Hi everyone and thanks for gracious comments. I never really expected this to hit viral, so let me explain a few things.

First, sorry for mumbling & babbling with that Finnish accent - I rarely speak English, so sometimes it's a bit hard to articulate sentences from fly.

The title "overview" is a bit overshot, it should be more of an "Quick take on BB + VST + DAW workflow (what the heck is BB anyway?)".

I have been familiar with Band In A Box from early nineties, but I haven't been using it, except for few trials here and there over the years. I remember playing around with old DOS and Windows version, as my dad has been using it for over 20 years(!). I have seen how good it can be when paired with Roland MT32 or such (back in good old days), and I have watched it growing over the years.

My musical ambitions have varied between every kind of genre, from metal to dance, pop, rock and such. Few years ago I started seriously to invest on studying soundtrack-genre (virtual orchestration) and that's when I started putting effort on wanna-be-profession-arranger -skills. If I were to ever make small bucks for even minor productions I have to be able to work fast, when doing backing tracks for theaters etc. This is why I finally took my personal roll with BB.

I don't plan to use BB as your usual pop/rock backing track arranger or studying platform, but more like an inspirational tool for coming up with themes, chord-structures and such. This is why I put most my effort on this "overview" video as seen by "virtual orchestrator" -enthusiast, and I tried to target audience of VI-Control -forum (which is full of guys who take their art seriously).

So as said, I really wanted to target those viewers who wouldn't be your usual BB users, but people who are trying to produce tracks and ideas quickly (= video game & film composers).

My overview video includes couple of example tracks (another one within comments). I really wanted to put effort on the final mix, as the quality of example track would be either dealmaker or breaker for professionals. If it were to sound like static midi or plain real tracks laid together, soundtrack composers would skip BB without hesitation... Additionally, I tend to try to keep my videos as short as possible. 15 minutes is just about the maximum what enthusiastic viewer is ready to spend on tutorial/overview video, so I really had to put focus on small feature-section :P

As such, my overview really doesn't put enough effort on telling what Band-In-A-Box really is and what it can do for all-kinds of musicians. It doesn't give enough praise for it as an virtual-live-band, nor as an gem-box for studying all kinds of genres.

I really didn't even try to cover all this, so I'm really sorry if someone might find it a bit uninspiring or shallow take over the subject. Hopefully someone will cover missing points more thoroughly and show all those neat tricks BB can do, be it arranging bar rests/hits, throwing tab-notes for guitars, using style-picker (/ style wizard!), or generating solo tracks.


Finally a little message for PG -

Sorry for giving harsh comments about UI. As an experienced software developer (specialized on UI-design) I understand what the weight of history means for evolving software, and having 20 years of past is respectable! Still, I stand behind by points: UI reminds me of late 90's / early 2000. It's really confusing and is filled with lots of unnecessary features (such as "open file location" or "delete current file" -- really, what are those for? smile... At the same time it's great that there are lots of configuration variables, something advanced users love!

My only real cons are related for unstability of VST support. I haven't been able to get any VST's to work without crashing, be it Addictive Keys or Kontakt 5. Coyote / Soundfontz-player doesn't seem to handle too well either, as I'm having really hard time changing instruments (as switching midi patch doesn't seem to have effect on playback sound). I also haven't been able to route my Nektar LX88 midi keyboard to midi thru, even though MIDI debugger shows that notes are coming in...

Still, I can't but praise you for your history and dedication for your product. Keep on doing to the good work and I hope all the best for the whole community of Band-In-A-Box!

Last edited by Reaktor; 02/03/17 06:24 AM. Reason: minor spelling corrections etc.