterns over existing songs to add tension/release effect to your Band-in-a-Box arrangements.

• Generate chords only, and then compose your own melody by playing or singing along with the chord progression. This can help composers to write new songs by starting them off with a chord progression that they might not ordinarily use. And if you're stuck at a certain bar, see what Band-in-a-Box will generate/regenerate as a melody for that section.

• Generate chords only, and practice playing your musical instrument along with the chord progressions. Print out the generated lead sheet of chords so that you can see the chords easily on the music stand. Working with new chord progressions is useful to 'get-out-of-a-rut' in your practicing by playing new chord progressions.

• Generate Melodies only - over existing chord progressions

• Use the versatile Melodist 'Jukebox' feature to Generate Songs (Chords & Melodies) in succession. Generate Solos over generated chord progression, or over the same chord progression (to practice blues soloing for example). The Melodist Jukebox will continuously generate and play new songs. You can set the range of Melodists to include in the Jukebox, or keep the Jukebox on the same Melodist the whole time.

• The Favorite Melodists window shows you the most recently used Melodists.

• Normally you want to write the Melody to the Melody track, but you can also choose to write it to the Soloist track.

• You can choose whether or not to allow style changes. Melodists will automatically load in a style that is appropriate for the Melodist if this is turned on.

• For songs with the form AABA, you can have the second A section transposed.

• There are currently over 200 Melodists defined, and you can define your own Melodists using the Melodist Maker, assigning them to one of the available Melodist databases.

• The Melodist Maker lets you define or edit your own melodists. You can specify the title, memo, patches, style, melodist database to use, and harmony. You can also customize and fine-tune your melodist using parameters that control the type of chords, melody and intro to be generated, song form, theme continuity, endings type, anticipations, feel, and more. Specific examples of melodist maker settings are 'Unique Themes' (%), 'Mix Minor and Major Progressions' (%), 'Chord Substitutions throughout Form' (%), and 'Melody Note Range'.

• You can save and export individual Melodists you have made, and share them with your friends.

• Use the MedleyMaker to combine two or more songs into one single song.

• 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!

• Choose from over 300 Soloists from a wide variety of genres. Generate Soloists in styles similar to great jazz musicians, (e.g. Django, Coltrane), or choose from Country, Pop, Rock, Classical Soloists and many others.

• You can narrow down your search be specifying a particular Soloist type/feel (ex. Even 8th notes, Waltz Swing 8th notes) or genre (Ex. Satch Trumpet, Blues (Shuffle), etc.). The Soloist dialog will optionally show you all of the Soloists available, including the ones you don't have. Get all of the Soloists (except for the Artist Soloist Series) in the MegaPAK and SuperPAK, or get them all in the UltraPAK!

• There are many different ways to use the Soloist! Generate a Solo and practice it by looping it, slowing it down, or printing it out, until you can perform a great solo over any chord changes!

• Generate a Soloist and attach a Harmony such as "Big Band Brass" to create phenomenally quick and interesting Big Band Arrangements automatically.

• Have the Soloist play a solo according to your accompaniment and arrangement.

• Trade 4's in a call-response fashion with the Soloist (you solo for 4 bars, Band-in-a-Box solos for 4 bars, etc.)

• Concentrate separately on different aspects of your playing with assistance from the Wizard. From soloing with proper phrasing and "feel" (the best notes are included automatically) to accompanying a soloist with confidence and authority (Tip: try muting out one of the accompaniment parts such as the piano or guitar part and play along to the Soloist in a supportive role - it's fun!)

• Generate a Soloist on chords/keys that you would like to practice. Band-in-a-Box will play and solo with you all day without getting bored. For example, if you want to work on your II-V7-I progressions ("two-five-one"), you can just type the chords you want, and generate a solo to play over those changes. As the solo plays, you see the notation, can you can sight read along. Pressing the "Loop Screen" checkbox on the notation will loop the notation the screen so you can master each 4 bar phrase (II-V-I) and then move ahead to the next one!

• The Favorite Soloists dialog displays a list of the most recently used Soloists.

• You can have the Soloist play 'double time', so it plays twice as many notes in a given space of time. This is useful for ballads and other tunes with slower tempos.

• You can select a custom instrument, harmony, and style for the Soloists to automatically load.

• There are different "Solo modes" you can choose from. 'Normal' mode will generate and play a normal solo. 'Fills' mode instructs the Soloist to 'noodle' on the song for a user-defined percentage of time, rather than playing a solo throughout.

• You can have the Soloist play 'Around the Melody'. This is useful if you have a sparse Melody. The Soloist will play during the empty spaces between phrases of the melody.

• You can have the Soloist Trade 2, 4, or 8 bars at a time. For example, if set to 4, this instructs the Soloist to play 4 bars, then "lay-out" for 4 bars, then play the next 4, etc. This is useful for practicing your response to a musical idea. You can also specify whether you want the Soloist to play the first group of 4 bars, or the 2nd group.

• The Solo Wizard instructs the Soloist to play only when you press a key on your computer or Piano keyboard. This is useful for live performances.

• You can have Band-in-a-Box generate a solo for a specific range of bars. If you already have an existing solo, only the bars you choose will be rewritten, allowing you to generate multiple solos in the same song.

• Band-in-a-Box will auto-suggest an appropriate Soloist for your song, and if you want a different one, it will suggest alternatives.

• You can choose which choruses you want the solo to happen in, and you can choose whether you want the presence of a melody to determine if a solo will occur. You can also have the Soloist mute the melody in the middle chorus if you choose to.

• You can have the Soloist instrument change after a certain amount of time. For example, you could have the instrument change every chorus, every part marker, or every 4 bars.

• When musicians solo for a song, the solo is typically influenced by the melody as well as the chords. Band-in-a-Box will intelligently allow the melody to influence the type of solo generated by the Soloist. The result is a much better solo generated for the song. A strength (%) setting allows you to control how much the solo will be influenced by the melody. Choose the melody influence (%), and one of several presets to control the type of influence (pitches/rhythms/note density, etc.). Presets include Pop/Simple melodies and Bebop/Complex Melodies.

• There are many advanced Melody Influenced Soloist settings. These include settings like "First note must match riff (0-100% of the time)", "% passing notes acceptable, and "% of notes that match pitch and time".

• You can optionally use larger Soloist database files when generating the solo, to create a more sophisticated solo (takes slightly longer to generate).

• If you wish to make your own Soloists (assigned to one of the available Soloist databases), or modify an existing soloist, Band-in-a-Box offers you a Soloist Maker module.

• Using the Soloist Maker, you can specify the title, memo, patches, style, soloist feel, soloist database to use, and harmony. You can also customize and fine-tune your soloist using parameters that control things like the types of phrases, number of 'outside' notes, note spacing, and legato.

• You can save and export individual Soloists you have made, and share them with your friends.

• Harmonies are sophisticated, using chord tones and passing harmonies. Each harmony can use up to 3 channels, so a harmony can include piano, vibes and guitar for example.

• An example of a such a harmony is "Shearing Quintet". This includes 5 part piano harmony, plus doubling of melody by vibes, and also doubling by Jazz guitar an octave down. This simulates the famous Shearing Quintet sound.

• Harmonies can be written to MIDI file as single track or each voice on separate track.

• You can write the a harmony (the whole track or just a specific range of bars) permanently to the Melody or Soloist track, and if you do this, you have the option of 'loosening the start times of notes' (makes them sound more natural). When you have converted the track, you can view and print all of the harmony notation. Using the Lead Sheet window, each voice can be printed separately, or you can print all voices together.

• Favorite harmony dialogs, for both the Melody and Soloist/Thru harmonies, allow you to select from the most recently used harmonies.

• Use the Harmony Maker to define your own harmonies, or edit existing ones! Your harmonies can be saved/loaded, so you can share them with your friends.

• In the Harmony Maker, you can specify which types of voices should be present, and their parameters (Channel, low, high, octave double, velocity (volume) boost, patches (instruments)).

• There are many settings for customizing your harmony, including: 'Use Close Harmony' (%), 'Use Passing Chords' (%), 'Lowest Harmony Note', 'Overall Harmony Octave', 'Volume Adjust of Entire Harmony', 'No Harmony if duration less than...'(musicians won't harmonize a note if it's shorter than a certain [variable] duration), OK to make new harmony with new chord (Determines how the program should respond to chord changes during a sustained harmony), and 'Use Guitar Harmony voicings' (this uses real guitar voicings that display correctly on the fretboard).

• Also, modern Jazz harmonies often voice chords in 4ths. For example, a C chord with C melody might be voiced C, G, D, A, E. You can select 4ths voicings to harmonize the Melody, Soloist, or THRU parts using 3, 4, or 5 part voicings in 4ths.

• With Live Harmonies, you can play notes live on your keyboard above a split point, and have them harmonized according to chords below the split point, and you can do this even while Band-in-a-Box is not playing. Of course, it is not necessary to play chords while Band-in-a-Box is playing, your notes will be harmonized automatically.

• Band-in-a-Box normally saves information as MIDI data, however you can convert any song to a wave file using the Render to Wave feature. A popular reason for doing this is that it's the first step in creating an audio CD of your Band-in-a-Box songs.

• You can also convert your Band-in-a-Box songs to compressed audio file types, such as MP3 and WMA. These types of files are much smaller, so are useful if you want to stream your files from a website, email them to a friend, and so on.

• Normally, rendering takes a long time because you have to listen to the song play through, however you can also "Direct Render" your songs to wave using the Roland VSC3, included with Band-in-a-Box. Direct Rendering takes a matter of seconds, and uses the rich sounds of the VSC.

• If you are using any DXi or VSTi synth, such as the popular VSC-DXi included with Band-in-a-Box, you can "DXi-Direct Render" your song to wave, which takes only a few seconds per song.

• You can optionally render one wave file per track and generate stereo or mono wave files. Having one wave file per track is useful if you want to import the individual tracks into another multitrack sequencer for further processing.

• If you have an audio track (ex. vocals), this can be merged in automatically with your rendered wave file. The volume of the audio track can be adjusted so that it mixes well with the rendered MIDI tracks. The RealDrums track will be merged in automatically as well.

• Specify whether you want a 2 bar lead-in and/or drum count-in sound in the rendered file. There are also settings to add silence to the beginning and end of the rendered file.

• If you have alot of files to render to wave, MP3, or WMA, the Batch Render dialog allows you to convert a whole folder of songs in one easy step.

• You can set the name of the batch rendered files to be either based on the file names, or based on the full song titles.

• If you are batch rendering files to MP3 or WMA, you can choose to also save the wave files for each song. You can also reset the DXi synth after each render. This ensures that no audio (stuck notes etc.) from previous file is retained.

• Clicking the 'Burn to Audio CD' button will launch MINIBurn, a CD burning application included with Band-in-a-Box. If your song has not already been rendered to wave, Band-in-a-Box will automatically do that first. You can use MINIBurn to create your audio CD, or you can use any other third party CD burning application.

• This is one of the all-time most requested features for Band-in-a-Box. This amazing wizard automatically figures out the chords from any audio CD track, MP3, WAV, or WMA (Windows Media) file and displays them in Band-in-a-Box.

• The Audio Chord Wizard automatically determines the average tempo of the file, as well as beats and bar lines throughout the song. For extremely accurate bar-line and chord detection, there is a tap-tempo feature. Simply play the song and tap the F8 key twice at the beginning of two consecutive bars. The Audio Chord Wizard (ACW) will use that information to improve detection throughout the song.

• The audio "Piano Roll" window shows many of the strongest frequencies found in the file during each eighth-note interval. It also displays all of the bass notes found in the song.

• The Audio Chord Wizard will detect either 1 or two chords per bar (settable), and also shows a visual audio wave graphic.

• If the song is not in concert pitch, there is a fine-tuning setting that can be adjusted to improved chord detection. ACW can also automatically detect fine-tuning for you.

• There are many advanced settings that can be used to tweak the display and chord detection, for example 'Audio Beat Detection Sensitivity', 'Number of Bass Notes Displayed', 'Harmonic Scaling', and more.

• You can send the chords back to Band-in-a-Box so they will display in the chord sheet window.

• The Audio Chord Wizard Utility dialog includes automatic detection of key signature based on the chords only.

• After an audio song (MP3/WAVV/WMA) has been loaded into the Audio Chord Wizard, there will be bar lines assigned automatically by ACW, and perhaps modified by you. If you would like your Band-in-a-Box song file to follow these bar lines, you can press a button to create a tempo map - then the Band-in-a-Box MIDI parts will play in perfect sync with the audio file!

• Having an accurate tempo map allows you to "remix" existing MP3 (and other audio) files, by adding a Band-in-a-Box style to the audio. For example, add strings or congas to an existing song, (or a trumpet solo, or chord reharmonization etc.), or add drums to a song that doesn't have them. The new parts you add will stay in sync for the whole song, and can be easily rendered to a WAV file. The tempo map can be added, removed, re-added etc. from the song at any time.

• You can enable or disable the Band-in-a-Box style at any time. If you disable it, you'll only be hearing the audio file play while you watch the Band-in-a-Box chord sheet.

• A Lead Sheet style window will shows the chords for the whole song on a single screen. This shows you the form of the entire song at a glance, and allows you to click on a bar on the lead sheet to jump to that area of the song.

• 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.

• Often this feature is used by people to record in a single-channel melody part using a MIDI keyboard, however it doesn't necessarily have to be a melody, and you can also record another part to the Soloist track! Once you have recorded your part, you can fine-tune and edit it using editable notation mode or the Piano Roll window.

• In addition, you aren't limited to recording a single channel melody - you can record as many instruments/notes as you want and edit everything. If you are recording more than one instrument, you can set the melody track-type to be multi-channel.

• If recording from a MIDI guitar, and each string is on a different channel (MIDI channels 11-16), you can change the Melody track from a normal single-channel track to a guitar-type track. Band-in-a-Box will then display Guitar tab in place of the bass clef.

• You can select to record from the start of your song, or from a specific bar/chorus number (punch in/out), and you can optionally overdub your track an unlimited number of times to record multiple parts!

• If you only record one chorus, Band-in-a-Box will automatically offer to copy the first chorus to the rest of your song.

• If you have Melody notes past when you stopped recording, you have the option of keeping them, or Band-in-a-Box can automatically delete them.

• For multi-channel recordings, Band-in-a-Box allows you to specify which channel you want your recorded part to play on!

• A Record Filter allows you to specify which types of MIDI events you want to record (notes, polyphonic pressure, sustain pedal, bank changes, other controllers, program changes, channel aftertouch, and pitch bend). Filtering out certain events can be useful when recording with a MIDI wind controller, which might send an 'avalanche' of MIDI data.

• You aren't restricted to recording from an external MIDI device - you can also record yourself playing the on-screen piano keyboards, guitar fretboards, or drums in the Drum Window! Or you can play notes on your computer (qwerty) keyboard using the playalong wizard, and Band-in-a-Box will record those!

• Choose one of the blank styles and record an entire song with multiple instruments onto a multi-channel melody track.

• This window naturally allows you to type in chords and lyrics, but you can also display or enter melodies and solos in standard notation. You see the melody, chords, and lyrics on screen just as you would in a lead sheet. You can also display the Bass, Drums, Guitar, Piano or Strings tracks in notation.

• Toggle between the notation window and chord sheet window by pressing a single button, or hotkey combination. You can open a "fixed" notation window, or a moveable floating notation window by pressing shift key as you click the notation button

• You can view the notation for any of the Band-in-a-Box tracks - Bass, Drums, Piano, Guitar, Strings, Melody, and Solo. Treble and bass clefs are displayed for each track, and for the guitar and bass tracks, tablature is (optionally) displayed. The majority of Band-in-a-Box styles use "intelligent" guitar parts, so Band-in-a-Box knows exactly which guitar string is used for each note.

• Tablature can also be displayed for the Melody and Solo tracks - the type of tab is customizable - ukulele, banjo, mandolin, violin, and over 10 different guitar tunings (ex. DADGAD, Guitar Open Tuning (High Strung)).

• The notation window displays all of the standard notation symbols - notes, rests, ties, staff lines, bar numbers, chords, key signature, time signature, which all effect the sound of the song. In addition, there are a number of other symbols you can enter (which are visual-only). This includes slurs, crescendo, decrescendo, staccato, staccatissimo, regular accent, legato accent, and marcato accent.

• The notation window can be resized on-screen as small or as large as you need it to be, and in addition, the number of bars per screen can be customized

• The Notation screen scrolls as the song is playing, and there is a scroll-ahead feature: When reading music, we normally read ahead a little to see what's coming up. Scroll-ahead can be set to 1 or 2 bars ahead of the music without interfering with your view of the current bar.

• Normally, when you play your song back, the notes are highlighted in red as they are played. Good sight readers might find this distracting, so the highlighting can be disabled.

• Notation can display notes in different colors based on absolute note names or relative to chord or key. The colors are definable. The default color scheme is one introduced by the Russian composer Scriabin. You can edit custom note color configurations and save/load them at any time.

• You can also set the notation to display note names in the note heads. You can display absolute note names (A, Bb, etc.), or you can display numbers relative to the current key or chord.

• The fonts for the Chords, Lyrics, Text, and Title can be selected individually. You can choose the PG Music font, or any other font available on your system. In addition, the size of the font is settable.

• An excellent Jazz Music Font is included. This font has a "handwritten manuscript" look. It's a great alternative to music fonts that look too "computerized."

• Jazz and Pop music often use certain non-alphabetic symbols for chord types. These include a delta (triangle) for major chords, a circle for diminished, and a circle with a slash for half-diminished. Also, tensions like b9 and b13 are stacked vertically and contained in brackets. Select the "Jazz Symbols" option and see these symbols for display/printout on the Chord Sheet, Notation, and Lead Sheet windows.

• Visual Notation and Chords Transpose: People who play transposing (non-concert) instruments will appreciate these settings. The Transpose setting will transpose chords and notation by a specified number of semitones. This only affects what you see, not what you hear. A clef split setting allows you to specify which notes will appear on the treble clef and bass clef. You can also set the maximum number of ledger lines. There are presets that you can select for specific instruments, for example "Melody on Bass clef -12", "clarinet +2", Bass Guitar +12, etc.

• Guitar Chord Diagrams (chord grids) can be displayed, using chords from a folk, pop, or jazz perspective. Over 10 alternate guitar tunings are available, plus banjo, mandolin, and ukulele chord diagrams. The Chord Diagrams have an optional setting to show fret numbers on them.

• For accidentals, you can choose whether you want the enharmonics of passing tones to be based on the current chord, or the key of the song.

• There are a few options that are designed to make the notation window more 'clean' looking so it's easier to read. These include 'Engraver spacing', minimizing the display of unnecessarily complicated notation, and optionally displaying up to 128th note resolution.

• The notation window has a scrub mode, which is useful for hearing a melody you are entering without having to play the whole arrangement. In scrub mode, notes will sound as you drag the mouse across them.

• To learn or study parts, it is very helpful to use the step-advance features. You can step note-by-note or chord-by-chord through the notation window, and each note/chord will be highlighted, played, as well as displayed on the piano and fretboard.

• When practicing, use the Loopscreen function to loop a single screen of notation, usually four bars.

• You can have multiple keys in a song. The new key signature is shown in notation.

• Feature (confirmation dialog) to prevent accidental entry of a duplicate note (same pitch near same time).

• Feature (confirmation dialog) to prevent accidental entry of a very high or very low note (large # of ledger lines).

• Bar Number options: Setting for bar # size on notation, lead sheet, and printout. Bar # options to include bar # on lead sheet and printout (every bar, part marker, page). Option to include substyle name when printing out "a," "b," etc. Bar # offset for Printout and lead sheet.

• Using editable notation mode, you can input a melody from scratch into the Melody track, or edit any existing melody. You can do the same with the Soloist track. In addition you aren't limited to entering a melody and solo exclusively into these tracks - you can enter anything you want. For example, you could enter your own Piano part into the Melody track as well, and set the track type to multi-channel so that it can play more than one instrument.

• You can also use the Melody and Solo tracks to 'freeze' the other Band-in-a-Box accompaniment tracks. For example, you can copy the Bass track to the Melody track, then add your own touches to the bass.

• Band-in-a-Box offers one of the quickest methods of notation entry. When in editable mode, you'll see all of the beat divisions of each bar, and you simply mouse-click where you want each note to go. There is no need to specify note type/length for each note you enter - Band-in-a-Box figures this out for you automatically, based on the following note entered!

• To edit notation, in Editable Notation mode, you can drag a note up/down to change the pitch, or right/left to change the position. You can also change the pitch of notes using keyboard shortcuts: Step-advance through the music and use the up/down cursor keys to change the pitch of a note.

• There is an optional setting 'snap to grid lines' - if this is turned on, notes that you entered will automatically be quantized to the nearest beat. If turned off, precise graphically editing of the note start-times can be achieved in the Staff Roll mode of the Notation Window by dragging notes horizontally.

• Staff Roll mode also allows you to graphically edit the volume and duration of each note - so you can click and drag with the mouse, rather than typing in numbers.

• You can also use the Note Edit dialog (by right-clicking on the note) to manually edit all of the parameters of each note: Velocity (volume), duration, MIDI channel, and Start time. You can force an accidental if you want a different enharmonic displayed,

• Section text (custom non-lyric text messages) can be entered at any place in the notation window, and you can format the font and style of the text, including boxed text.

• Two types of lyrics can be entered - Line-Based lyrics simple and quick to enter, you can simply type line-be-line the lyrics you want to appear on your printout. Note-Based Lyrics are much more versatile, with customizable style, font, and position. You can use Note-Based lyrics in Karaoke style performances, or for vocal practice. There are buttons to automatically place line and paragraph breaks for karaoke files.

• When entering notation, Band-in-a-Box will automatically add rests for you, however you can also specifically enter a rest if you need to.

• When entering notation, use "mono" mode if you are entering a simple melody line and want to make sure you don't get more than one note at the same time - this speeds up entry further.

• You can enter and edit chord symbols in the notation window rather than the chord sheet window, if you prefer.

• The event list displays detailed information about each MIDI event, including start time, even type (ex. Note, Program Change...), Note number, Velocity, Duration, and MIDI channel.

• For each event, you can edit any of these parameters, and you can delete events and insert new events

• The Event List filter is helpful for isolating and examining specific types of events. You can choose specific channels to display, or filter out specific types of events. For example, you could choose to ONLY show patch changes on channel 4.

• The events are all color coded by event-type making it easy to scan through the list and spot all of the Control changes (for example).

• As the music plays, the current bar and currently playing notes are highlighted so you can follow along. There is a scroll-ahead feature: When reading music, we normally read ahead a little to see what's coming up. Scroll-ahead can be set to 1 or 2 bars ahead of the music without interfering with your view of the current bar.

• Display any individual track in the Lead Sheet window, or display multiple tracks at the same time. For example, you could display the Melody track on top and Piano track on bottom. You can optionally display chord symbols and track names above each track, or only above the top track.

• Font size, staves per page, bars per line, and margins are customizable, and you can optionally display any of the following: Clef signs, key signature, chords, staff lines, bar numbers. The bar numbers can be displayed only at part markers, or for every bar.

• If your Melody or Soloist track has a harmony, you can display all of the harmony voices at once on the same staff, or you can show each voice on its on staff. In addition, you can choose to display only specific harmony voices. If you are practicing playing one of the harmony voices, you can mute that one voice and still see the notation. This is great practice for sight-reading, as well as for learning to play along with other instruments.

• Options for each harmony voice include 'Normal' (harmony plays as normal), 'Solo' (only the selected voice will play. '50% Solo' (Selected voice is much louder than other voices), 'Quiet' (Selected Voice is much quieter than other voices), and 'Muted' (selected Voice is muted).

• If you have added repeats, endings, or dc/ds coda to your song, you can optionally view the Lead Sheet window in "FakeSheet" mode. In normal mode, all of the bars will be shown from beginning to end as they play. In Fakesheet mode, the lead sheet will show repeats and endings like how you would see in many printed fakebooks.

• If your song has lyrics during repeated sections of your song, the Lead Sheet can show multiple lines of lyrics below each notation line.

• Add a "memo" to your lead sheet. This is a section of text with a customizable style and font size, that appears at the end of the lead sheet (and prints out). One popular use of this is to add multiple verses of lyrics to the end of your lead sheet.

• Most songs will fit on 1 page, so your printout will look similar to a standard fakebook

• You can easily make and print out a custom fakebook of all of your tunes with selectable margins, portrait or landscape (sideways) views, and paper size. You can also transpose parts to print out for trumpet /sax players, etc.

• You can display and printout Multiple Tracks of Notation

• In addition to a lead sheet style printout you can also print out any part of Band-in-a-Box, such as the Piano part, Bass part, or Guitar part. This can be used to practice your sight-reading, or to learn the parts.

• You can choose exactly what to print out - notes /chords / lyrics ( / bar numbers (at part markers) - and what clefs to include (treble / bass ). You can print out the first chorus, last chorus or the whole song - or you can specify a range of bars to print. Margins settings are offered so that you can, for example, make a left margin to produce printout to go into a 3 hole binder.

• Band-in-a-Box will auto-set the number of staves per page for you to attempt to fit the song on 1 page if possible (similar to fakebooks), but you can also set a custom number of staves per page.

• There are print templates in the print dialog to achieve various printout styles - Normal/Lyrics Only/Chords and Lyrics/Chords Only. You can even print out blank staff paper!

• If your song has a lead-in (pickup) to bar 1 then make sure you've checked the Lead-In. Actually, Band-in-a-Box sets this for you by looking for notes in the lead-in measure.

• Font style and size are customizable.

• You can optionally enter and print out Title, Style, Tempo, Composer, and Copyright information.

• You can print out your song showing repeats and endings (if you have entered them) using Fakesheet mode printing.

• The print preview window shows you exactly what your printout will look like, and has a variety of options for saving to a graphics file.

• You can quickly save a bitmap to the Windows clipboard, which can be pasted into other applications.

• Graphics files you can choose include Mono BMP, JPG, PCX, PNG, and TIF, with various resolutions. There are a number of reasons you might do this. Choose a BMP file to have an exact rendition of the screen to paste in another application, or choose a compressed format such as JPG or PNG for internet use or emailing. You can choose the exact dimensions in pixels of your preview.

• There are options to either save the current page only as a single graphics file, or save a range of pages with one button click.

• If you want to print out a number of your songs, there is a multiple-song printout option. This will automatically print all of the songs in the current folder.

• When printing multiple songs, you can specify the alphabetic range to print out, and also if you only want songs with melodies to be printed.

• Edit the Melody or Soloist tracks with ease and precision using the Piano Roll Window. No knowledge of music notation is required, since there are no staff lines or other notation symbols when displaying the notes. All notes and controllers are displayed as bars on a grid, and you can change note duration and pitch by selecting and dragging with your mouse.

• The Piano Roll may be opened as a movable window (which floats above the Band-in-a-Box main window), or it may be opened embedded, which occupies the same position as the Chordsheet/Notation panel.

• In addition to being able to graphically edit note timing/duration, you can also graphically edit Note Velocity, Controllers, Program Changes, Channel Aftertouch, or Pitch Bend information.

• Selections, Inserted Notes, or Edited Notes can optionally auto-snap to the grid spacing so that they are quantized to the nearest beat. The resolution is settable.

• You can choose the defaults for inserting note duration (ie quarter note, half note, etc.) and MIDI channel.

• A Chord Ruler displays chords and playback location, allows you to start playback by double-clicking, and allows you to enter notes. A Note Ruler displays bars and bar subdivisions, and allows you to select a time-range of notes. Click and drag to select notes, shift-click and drag to add notes to the selection, and more.

• There is a vertical keyboard panel along the left side of the note entry area. You can click on a single note of the keyboard to select all notes of that pitch, shift-click to add pitches to the selection, and more.

• In the Note entry area, you can click on individual notes to select them, shift-click to add to the selection, and ctrl-click to invert the selection. You can also select groups of notes by drawing rectangles around them.

• You can change the note start time, duration, and pitch by clicking and dragging the notes. Or you can change the start time, duration, and pitch of MULTIPLE notes at the same time by shift-clicking

• Precisely entering and positioning notes at an exact time is easily accomplished because of the grid lines and ruler subdivisions. You can also zoom in and out both vertically and horizontally, and/or increase the size of the note entry area.

• The Controller area allows you to easily and smoothly edit non-note MIDI events. For example, volume, expression, and pitch bends!

• You can choose the types of MIDI events that you want to display from a pull-down menu. If you choose to display controllers, you can specify which controllers you wan - for example....reverb, chorus, volume, expression, and panning are all different controllers.

• You can select series of events using the graphic event ruler, or select individual events. Clicking, Shift-clicking, and Ctrl-clicking are all supported.

• You can draw straight lines to insert events. For example, you could enter a crescendo (gradual increase in volume) by drawing a line sloping up.

• You can freehand draw curves of events as well! A scale allows you to adjust the density that you want events to be inserted.

• There are options to re-channel all or selected events to the Track Channel, or the channel being viewed. You can also auto-remove overlapping notes.

• There is a Ghost display option - if you are viewing notes on one channel, notes on other tracks can also be displayed in light gray.

• Normally you would want a single part on each of the Melody and Soloist tracks. But, since MIDI information can have separate channels, it is possible to store 16 separate parts on each of the Melody and Soloist parts.

• The Sequencer Window can be used to manage each of the channels on your Melody/Solo tracks, especially useful if you want to import and play an entire MIDI file with Band-in-a-Box.

• Each channel is displayed, showing the number of MIDI events and patch. You can change the patch for each channel using menus.

• With the Multi-channel track display options, you can have some or all of the channels split to different tracks in the Lead Sheet window.

• You can also mute/solo any of the channels individually.

• The Sequencer's edit features allow you to Delete or Rechannel specific channels, merge tracks to a single channel, and change the velocities (loudness) of each channel. You can also move individual channels between the Soloist and Melody track - this is handy if you want to isolate specific channels in an imported MIDI file to view edit the notation in the Notation window.

• Feel like adding vocals to your Band-in-a-Box song, or a live guitar part? You can easily record one track of CD quality audio. You can overdub the audio part to add in harmonies etc. The MIDI and audio tracks are compatible with other sequencers like PowerTracks Pro Audio, so your full MIDI and Audio performance can be used in these other programs.

• Use Band-in-a-Box's built-in VU meter's to set your recording level. You can optionally leave the VU meters open for monitoring while you are recording. You can also access the Recording Control panel of your sound card directly from the Record Audio dialog.

• You can set where (bar/chorus #) you want to start recording from, and Band-in-a-Box will give you a two bar lead-in to get ready.

• Both mono and stereo audio track types are supported! You can set the track type for the current song, as well as the preferred default for all songs.

• There is a built-in Peak-Limiter, which helps prevent clipping due to the input signal being too loud.

• If you want to re-record only part of your audio track, there is a punch-in option. For example, if you messed up in bars 2 and 3, you can set those as your punch-in range, and audio will only be recorded during those bars.

• Do you want to record a piano part from your MIDI keyboard and vocals at the same time? You can do that! Band-in-a-Box will optionally record both MIDI and audio at the same time, and you can set which track (Soloist or Melody) that you want your MIDI track to be recorded to.

• You can overdub your audio track to add harmonies to it etc.

• Use the built-in TC-Helicon Audio Harmonizer to add audio harmonies to your recorded vocals!

• There are many audio plugins included with Band-in-a-Box! Built-in plugins include a compressor, Gate, Distortion, Reverb, Echo, Chorus, Flanger, Ring Mod, Tremolo, Tone Control, Graphic EQ, Parametric EQ, Gain Change, De-Ess, Auto-Wah, Pitch Shift, Exciter, Enhancer, and Hum Filter. Each effect is full-featured - many with over 10 distinct parameters that you can adjust and fine-tune. You can also save and load presets of your most frequently used setups in each effect.

• You can also use any number of third party DirectX Plugin or VST effects for your audio track.

• Both Realtime and non-realtime DirectX and VST effects processing is available. While non-realtime processing alters the track 'permanently' (although there is an undo function), realtime processing is extremely versatile!

• With Realtime DirectX processing, you can, for example, add reverb to your audio track as it is playing, and keep adjusting it until you get it right.

• You can chain up to 4 different Realtime DirectX or VST effects at one time - so you can have Echo, Chorus, Reverb, and EQ all on the audio track. Band-in-a-Box will automatically scan your computer for DirectX plugins, and you can locate and add any VST plugin.

• Some top-of-the-line RealTime DirectX effects are included with Band-in-a-Box: PGFiveBandEQ PGPeakLimit, and PGReverb. Many more PG Music Realtime DX effects are included with PG Music's PowerTracks Pro Audio, and can be used in Band-in-a-Box as well. DirectX effects are also available from third party sources.

• Band-in-a-Box supports both standard MME/WDM and low-latency ASIO drivers.

• The Audio Edit Window allows you to edit the waveform of your audio recording. It has a dB scale, and features to zoom in/out both vertically and horizontally. You can zoom in right down to the sample level, snap your highlighted areas to gridlines, and press a button to play the selected area.

• You can solo, mute, or kill (erase) the audio track. One reason for muting the audio track might be after you import an audio file and have Band-in-a-Box interpret the chords using the Audio Chord Wizard. You could have Band-in-a-Box create an arrangement using the chords, then mute the original audio file.

• You can harmonize your audio track according to the chords of your song or according to a MIDI melody that you have recorded (or entered manually) into the Melody track.

• If you hit a few wrong notes when you recorded your singing into Band-in-a-Box, Melody Pitch Tracking allows you to correct the pitch to a MIDI melody part you have entered. You can do this for your whole song, or only a single note.

• When harmonizing to a MIDI melody, choose from over 200 Band-in-a-Box harmonies, for example "Barbershop - roots in bass" or "A cappella 4-pt close har". Choose from many different harmony types, for example "1 Down 2 Up" or "4 Unison".

• When harmonizing to the chords of your song, choose from over 20 audio harmonies, for example "1 Down 2 Up", "4 Unison", or '1 Unison, 3 Up'

• You can generate audio harmonies for the entire song, or you can specify a range of bars/choruses that you want to harmonize.

• Output the harmonies as separate wave files for use in another program. This allows you to import each harmony part (which is a wave file) individually into a multitrack sequencer such as PowerTracks Pro Audio, where you can do further editing and fine-tuning.

• Band-in-a-Box will auto-set the octave of the MIDI melody part you are harmonizing to, so that it is suitable for different vocal performances, for example "male (bass)" and "Female (Soprano)".

• The TC-Helicon's "Humanization controls" include Timing, Pitch, Portamento, and Octave. allow you to Adjust the Timing, Pitch, Portamento, and Octave of your harmonization. For example, the Timing Humanization slider affects all harmony voices. When set to zero, all harmony voices will be synchronized so that words start and stop at the same time. As the slider is moved up towards the maximum setting, the harmony voices will appear to be more and more decoupled in time.

• Set the Dry voice level to determine how loud the original vocal should be in the output mix.

• Adjust the volume level and panning for each harmony voice.

• Select a choir effect (small, medium or large) if you want to create a more authentic, full choir sound.

• You can choose a type of "pitch effect" (combination of vibrato and scooping) to be applied to each harmony voice. Some examples are Natural Vibrato, Ballad Rock, Broadway, and Crooner, and there are over 20 in total to choose from.

• Each of the four voices has a Gender slider. This control affects the location of the singer's formants (and thus the perceived size of the harmony singer).

• In addition to Band-in-a-Box song and style files (.MG*, SG*, and .STY), Band-in-a-Box can load in many types of standard files. You can load and play standard type 0 or 1 MIDI files (.MID), and MIDI karaoke files (.KAR).

• You can also load and play a variety of audio files, includes wave files (.WAV), MP3 files, WMV/WMA files (Windows Media files), and CDA files (Audio CD tracks).

• Band-in-a-Box will play audio files at 1/2, 1/4, and 1/8 speed, useful for transcribing and learning songs.

• You can choose to associate file types with Band-in-a-Box (this is offered automatically when you first run the program, or can be selected via a menu option. This way, you can double-click on files in Windows Explorer (i.e. outside of Band-in-a-Box), and they will load and play in Band-in-a-Box automatically.

• Band-in-a-Box allows you to use a custom open/save dialog, with added features like search, favorite folders, and remembered sizes and font settings.

• A "Favorite Folders" button allows you to quickly choose from previously used folders - saving the time needed to navigate through Explorer-style folder choices.

• The Save Song with Patches dialog allows you to choose which settings you want to save with your Band-in-a-Box songs. You can choose whether or not to save your song with custom patches, bank changes, volume, reverb, chorus, panning, harmonies, Soloists, and RealDrums styles.

• Global Overrides options are available for loading in songs. This allows you to set the overall song looping (always OFF, always ON, or as set in the song). Similar overrides are available to set which other information gets loaded from a file, such as patches, harmonies, volume, reverb, chorus, panning, banks, and notation symbols.

• This window displays the full title of the song (not just the filename), and allows you to search for a word or phrase to quickly find a song title. The SongPicker will display up to 10000 songs in a single folder!

• In addition to the song title, the song list dialog displays much more information about each song! This includes the file name, style name (ie the style used by the song), style set #, key of the song, time signature, tempo, genre, feel, form, and more! It also tells you whether the song has a Melody, Solo, Note-based lyrics, or line-based lyric. You can sort the list of songs by any of these criteria!

• You can optionally have a song automatically play when it's chosen from the SongPicker.

• Copy the SongList to the Windows Clipboard, paste it into a word processor, and print it out.

• The SongPicker builds a database of songs in the current folder. Easily rebuild the list of songs when the contents of the folder changes. Browse to different folders using buttons within the SongPicker window, and show a list of favorite folders, ones that you have recently accessed. Optionally have the SongPicker always open in a single folder, and optionally include subfolders within the current folder.

• Export the song list as a CSV (comma separated value) file a text file that can be opened in Excel or other spreadsheet programs.

• Customize the fonts to your liking.

• You can apply a versatile filter to the list of songs - for example, you could ONLY show songs that have the GENRE Jazz.

• There are buttons to access the Find File, File Open (all types), and Favorite song dialogs directly from the SongPicker. There is also a button that changes the current folder to the main Band-in-a-Box folder.

• MIDI files are standard files that can be read by a wide range of third party software and hardware. You can save your Band-in-a-Box compositions as MIDI files and fine-tune them in a multi-track sequencer like PowerTracks Pro Audio for example.

• You can choose to save the MIDI file to your hard disk, or you can save it to the clipboard. If you will be importing it into PowerTracks, the clipboard option, you can use the convenient File | Open from clipboard option in PowerTracks.

• Choose from different MIDI file types - Type 1 (MultiTrack. This means that when you open the file into your sequencer, all of the instruments will be on separate tracks), or Type 0 (All on a single track - some hardware devices only support this type).

• You can save your MIDI file with each different drum sound (for example, Kick, Snare...) on a separate track.

• You can save the song as a karaoke file, which is a specially type of MIDI file with lyrics.

• Use the Batch Mode to generate multiple MIDI files, all in one easy step. Batch Mode will create MIDI files from all of the Band-in-a-Box song files you have saved in the selected folder.

• When using Batch Mode, you can name each MIDI file based on the file names, or on the song titles, and you can specify a maximum # of characters for the filename to have (if using the song title option).

• You can choose whether you want to include various aspects of the song in your MIDI file. This includes patch changes, 2-bar lead-in, lyrics, section text, volume/reverb/chorus/panning, guitar position controller, and harmony.

• If your song has a harmony, you can choose to have the harmony voices each written on separate tracks. If your song has a guitar part, you can choose to write the guitar part on 6 channels (11 through 16), corresponding to the strings.

• If the song uses RealDrums, you can have Band-in-a-Box automatically save the RealDrums part as a wave file. You can import this wave file along with the MIDI file into PowerTracks Pro Audio.

• 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. Band-in-a-Box allows you to open up any MIDI file and it will automatically figure out the chords of the song for you.

• Band-in-a-Box automatically analyzes the MIDI file, figures out where the bass, piano, melody and other tracks are, and then figures out the chord changes for the song.

• The chords are written onto the Band-in-a-Box Chord sheet 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 melody!

• You can use a File-Open item to open a MIDI file - if you do this, Band-in-a-Box will figure out the chords and import the entire MIDI file to the editable melody track. At the same time, Band-in-a-Box will mute it's own style so you hear ONLY the original MIDI file and can follow the chord symbols on the chord sheet.

• A much more customizable method of importing and interpreting chords in a MIDI file is to use the MIDI file chord wizard. Using this method, it is possible to import ONLY the melody track from the MIDI file, so you quickly can come up with brand new arrangements for the song using Band-in-a-Box style accompaniment!

• Using the wizard, you can have Band-in-a-Box interpret/import the complete song, or just a portion of it, specifying a range of bars.

• When you import a MIDI file, Band-in-a-Box interprets many things automatically. You can optionally specify all of these things yourself, including the channels used by each of the instruments, the style of music, and so on.

• Other PG Music programs use manufacturer-specific meta events in the MIDI files for chord symbols. You can optionally have Band-in-a-Box interpret chords from scratch, or use the existing chord symbols.

• You would expect different types of chords symbols for different styles of music - for example, the chords, and method used for chord interpretation would be different depending on if the song is Jazz or Pop, whether there is a walking bass line, or whether it is a solo piano arrangement. A series of chord options allows you to customize the process.

• You can specify what the chord resolution is (how often the chords change), whether to include slash chords, whether the bass part is mainly root, root-3-5, or walking bass, and whether to include Sus chords, 7th chords, and chords with no thirds. There are preset options as well, which will set this up for you. For example, the Rock setting would not allow 7th chords, but would allow chords with no thirds.

• You can manually set the key, tempo, and key signature for the MIDI file if you want, but Band-in-a-Box will automatically determine these for you as well.

• Specify which channels (ex. Melody, Guitar etc.) you want to be imported to the Melody/Soloist tracks, or whether you want the entire MIDI file to be imported.

• You can examine how Band-in-a-Box determined the chords, by choosing an option to write chord summary notes to Soloist track.

• Highlight an area of chords, and Band-in-a-Box will show you possible chord substitutions, displayed with helpful comments indicating why a particular substitution might work in each case. For example, if you had chords such as "Dm7 G7 Cmaj7", a list of substitutions including the tritone substitution "Dm7 Db7b5 Cmaj7" would be offered to you for use in your song.

• Or you can enable the "Auto-Substitution" feature, and the substitutions will be selected according to the general pre-set preferences.

• You can let Band-in-a-Box show you a list of possible substitutions to pick from yourself, or you can let Band-in-a-Box pick them automatically. With the latter feature, Band-in-a-Box can automatically generate substitutions for the whole song or a specific range of bars, based on your preferences (what % you want to substitute, more/less chords per bar, type of substitutions, etc.).(

• You can control what types of substitutions to see - "Jazz" or "Pop/Country". Some substitutions include more chords than the original, and some simplify the progression. You can elect to exclude substitutions that have a chord on each beat.

• You can filter the list of chord substitutions to include only the best substitutions, or all of them.

• When a musician sees a lead sheet that has a melody written out, he/she would almost never play it exactly as written. They would change the timing to add syncopation, change durations to achieve staccato or legato playing, and so on. Band-in-a-Box will do this automatically for any melody.

• If 'Live Embellishment' is enabled, Band-in-a-Box will embellish the melody a little differently each time the song is played, emulating what a real musician would do.

• You can make any embellishment you hear permanent, so that it will play exactly the same each time.

• The Melody Embellisher dialog has many settings that you can use to customize the embellishment. You can define how often (%) you want the following effects to be used: Adjust Octave, Anticipations, Grace Notes, Doubled Notes, Extra Notes, Note "Turns", Vibrato, Laid-back feeling to the melody.

• You can select whether or not you want Humanization - this adds realism to the Melody by randomizing start times, velocities (volumes), and durations of the notes. This is especially valuable if the melody was step-entered into track rather than recorded.

• Choose from a number of embellishment 'presets', such as "Maximum Embellishment", and "Vibrato Only". Or save you own custom embellishment setups (*.EMB files).

• A Statistics window allows you to view exactly what the embellisher has changed on the track - ex. it will give you stats like "Total notes=404, Pitch=72, Grace notes=4".

• There are advanced fine-tuning settings for vibrato rate/depth, duration of grace notes, and so on.

• The Reharmonist generates a chord progression in the genre that you choose (for example "EZ Listening - Pop", Bossa Nova (Latin), and so on), based ONLY on the melody. Generate chords from scratch, or an improved chord progression for an existing song.

• You can use the Reharmonist for an entire song, or just a portion of a song that you want to improve.

• Use the feature interactively by displaying a menu of possible chord progressions for a portion of the melody, and audition them to choose the best one using the "Bar Reharmonist." This allows you to hear some new chord progressions for existing melodies, or brand new progressions for tunes without chords. Band-in-a-Box will give you a list of possible chord progressions and sort them from "best" to "worst"

• Band-in-a-Box analyzes the melody, and gives its best guess as to the best key for the song. If it is different than the current key, Band-in-a-Box will suggest the new key.

• You can specify to what extent chords from the Major and Minor keys will be used in the song.

• Reharmonize the same melody multiple times, and you'll get brand new chords each time!

• Songs play continuously, one after the other, either in alphabetical or random order, making it an excellent tool for practicing or for live performances.

• You can have the Jukebox only play songs with melodies (songs with an .MG? extension, and you can have it automatically choose a different melody patch (instrument) for each song played.

• Use the Jukebox to play a 'Guess the Song' game - when you use this feature, Band-in-a-Box hides the title of the song - when someone makes a guess you can click on the Song Title window, and the title will be displayed.

• You can have Melody and Soloist/Thru harmonies randomly assigned within a given Harmony # Range for use with the Melody and Soloist/Thru tracks.

• Optionally have the Soloist play over all the songs selected for Jukebox playback. You can have Band-in-a-Box choose the Soloist, or you can choose it manually for each song.

• The Jukebox doesn't have to play the entire song - you can set it to Song Preview mode. Have it play a single chorus of each song or settable number of bars.

• When playing the jukebox, you can set playback to pause until you strike a key on your computer keyboard, or until a MIDI keyboard note or pedal is pressing. You can also specify a delay (in seconds) between songs.

• Other Jukebox settings include a Loop setting to have the Jukebox continue playing after it has reached the last song in the folder and an option to include the audible count-in.

• You can have full control over your song while it is playing, by pressing keys on your MIDI or computer (qwerty) keyboard. For example, if the last chorus is playing you can easily extend the length of the song. You can also set loop points on-the-fly. The loops happen seamlessly so are suitable for the "dance floor". The conductor can do over 80 different things!

• You can define up to 10 sections, and then jump to any section by pressing a single hotkey (1-9, 0) on your keyboard. For example, you could set Section 2 to be your 2nd chorus. These are saved with your song.

• You can press a single hotkey to loop 1 bar, 4 bars, a user-defined # bars, screen, part (between part markers), chorus, or section. Press another hotkey to turn looping off.

• You can press a single hotkey combination to go ahead 1 bar, 4 bars, a user-defined # bars, screen, part (between part markers), chorus, or section.

• You can press a single hotkey combination to go back 1 bar, 4 bars, a user-defined # bars, screen, part (between part markers), chorus, or section.

• All of these functions can happen seamlessly, and you can set exactly how you want the action to occur. For example, by default, the section change will occur as soon as you press the key, and it will go to the equivalent place in the bar immediately before the beginning of the target section (so that the music stays in time, and the next section begins at the end of the bar). But you can change the default for the action to take place at the end of the current bar, or current part marker etc.

• The conductor can either be controlled by the qwerty keyboard, or a MIDI keyboard. If using a MIDI keyboard, there are additional settings that allow you to use the keyboard both for playing along with Band-in-a-Box AND controlling the conductor.

• The Frontier Design TranzPort is a wireless remote control hardware unit that allows you to control Band-in-a-Box remotely.

• The backlit LCD provides a two-line readout that displays the chords, and buttons and a wheel allow control of many Band-in-a-Box features.

• Select songs and play/stop/pause/loop. Select/mute/solo tracks and volume/tempo changes are all supported.

• Selectable transpose lets the TranzPort show chords in a non-concert key (e.g. Eb Alto) while the computer shows concert - great for jam sessions!

• Display the scrolling lyrics of the song on the TranzPort for a wireless Karaoke session!

• Choose the Genre of music and style variation that you want to generate the sound track in, and have the SoundTrack Generator come up with an original composition for you.

• Or, choose from a menu of over 100 SoundTrack songs included with Band-in-a-Box! These songs use some of the special SoundTrack styles included with Band-in-a-Box. Style examples are Country1.sty, healing1.sty, and uplift1.sty. Song examples are Quiet Willow and Grandma's House.

• You also have the option of choosing one of the RealDrums demo songs (from the Drums - Demos folder), loading in a song demo, or loading in ANY existing song.

• Set the length in bars, and the Tempo that you want your soundtrack to be. Band-in-a-Box will determine and display the duration (minutes:seconds).

• Or, specify the duration that you want the SoundTrack to be, and Band-in-a-Box will automatically calculate the appropriate number of bars and/or tempo for you.

• Choose which tracks you want to include in the rendered SoundTrack file (i.e. bass, piano, drums...)

• Choose to have a Fade-in or Fade-out of a definable length of time.

• When you are finished, Band-in-a-Box will direct-render your song to a WAV, MP3, or WMA file.

• The Big Piano can display any track, and shows scale and guide notes, making it easy to learn piano parts in Band-in-a-Box.

• The name of the note that the mouse cursor is over is highlighted at the top of the window. The key of the song and track displayed is also shown at the top. The range of the piano is set automatically (based on the actual notes in the track) to show the largest possible piano.

• The notes of the scale are circled on the piano, with the note names included. The root of the scale is colored in red. As the song plays, scale tones are colored green, other (out-of-scale) notes are colored yellow. This scheme can be customized in the Big Piano Settings, where you can choose to show Guide Tones for Root only, Scale tone, Chord Tone, or none at all. Note colors can be absolute or relative to the key of the song, and note colors can be absolute, relative to key, or relative to chord.

• Clicking on the Big Piano plays a note (using the Thru part) and this can be recorded or sent to the Notation window when entering notation

• You can step-advance forward and backward through the track one note at a time or one chord at a time by pressing buttons on the Big Piano window, or by using keyboard hotkeys.

• Guitar players can "read-along" to a Melody or Solo simply by looking at the resizable guitar fretboard. An easy, intuitive and fun way to learn guitar!

• Learn different voicings for the same chord! When you have a note or chord highlighted, you can press buttons to cycle through the available 5-10 voicings possible for each chord. You can also cycle through the various positions of a single note on all 6 strings.

• The step-advance features can step through a track one chord, or one note, at a time - leaving the chord displayed on the fretboard for you to study. To do this, you can press buttons on the Guitar Fretboard window, or use keyboard shortcuts.

• Band-in-a-Box displays the name of the current note that you point to with the mouse. If you click on the guitar at that position, the note will sound. If the Notation window is open in Editable Notation or Staff Roll mode, that note will get inserted on the notation at the current position on the timeline (this feature can optionally be disabled/enabled).

• Toggle between two popular positions - Aeolian and Phrygian. You can choose to display note names on the fretboard at either or both of these locations, and the note names can be absolute, or relative to the key of the song or chord. Band-in-a-Box can auto-choose the best position for the selected track.

• You can choose what notes will be displayed on the fretboard, the currently selected track (bass, piano, guitar, melody, solo, etc.), the MIDI thru channel, or both. The MIDI Thru channel is the live-playing channel.

• With multi-channel mode set on, the Guitar Fretboard can display information on channels 11-16 on strings 1-6.

• The fretboard can display over 10 alternate guitar tunings, including DADGAD, Drop D (High Strung), and Open G (High Strung). It can also display Bass, Mandolin, Violin, Banjo, and Ukulele fretboards. Note - in order to display correctly, the fretboard is automatically set to the correct tuning for the guitar track of intelligent guitar styles. There are specific styles you can use to practice alternate tunings, such as DADGAD1.STY!

• The Guitar Fretboard has many other options. For example, for three note jazz voicings, there is a high note that is either not played, or muted. You can choose whether or not to display this note on the fretboard. You can also choose whether you want the little finger or index finger to play notes that are one fret out of the normal position, and you can boost the octave to display on the fretboard, automatically or manually.

• The Guitar Chord Tutor is an amazing way to practice rhythm guitar. This will display accurate rhythm guitar chords for any song on the guitar fretboard.

• You can choose to have the chords played, or ONLY displayed, great practice for sight-reading and fun to play along with the song! Have the guitar chords displayed early (before they occur in the song), giving you time to see the chord before it's time to play it.

• Choose which types of chords the Guitar Chord Tutor will display, depending on your preferences - it can display Pop, Jazz, or Folk style voicings, in easy, medium, and advanced forms. The advanced ones use inversions and changing patterns of chords, while the easier ones just stick to the common campfire chords.

• One of the tutors uses 3 note jazz voicings to simulate the famous Big-Band chord guitar styles. In this case, you can optionally choose to have the muted fourth note displayed.

• For further study, you can have the guitar chords written permanently to the Melody or Soloist tracks.

• The Guitarist allows you to generate a guitar chord solo for any melody. Band-in-a-Box will intelligently arrange the melody to a guitar chord solo by inserting real guitar voicings throughout the piece.

• You can select from among many "guitarists" in order to create your arrangement, for example "J. Pass 4 notes in position", or "Johnny Ballad close voicings".

• You can set the Guitar patch to use, the Track to use (Melody or Soloist), as well as the preferred fret position. You can generate a Guitar chord solo for the whole song, or a specified range of bars.

• The Guitarist Maker allows you to define you own Guitarists, or edit existing ones. You can save and import single Guitarists, allowing to you share your custom guitarists with friends.

• You can specify many parameters of your guitarist, including the strum speed, strum delay, how often chords get played, and frets to move on each beat and passing note.

• You can also choose which chord types to use (ex. Best, Advanced, Unusual, Barre), specify how often you want chords with 2,3,4,5,and 6 notes, and choose chord embellishments (ex. 7ths, 9ths).

• The Guitar Tuner is optimized for guitar and bass, though it can be useful with other instruments as well. Connect an electric guitar or bass to your computer's sound card input, or tune an acoustic instrument using a microphone connected to the sound card mic input. Play a pitch and the tuner will auto-range to determine the nearest note, and display the intonation of your instrument.

• An Input reading displays the instrument Input Level in dB, as well as the most recent note detected by the tuner.

• A Pitch Meter shows a moving bar graph of the pitch in cents (hundredths of a semitone) of the tone.

• A Fine-Adjust control allows you to modify the tuner's calibration.

• The Hum Filter will help you get a signal with little hum or noise, which is better for pitch detection.

• An Oscilloscope Display allows you to view the waveform of your instrument.

• The tuner (optionally) displays the most recently detected note on an on-screen keyboard and fretboard.

• Numeric Pitch area display pitch information (Hertz and Cents) in text format.

• The Tones Window allows you to generate tone references for tuning by ear. You can specify the Wave shape, Cents, dB level, and chromatic pitch. In addition, you can select Guitar or Bass buttons to tune using standard guitar or bass pitches.

• A convenient Cycle Tones feature will automatically play the Guitar or Bass pitches in sequence, to make it easier to tune guitar without touching the computer keyboard or mouse. You can customize the period of time between pitches.

• Ear training is an important exercise for all musicians, and you can practice and sharpen your ear training with help from Band-in-a-Box. In addition to the common interval exercises (perfect 4th, minor 2nd , etc.), learning to "play-by-ear" for Jazz and Pop music is further enhanced by ear training exercises to recognize common chord types (e.g., Major, Minor, Dominant, etc.).

• Using the "Interval Tutor" module, Band-in-a-Box will play an interval and it's your job to guess what it is. To guess an interval, you click on the appropriate up or down interval. You can have the interval replayed if you didn't get it the first time.

• There are a number of settings that you can use to determine the key that you want the intervals to play in, the difficulty level of the interval, or what type of interval you want to practice. For example, you can have the first note be the root of the key (easier) or it can be any tone (harder). Or, click a button to set it for the easiest or most difficult settings.

• Band-in-a-Box keeps track of your score, and displays it in the dialog, allowing you to monitor your progress.

• Use the Ear Training Window's Chord Tutor module for practice learning and recognizing different chords. Band-in-a-Box will play a chord and you will have to identify the chord type (for example, major, maj7, minor). A more advanced option will have you guessing the both the chord type AND root.

• Optionally show the notes on the on-screen piano keyboard while you are guessing the chords. If you are an advanced musician, seeing the notes on the piano during the guessing game would be "cheating," since you'd probably quickly recognize the chord. However, a beginner would benefit from this.

• Other options in the Chord Tutor include "types of roots and chords to use", "extensions to include", and "voicing types" (open, closed, etc.), allowing you to customize the ear training exercises for beginner through to advanced.

• You can launch full-featured ear training games Pitch Invasion and Music Replay from the Ear Training window.

• "Aliens" descend upon your home planet, intent on destroying your prized collection of musical instruments. It's your job to blast them out of the sky by recognizing the pitch that they are playing, and playing that pitch yourself before they reach the ground. If they reach the ground, one of your 15 musical instruments is destroyed.

• You can choose any game from 1 note to 12 notes. For example, if you choose a 7 note game, you will need to be able to recognize one of 7 different pitches - C, D, E, F , G, A, or B. Or if you would prefer, you can select your own combination of custom notes.

• In addition, you can choose from 10 different levels of increasing difficulty.

• The game monitors your progress, giving you points for Aliens destroyed, and there is also a "Level Boost" bonus (If you are able to destroy 15 aliens in a row without making any mistakes), a "Note In Any Octave" bonus, and the "No Instrument Damaged" bonus.

• Depending on your setup, you can play the notes either by clicking on the on-screen piano keyboard, or by pressing the corresponding key on your qwerty keyboard, or by playing the note on an external MIDI keyboard that is attached to your computer.

• The composer Scriabin believed that certain colors were associated with certain musical pitches. In Pitch Invasion, you can choose to associate colors with the aliens and/or on-screen keyboard.

• You can set specific ranges of notes that you would like to practice, and you can choose whether or not you want to allow notes in any octave.

• A variety of note hints can be useful for beginners - one option is to have a 'staff hint', where the alien is replaced with a treble clef staff showing the note being played.

• Music Replay features 3 different games that focus on developing three different musical skills.

• "Replay Note" is a game where you need to play back an ever-increasing series of notes. Its primary function is to develop the player's pitch-recognition skills. There are a total of 12 levels that you can play with this game, each containing more notes that the computer can choose from. There is also a "custom" level, which enables you to pick your own set of notes to play with.

• You can play back the notes by clicking on the on-screen keyboard, by using the accompanying hotkeys on your qwerty keyboard, or by using an external MIDI keyboard that is connected to your computer.

• Beginners can choose an option to show "hints", which are flashing lights that appear on the notes as they are played by the computer. If you choose not to use hints, only the first note of the game will flash on-screen to show you where to start.

• You can start the game playing as many notes as you want. Beginners could start with 2 notes, and advanced players could start with 10 or more notes.

• In the game "Replay Rhythm", the computer plays random 1 bar rhythmic phrases, which you are expected to play back, by tapping the spacebar or qwerty keys.

• In Replay Rhythm, there are 4 levels to choose from, which have either easy or difficult eighth note or sixteenth note rhythms.

• The third game, "Replay Melody", as a combination of the first two games. There are specific pitches involved, but you also have to play back them with correct rhythms. The notes can be played on the on-screen piano keyboard, on your qwerty keyboard, or on an external MIDI keyboard.

• The scoring system allows you to monitor your progress. For Replay Melody, you receive a score out of 100 for rhythmic accuracy, and a score out of 100 for note accuracy. Your score for a given phrase is the average of the two.

• For Replay Melody, there are a few different levels to choose from - you could choose to only use the notes C and G, or you could choose notes from the C Major scale, the C Pentatonic scale, the C minor scale, or all chromatic notes, depending on the difficulty level you want. You can also choose whether or not to show the notation and note hints.

• Many educational Band-in-a-Box features can be accessed from the Practice Window at the click of a button, including "play-along" features such as chord breaks, Soloist Trade-4's, Sight-reading (Soloing), and Intelligent Transpose.

• You can also access "Chord" features such as Chord Substitutions, the Reharmonist, and the Chord Builder.

• Additional 'practice' features allow you to transpose for concert, Eb Alto, Bb Tenor, Bb Trumpet, and Trombone, and also allow you to set 1/2, 1/4, and 1/8 speed playback tempos.

• Jazz Practice allows you to load in Band-in-a-Box songs that have been specifically designed for practicing common Jazz chord progressions.

• There is also one-click access to the Ear Training dialog, Pitch Invasion, and Music Replay.

• Educational Band-in-a-Box add-on products can also be accessed from the Practice Window. Many of these add-ons are available separately or included in the UltraPAK, or they may have come with some of your past Band-in-a-Box purchases if you have purchased an upgrade. If you have these items installed to your hard drive, the Practice Window will find them easily if they are installed to the default locations.

• The add-on programs include great tutorial programs such as CopyMe, and the 101 Essential Phrase and Riffs series programs"

• There is also one button access to many other PG Music educational programs and lessons, such as the MasterClass series, Video Guitar Lessons, and Multimedia Performance programs, (if you have them installed.

• More information about all of the add-on programs in the Practice Window can be found here.

• For items that you don't have, you can choose to display or not display them on-screen (Show add-ons if not available).

• If you are preparing for a performance or a jam session with friends, you likely have a list of songs that you are working on. You can use the Practice Folders feature to manage "practice folders" of songs, and select those songs from a convenient quick-access pop-up menu.

• Style creation is done by recording (or step-entering via the StyleMaker's notation window) one or more patterns for each of the Drums, Bass, Piano, Guitar, and String parts. If you don't want an instrument in a style you don't need to record any patterns for it.

• The StyleMaker is loaded with options and features that allow your styles to grow in complexity and number of patterns. A simple style would consist of three patterns (one each Bass, Drums and Piano) but more complex and varying styles are created by using more patterns - you can input many hundreds of patterns in a given style. In addition, patterns can be classified by many ways allowing them to be played only at appropriate times. Patterns can be given varying lengths or can be assigned to certain types of chords or only to be played on even or odd # bars, and much more. We believe that the StyleMaker satisfies both the need to create simple styles with repetitive patterns and the ability to intelligently create complex styles.

• Drum patterns can be recorded live and imported into the StyleMaker, or can be step-entered into a Drum Pattern Grid. When using the Drum Pattern Editor, you can create a drum pattern using a drum kit of about 20 different drum instruments (Snare, Closed Hihat, etc.). You can define your own custom drum kits - for example you might want a different kit for a Latin style than you want for a Jazz style. enter numbers (which are the velocities of each of the individual drum hits)

• It is easy to create a drum pattern using the Drum Grid Editor - for each drum instrument, there is a box at each beat (for example, in even 16th resolution there would be 4 groups of 4 boxes each), and you simply need to enter a number in each box, where you want a drum hit to occur - the exact number you enter determines how loud that drum hit will be.

• You can randomize any note in the pattern, so that the pattern sounds more realistic. To do this, you can enter alternate drum notes, and define the percentage of time you want them to occur. In addition, you can specify the note as a doubled (32nd) note).

• For each pattern, you can specify a relative weight - how often the pattern should play in the style. For example, if a particular pattern is quite unique, it would stand out if it was played all the time. Instead, you can have it play only once in a while to add variety.

• In Jazz styles, the 3rd triplet in a swing feel style is often played late, and you can have any pattern play a settable amount late so it sounds more natural.

• Each style has two variations (substyles), so you can enter to distinct feels when programming/recording your drum patterns.

• You can input a number of drum fills, which get played at A or B substyle part markers. You can create many different drum fills, which is important to make your drum style sound authentic.

• You can specify a mask for each pattern, so you can determine on what bars it should be played in the style. For example, drummers often play in two bar phrases, so you might want a particular 1 bar pattern to be played only on even bar numbers following a drum fill.

• Bass, Piano, Guitar, and Strings can be recorded from an external MIDI controller, or can be step-entered into a full-featured editable notation window. You can choose any instrument for each track - the strings track doesn't necessarily have to be strings, and so on. In one style for example, you could put an additional piano part on the "Strings" track.

• Each of these tracks can have a number of 8-beat, 4-beat, 2-beat, and 1-beat patterns for each substyle, as well as ending bars.

• Each pattern can have a relative weight - set this number higher if you want the pattern to be played more often than other patterns. As with the drum patterns, every pattern can have playback bar or beat masks, so that it only plays at appropriate places in the song.

• To make you patterns more intelligent, you can also record patterns that will only work on certain types of chords, or restrict the pattern to be played only if the next chord is a certain interval away.

• Options to embellish the pattern are very useful in Jazz styles.

• Select from three different Voice Leading settings - for example, with Smooth voice leading, you can ensure that appropriate voicings are played so that the chords don't "jump around" the keyboard unnaturally.

• "Macro notes" make it easy to make a great sounding pattern that uses full chords, without having to specifically enter the full chords. For example, for Piano patterns, enter MIDI note #83 (B) and you will get a 'Pop Chord - Diatonic Below'

• Guitar Macro notes are very powerful. For one thing, they will allow the style to intelligently and accurately display the guitar patterns on the fretboard and tab displays.

• For Guitar Macros, choose from many different chord types - for example, 'Jazz chords', 'Pop - Barre chording', 'Guitar - Drop D', and '5-String Banjo'. You can set the highest and lowest fret, as well as the strum speed. Other settings include 'Single chord (%)', 'Chord with inversion later in pattern (%)', 'Walking pattern of chords (%)', and 'Single chord w/ some chromatic movement (%)'.

• All patterns are entered based on C7 chord tones, however you can audition the pattern over different chord types within the StyleMaker.

• There is a Quantize feature that can be used to move every note in the pattern closer to the beat. You can also adjust the overall volume and legato feel of each pattern.

• Using the Push settings, patterns can be played a little ahead of the beat a certain percentage of the time, which gives your arrangement a more human feel. Pushes can also get a velocity boost so that they are a little louder than other patterns.

• Assign RealDrums to any style, and your Band-in-a-Box style will always play with that specific RealDrums style. Many of the RealDrums have many variations - to make your style more interesting you can have Band-in-a-Box automatically change variations with each play.

• Notes playing near the end of a pattern might conflict with the next chord, and there are settings to determine how these notes are dealt with.

• Instead of recording or entering your patterns, you can import the pattern from any MIDI file, or from the Melody track of the loaded Band-in-a-Box song.

• Make custom Hybrid styles by importing instruments from a variety of other styles, into the one you are working on!

• A StyleChecker and StyleSummary features scan your style, giving you a summary of what it includes, and warning you if there appears to be anything that might cause a problem.

• Long Style Name can be stored in the Style (up to 32 characters), and this will appear on screen and in StylePicker.

• Style Log options. For people making styles, this text files shows exactly which pattern was used in the song generation for every instrument and bar/beat. Useful in fixing errant patterns.

• Styles can contain RealTracks and RealDrums.

• Styles can use MIDI soloists. For example, make a style with a banjo part that has the same quality as the Band-in-a-Box Banjo Soloist.

• Style Flipping is supported - convert "a" section to "b," and vice versa.

• This feature allows you to play and create a style that has instruments from up to five different styles! You can, for example, play a song with a Reggae bass, Rock drums, Salsa piano, or any combination of up to five styles that you want.

• You can do this without having to use the StyleMaker, which is a more complicated process. Create a name for your hybrid style and you can save it with the song so that it will play that way in the future.

• Simply open a MIDI file, select your options, and press [Generate NEW style]. With plenty of options this wizard allows you to quickly make your own simple or advanced styles from a standard MIDI file - without any knowledge of the StyleMaker required!

• Novice users will appreciate the automated option that "does everything" to make the style while advanced users will appreciate the custom options to control (for example) which bars from the MIDI file are included in the style, how many pattern variations, and more.

• When you open a MIDI file into the StyleWizard, Band-in-a-Box will display each channel in the MIDI file, indicating the patch used for that channel, and which Band-in-a-Box track it should be converted to. You can customize this.

• You can audition and loop different bars/channels in the MIDI file to determine which bars you would like to be converted to your style. The bar snapshots can be added to either or both of the substyles. You can also select the bars with Drum Fills - or, you can press a button to have Band-in-a-Box do all the work!

• Advanced settings allow you to customize the process further - you can choose the specific voicings you would like in each of the tracks (for example full voicings, tritones, or power chords), and you can specify how 'sparse' you want a particular part to be. You can also choose whether to allow pitch bends and pushes in your style.

• You have the option of either using the StyleWizard to create a brand new style, or adding patterns to an existing style.

• You can also use Chord masks so that specific patterns over chords will get added to your style, and they will play exactly as in your MIDI file (just transposed).

• MultiStyles are Styles that can have anywhere from 4 to 24 substyles! A typical Band-in-a-Box style will have two substyles (for example chorus and verse), but with MultiStyles you can make a Band-in-a-Box style or song that uses 4 substyles (e.g. First Verse, Main Verse, Chorus, Break). You can select the various sections (substyles) using "a"/"b"/"c"/"d" part markers.

• Some of our newer 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. 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.

• The MIDI Display area shows the data generated by Band-in-a-Box and/or data received at the computer MIDI input. Each row shows a single MIDI event.

• Information included for each event includes the Event #, Time, Source (internal of external), channel, event type, etc.

• You can save all of the information displayed in the MIDI Monitor in a text file.

• The MIDI Monitor Filter window is very useful for focussing on specific types of MIDI events. You can set it to show input/output. You can specify which MIDI channels you want shown, which MIDI Events (for example, Note On, Control Change, Program Change, MIDI Timing Clock, etc.), and which Controllers (for example, Volume [7], Pan [10], etc.). It is easy to set up ANY combination of events you want to view.

• The animated Drum Kit window shows a visual display of all the General MIDI percussion instruments. While a Band-in-a-Box song is playing with MIDI drums, you can see each of the drum instruments being played.

• Watch the various drum instruments being played, or play along/record using any of the drum instruments (by using QWERTY keys or mouse). Very educational and lots of fun! The on-screen instruments may be played by mouse-click or computer keys. When playing with mouse-click or computer keys, the Shift key adjusts velocity between two user-specified levels.

• It is possible to record a drum part by playing the virtual drums. This is similar to how you would record a Melody, but set the Melody track to channel 10 or multi-channel. Drums are grouped on the computer keyboard by category, making it easy to learn which keys correspond to which drums. The kick, snare, and hihat sounds are on the lowest keyboard row. The lower-middle row contains toms and cymbals. The upper-middle row contains latin drums, and the top row contains Latin hand percussion.

• Multi-note instruments send different notes depending on where you click on the instrument. For instance, the Kick Drum can send three different notes, Ac. Bass Drum (MIDI note 35), Bass Drum 1 (MIDI note 36), and Square Kick (MIDI Note 32), depending on where you click on the drum.

• Pop-up hints on the Drum screen show you information for each drum sound - note name, MIDI note number, and computer key.

• You can select whether to show all instruments, or only those that are used in the song.

• The window is sizable, and can be maximized to full screen so it can be seen from across the room. Band-in-a-Box will display the lyrics for any Band-in-a-Box song with note-based lyrics, as well as any imported MIDI karaoke file.

• You can customize the look of the lyrics window. Individual color elements can be picked (text, highlight, background, and chord color), or choose from one of the presets (ex. Yellow on Red, Black on Teal). You can also choose the font, font style, and font size.

• You can choose whether or not you want chords to be displayed along with the lyrics, either interleaved with the lyrics, or on a separate line above the lyrics.

• You can optionally have the Big Lyrics window auto-open when you load in a song with lyrics.

• A Lyrics-only Print option allows you to copy line or note-based lyrics to the clipboard so they can be easily pasted into a word processor.

• Audio Karaoke files are popular using several formats; the most common is CDG format, which includes the lyrics in graphical format on Audio CD's. Since a computer doesn't typically use audio CD's, there is a format that combines MP3 (containing the music) and CDG (the graphical lyrics). You can open up MP3/CDG files inside Band-in-a-Box and see the scrolling lyrics from your Karaoke files, using the Karaoke Window. Best of all, you can use the Audio Chord Wizard to figure out the chords as well, making Band-in-a-Box a great choice to play your Karaoke files!

• Band-in-a-Box will play through the MIDI synthesizer of your choice, including any hardware or software synth.

• You can connect up an external MIDI synthesizer, MIDI guitar controller, or MIDI Wind controller and use these devices to record or play live with Band-in-a-Box and generate the sound.

• Band-in-a-Box includes a high quality software synthesizer (the VSC). The VSC-DXi provides perfect synchronization between MIDI and audio tracks, quick and easy DXi-Direct Rendering to WAV, and the opportunity to apply real-time DX effects to the sound output. The VSC can be used with other MIDI programs as well.

• Band-in-a-Box supports both DXi and VSTi software synthesizers. In addition, you can add up to three real-time DX or VST audio effects (Peak Limiter, EQ, Reverb) onto the output.

• Many synthesizers have higher banks, and Band-in-a-Box allows you to access all of the sounds on those banks. You can create a patch map (or use an existing one if available) which allows you to select each of the patches by name. This allows you to utilize the very best sounds available on your synth.

• Band-in-a-Box has built-in support for General MIDI (GM), General MIDI 2 (GM2), and GS. This means that you can access patches by name from pull-down menus, and in addition, some Band-in-a-Box styles will use GM2-specific patches if they are available.

• You can set a latency value for your MIDI device - this allows you to keep the sound in perfect sync with what you see on-screen. A Latency Adjust feature makes it easy to sync MIDI with Audio, if necessary in your setup.

• For non-General MIDI compatible synths, Band-in-a-Box can automatically re-map the General MIDI sounds so that they match your synth. You can also specify custom GM and drum kit maps for synths that Band-in-a-Box doesn't know about. You can save custom MIDI setups for each synth.

• There are a large number of different synths on the market, and Band-in-a-Box has helpful tips for many common sound cards and MIDI synths. This helps you make the most appropriate settings for your synth.

• You can have Band-in-a-Box automatically convert patch maps from PowerTracks Pro Audio or Cakewalk.

• Band-in-a-Box supports live playback from an external MIDI synth through DXi or VSTi synths, using ASIO drivers.

• Band-in-a-Box can send GS, XG, or General MIDI Mode-on messages (resets all General MIDI devices), and Panic messages (all notes off). In addition, Band-in-a-Box will send SysEx files, and can even load a SysEx file at startup if you want to send a specific instruction to your synth whenever you launch the program. Note - SysEx files can be created with PG Music's PowerTracks Pro Audio.

• When playing an external keyboard, you might hear an echo effect if your keyboard is set to Local On (both Band-in-a-Box and your keyboard are playing the MIDI information). Band-in-a-Box can automatically turn local on or off, depending on your preference/setup.

• The channels used by each Band-in-a-Box track, and each of the MIDI harmonies, are normally best left at their defaults, but can be customized if you need to in special cases.

• There are global overrides for many different MIDI-related settings. For example, you can specify whether you want to allow loading of any of the following settings: Patch changes, harmonies, Volume, Reverb, Panning, Chorus, Bank (MSB), Bank (LSB). You can also specify whether you want to load notation symbols with songs, and if you want overall looping of songs to be the default setting.

• The Output Chords feature is useful if you are using an external device like "The Vocalist" or an external arranger that can read chords in real time. Band-in-a-Box will output chords in root position on the selected channel during playback.

• With the Output Chords feature you can specify channel number, velocity, and note range to output. In addition, you can specify triads and 7ths only, or complex chords as well. There are presets for the Roland arranger series, and the Vocalist.

• The Vocalist will also conveniently display the output on the on-screen piano, or output the chord track in the MIDI file. This is one way you could study chords in their root positions! You could open the MIDI file into the Band-in-a-Box notation window to study the chords further.

• There is a Master Tuning function allowing you to tune your sound card or module to another instrument, and a testing function to determine of your sound card/synth/module supports master tuning.

• Master Tuning is useful if you're playing along with an instrument or recording that can't easily be re-tuned, like an acoustic piano. It allows you to adjust the tuning in increments as small as 1 cent.

• With MIDI drums, there are some differences in how different synth manufacturers treat drum brush kits. Playing a style that is supposed to use brushes, on a standard drum kit sounds awkward, so if you need to, you can set drum brush options to Regular GM/Roland GS note #s, Yamaha note #s, or no brushes at all. In the latter case, Band-in-a-Box will remap the drum sounds so that drum brush styles will sound ok even on synths that don't support brushes.

• You can have Band-in-a-Box Auto-send GM/GS mode on at startup, and automatically turn local ON (on your external keyboard) when exiting the program.

• There are specific settings for Roland GS modules to set Reverb type, Chorus type, part, channel, and key shift.

• You can choose different colors for various elements in Band-in-a-Box, choose from pre-made color schemes, or make your own.

• The Chord Sheet can be customized with a selectable number of rows per screen, and Band-in-a-Box can also auto-adjust the number of rows so that your songs will always fit on-screen if they are within a specified range of bars.

• You can choose any font for the chord sheet. In addition, suggested chord fonts are available in a menu, including an excellent Jazz Chord Symbols font - Jazz and Pop music often use certain non-alphabetic symbols for chord types. These include a delta (triangle) for major chords, a circle for diminished, and a circle with a slash for half-diminished. Also, tensions like b9 and b13 are stacked vertically and contained in brackets.

• You can have C9sus chords displayed as C11 if you prefer.

• Band-in-a-Box has floating and dockable toolbars with a customizable set of buttons. In addition, you can choose the toolbar mode to be normal (icon and text), text-only, icon-only, or you can choose to have no toolbar at all.

• You can have chords displayed normally (Dm7, G7, Cmaj7), with Roman Numerals (IIm7, V7, Imaj7), with Nashville numbers (2m7, 57, 1maj7), or with Solfeggio (Rem7, So7, DoMaj7).

• Other Chord Sheet display options include enabling display of repeats and endings, displaying bars higher than the end of the song, and showing chords with push and rest characters.

• You can optionally show or hide the on-screen piano keyboard, and the Band-in-a-Box screen can be flipped so that the Toolbars are on the bottom and Chord Sheet is on the top.

• Band-in-a-Box is compatible with all screen resolutions, including lower screen resolutions like 800X600.

• This feature helps you choose the best song key for your vocal range. Open the Vocal Wizard, enter your vocal type (baritone, tenor, etc.), or choose a custom range. Then the wizard analyzes the song and recommends the best keys for you to sing the melody for that song. It will show each of the 12 semitone keys, show a score for each key, and transpose the song to that key.

• You can enter your "comfortable" vocal range, from lowest note to highest note. If you can sing falsetto, you can also enter the highest falsetto note, and the percentage of falsetto notes that would be acceptable as falsetto notes. There are also options to restrict choices to certain keys and "transpose now."

• You can select a preset (like Baritone Male or Contralto Female), or you can select one of 8 user presets, which allow you to enter and save a custom range.

• Most musicians have favorite keys, and you can select keys that would be acceptable for the Vocal Wizard to choose. For example, if you choose "Jazz" keys, the Vocal Wizard might recommend the key of C instead of D.

• Normally you'd want to analyze the whole song, but you can also analyze a partial range.

• The Vocal Wizard can also work in an automatic mode, transposing a song to the best key as soon as it is loaded, without having to visit the Vocal Wizard dialog. This way, you can ensure that any song you load will be in the best key for your vocalist!

• You can click on the root of the chord, the extension (Maj7 etc.), and also an alternate Bass Note (Slash Root). For example, to make the chord F9/A, you would click on the 'F' root, the '9' extension, and the Slash Root of /A. As you click on them, you'll hear the bass note played on the Bass part, and the extension played on the Piano track.

• The Chord Builder is both an education tool, and a method you can use to enter chords into your song.

• If you are happy with the sound of the chord, you can press a button to enter the chord in the Chord Sheet at the bar and beat specified.

• You can move back and forth a beat at a time by using arrow keys. The Chord Builder can be left open as you work entering chords into Band-in-a-Box.

• This allows you to enter an entire song without having to type in any of the chords!

• Play any chord on your MIDI keyboard. Band-in-a-Box will then provide you with up to 4 interpretations of the chord you played, with its best suggestion at the top of the list, and any alternate interpretations directly below.

• Choose the chord you want to have pasted into your song by clicking the appropriate [Enter] button beside the chord name.

• Without using the Chord Detection window, just press Ctrl+Enter at any time. This will insert the last chord that you've played on your MIDI keyboard onto the Chord Sheet, even if you aren't holding the notes down anymore. (Ctrl-Shift-Enter inserts the chord on the 2nd or 4th beat of the bar, Ctrl-Enter inserts the chord on the 1st or 3rd beat.)

• When playing live, you can have Band-in-a-Box automatically transpose your live part to any other key!

• You can define a favorite key and "Each time a song is loaded" Band-in-a-Box will optionally transpose any and all loaded songs to that key. This is a great feature for practicing in a certain key.

• If you want to practice the same song or chord progression in many different keys, Band-in-a-Box offers you the ability to transpose each chorus by a specified number of semitones. Or, you can have each chorus transposed by a random number of semitones. You can use this in combination with the "endless loop middle choruses" feature to endlessly play the song as it transposes keys each chorus. This is a great way to practice a tune. When Band-in-a-Box transposes, it's not simply moving the notes higher/lower, it is intelligently re-arranging the performance to keep the instruments in correct ranges and the Melody within one octave of the original.

• Vocalists will appreciate a feature that automatically transposes to the best vocal key when a song is loaded, depending on the vocal range and other settings in the Vocal Wizard.

• The Wizard will auto-transpose live playing from a MIDI keyboard so the notes are always "correct".

• You can quickly choose to add a Fadeout ending. Just press the Fade button in Song Settings, and Band-in-a-Box will fadeout the last "X" bars of the song (you can specify how many bars).

• Customize the fadeout with precise values for the length of the Fadeout

• Allows you to find a Band-in-a-Box song (or any file that BB can open), including filtering by words found in file name or any text in the file.

• Get a listing of all Band-in-a-Box songs in the BB folder with the word "Reggae" in them. This produces a list of over 50 songs in the MegaPAK, so you can quickly choose from them and know that, if you're a reggae lover, you haven't missed out on any Band-in-a-Box songs or Styles with Reggae.

• A similar listing for "Blues" reports 454 files. The listing stays between sessions, so you can then take your time to explore all the Blues that Band-in-a-Box offers.

• A typical lead sheet printout contains 1st/2nd endings, repeats, coda, tag, and sign markings. You can add these repeats to an existing Band-in-a-Box song that has already been entered in "linear" fashion, without repeats. Or, you can enter only the chords for the first repeated section, and Band-in-a-Box will automatically create the new bars for you.

• Either way, when you view your song in the Chord Sheet or Lead Sheet, Band-in-a-Box can either hide the repeated bars, showing the repeat signs and reducing the number of bars shown, or view all of the consecutive bars of your song. or show the repeated bars. can view it on the Chordsheet in Linear mode or Fake Sheet mode. Since the repeated bars still exist, Band-in-a-Box still generates an arrangement for the repeated bars (a live player wouldn't play exactly the same thing each time through even though the chords are the same). The melody and solo lines can also still be recorded linearly, so you can vary your playing in the repeated sections.

• The types of repeats that you can enter into your song are regular repeats, 1st/2nd/3rd/4th endings, DC/DS al coda, and DC/DS al fine.

• If you have a song previously entered that you'd like to mark with a 1st/2nd ending or repeats, there is a feature that will automatically detect the song form (ie AABA) and spot the repeats and endings for you - assuming that the chords are the same for the repeated sections.

• The Track-to-Track copy/move/delete feature is quite versatile. One simple thing you can do is copy from one track to another. For example you could copy the Bass track to the Melody track to double it an octave above. Or, if Band-in-a-Box generates a specific Piano accompaniment that you really like, copy it to the Melody or Solo track, which essentially "freezes" that track. You can then mute the Piano track so you will always hear that specific arrangement. (Tips - mutes the Piano track afterwards, set the Melody/Solo tracks to multichannel and select the correct instrument for each channel using the Sequencer Window.

• For a multi-channel melody (e.g. a MIDI file on melody track), you can copy or move selected channels to another track. There is an optional merge with destination track option.

• You can delete selected channels from the track, which is useful for isolating the Melody track on an imported MIDI file.

• People who use Band-in-a-Box for soloing practice will likely turn the lead-in off to allow endless looping uninterrupted by the lead-in count. You can also have the lead-in bars played with a quieter or silent drum lead-in.

• If a song has an intro, it's usually not necessary to play the 2 bar lead-in count, so there's an option to always omit the lead-in if an intro is present.

• There are three settings for an audible metronome - None, During Record, or During Record and Play.

• The count-in can be drum patterns instead of "1-2-1234." You may prefer hearing the drum beat to a simple count-in, since it provides more information about the upcoming groove. If you're playing with Band-in-a-Box live on a "dance floor," this setting will avoid "dead air" between songs, and keep the drumbeat going.

• You can select any drum instrument for the count in. You can choose different count-in rhythms, e.g., tap on 2 and 4 instead of 1-2-3-4. A smart lead-in option avoids playing the count-in drum sound during a melody pickup.

• Drummers who play along with Band-in-a-Box by muting the Drum track will find it useful that the count-in can still be played even if the Drum track is muted/disabled

• You can display a visible metronome on-screen during the entire song (or just the lead-in). Choose the screen position (top-right or center), and the size (up to near full screen size). Also choose the visual metronome pattern (1234, 1-3, 1---, or -2-4). Seeing a metronome on-screen is a great way for a student to learn to keep on the beat, and with a settable size, students can view this from across the room.

• The count-in is usually two bars, but you can also specify a 1 bar count-in.

• You can point to anything on the Band-in-a-Box main screen or in a dialog box, and you will see a descriptive "fly-by" help hint. There are many hundreds of comprehensive hints throughout the program with information, tips, and suggestions.

• You can choose whether to show short hints, detailed hints (more information), or none at all.

• It's often faster and more convenient to use keystrokes instead of using the mouse. There are keystroke "hotkeys" available for almost everything. For example, there are hotkeys for muting instruments, adjusting volume, panning, reverb, chorus, and bank of instruments, controlling song playback by looping, jumping, etc., and opening songs and styles.

• One of the greatest strengths of Band-in-a-Box is the ability to enhance the program through add-on Styles, Soloist, and Melodists. The "What Add-ons" feature scans your computer's Band-in-a-Box folder and displays what add-ons are and aren't found.

• A PDF manual that describes the newest features in depth, a complete PDF User's Guide, and an extensive help file that describes every part of the program, are all included and installed with the program.

• The PG Music website contains online user forums as well as an extensive support section with regularly updated frequently asked questions (FAQs), written tutorials, and video tutorials.

• PG Music has 100% free tech support - call toll-free, email, or chat with a representative live from the website. Click here for contact information.

• Band-in-a-Box is available in over 15 different languages, and each localized version has translated help files and manuals. Visit our International Band-in-a-Box page to learn more.