Many more new features in RealBand 2011!

RealTracks Enhancements

We've made big improvements to the sounds of the RealTracks, so that they sound more natural over a much wider range of tempos with the élastique Pro V2 time stretching and pitch transposition engine by zplane.development. These improvements are built-in, so there's nothing you need to do to get it working. Your existing songs will just "sound better" over a much wider range of tempos and transpositions. Please watch the demo videos for audio examples of the improvements.

We've made the size of the RealTracks much smaller so that they now only take up 30% of the space that they used to. And the audio fidelity is improved, since it sounds better over a much wider range of tempos with the élastique Pro V2 time stretching engine!

You can now have RealTracks styles changes within a song, and generate Soloist Medleys – solos where the RealTracks is made to switch instruments every "N" bars or every chorus. Either use the pre-existing Soloist Medleys in the RealTracks Picker or define your own. For example, you can add a Bluegrass Medley Soloist that switches between solos from Mandolin, Guitar, Banjo, and Fiddle every 4 bars. Or a Jazz Medley Soloist that switches between Alto Sax, Trumpet, Piano, and Guitar solos every chorus. Or insert "Silence" as one of the instruments, which allows you to play your own instrument.

RealTracks can be made as Half-Time/Double-Time/Triple-Time, so it is easier to select them, and they show up in the RealTracks Picker with tempos indicating when they can be used. For example, Alto Sax, tempo 140 will also show up in the RealTracks picker as Alto Sax, tempo 70 [Double Time] so you can easily choose it.

RealTracks sound more "musical" when stretched to extreme tempos. In addition to the major audio improvements when tempo is stretched by élastique Pro V2, the RealTracks soloists sound more musical when stretched to extreme tempos. This is because musicians tend to play more ahead/behind the beat at slower/faster tempos. This is a done automatically.

Existing Jazz RealTracks are enhanced.

• Phrasing is improved, with more pushes to sound more natural.
• Playing over non-Jazz chords (triads) is improved.
• RealCharts notation, bass tab, and on-screen bass fretboard now displays for some of the Jazz Swing Acoustic Bass RealTracks.
• Some styles have better playing over m6 and 6th chords (e.g. the new Gypsy Jazz styles).
• Some RealTracks have a "simpler" variation with less complex playing (e.g. Acoustic Bass Jazz Swing).

RealCharts for RealTracks

RealCharts are now implemented for those RealTracks that support them, with a menu option for generating RealCharts when generating RealTracks. This is a powerful tool for learning, arranging, and chart printing.

RealCharts Notation and the Guitar fretboard are improved for some guitar styles (e.g. Brent Mason). Now you can see bends in blue on the guitar fretboard.

StylePicker Enhancements

New StylePicker Filters show you only the styles that match your search criteria. These help you to select the style that you want, by allowing you to specify:

• Even/Swing feel,
• 8ths/16ths,
• tempo range,
• # of instruments,
• specific instruments (e.g. styles with "Banjo"),
• specific RealTracks Artists,
• RealDrums Artists,
• Real styles or MIDI styles.

For example, if you are searching for a Jazz Ballad style that is all RealTracks, has bass, drums, and guitar, works for a tempo of 60, with Swing 8ths you can set this filter and then only see styles that match these criteria, instead of a list of thousands of styles.

New StylePicker Columns added

• # of instruments in style, e.g. 4.
• Whether any required RealTracks, RealDrums are not installed, e.g. NA.
• Whether a RealTracks substitute for a MIDI style is available, e.g. sub.

StylePicker columns now have headings that show descriptive popup hints when they are moused over.

Auto-Generated style memo added for each style. This lists names of all instruments, # of instruments, RealTracks/RealDrums used, whether any required RT/RD are missing, and more.

Example Memo:

StylePicker display is wider on bigger monitors.

Other New Features include:

You can now get a list printed out of current contents of the RealTracks Picker dialog. Hold the Shift key and press the [Update] button.

MultiStyles (with up to 16 substyles) made with Band-in-a-Box will play with RealTracks in RealBand.

Expanded and improved hints are now present for most dialogs.

New Flash messages for quicker work flow. The Tempo Change Warning message has been converted to a Flash message, and various other messages were converted to Flash messages as well.

The hourglass stays on when generating a song, or individual RealTracks, etc. to inform the user that the program is busy.

RealBand verifies the folder locations for Band-in-a-Box (BB), RealDrums (Drums), and RealTracks (RealTracks):

• Selecting an incorrect BB folder creates an instant Flash message.
• Selecting an incorrect Drums folder creates an instant DIALOG.
• Selecting an incorrect RealTracks folder creates a DIALOG once you exit the main folder selection menu.

Folder checking on boot up. If the BB, Drums, or RealTracks folders don't exist on boot up, a Flash message will appear to warn the user.

When choosing a MIDI style, (or generating a song using a Band-in-a-Box style) RealBand will confirm that the BB folder exists, and if it doesn't, it should open the dialog that allows selection of BB folder, along with a Flash message saying "c:\bb\ folder doesn't exist, please point to the correct location of your BB folder. "

Folder checking on boot up. If BB, RT, or RD folders don't exist on boot up, a Flash message will appear.

Transposing and Tempo Changes

Key signature change dialog now has a Transpose combo box, with additional settings made possible by the new élastique Pro V2 time stretching and pitch transposition engine:

• no transpose
• transpose MIDI only
• transpose audio only
• transpose all (MIDI and audio)

The previous Yes/No MIDI transpose question dialog has been eliminated.

The Tempo dialog now shows up where the mouse was clicked for greater convenience, and it has optional checkboxes to Stretch Audio and Adjust all tempos proportionally.

When starting up Band-in-a-Box features in a new session, a Flash message will say "Initializing accompaniment functions... please wait." to notify the user of the delay.

Song Generation

The Song Generation preferences now have an option to "Allow Auto-RealTracks tempo substitution based on tempo."

The Generate menu has added items for

• Generate MIDI Solo,
• Generate MIDI Harmony, and
• Generate Audio Harmony.

Tracks Window

The track names could not be seen in entirety so we added the ability to display longer track names, they now spill over into the second line. It will still display the patch, or the audio track type, if there is room after the end of the track name on that 2nd line.

Audio tracks now are drawn with a background color which makes it clearer as to the location of specific events.

There is a right-click menu item in the Tracks Window to highlight the current Audio Event. This makes it easier to select specific audio events, which then could be clicked and dragged (with Ctrl button held down) to a new location, etc.

Right-click on the RT### in the Tracks window has a Show RealCharts Notation menu item if a corresponding RealChart track exists.

A new "Mini View" mode has been implemented for the Tracks window. It has a shorter track height.

When loading an .MGU or SGU file, unused BB tracks are automatically put in "Mini-View " mode.

When you have multiple tracks selected, Track | Remove Track now removes them all.

The ability to scroll left & right in the Tracks window during playback by clicking on the horizontal scroll bar has been added.

And many more...

The long style name from Band-in-a-Box is now shown below the style name.

Pan settings for RealTracks in Band-in-a-Box songs are now loaded when a Band-in-a-Box song file is loaded.

The Master Volume setting from the Mixer is now duplicated in the main tool bar.

The Align Music to Click Track dialog has buttons added to set From to either the start of the bar < or the start of the song <<, and Thru to either the end of the bar > or the end of the song >>.