With Band-in-a-Box® 2017, we added the Natural Arrangements option!

If you give a pro musician a complicated chord progression, with fancy extensions like C7b9b13 or Gm11, the musician may reinterpret these rather than playing them exactly as written. This can achieve a much better sounding arrangement because the musician has freedom to choose from similar chord extensions. Now you can get Band-in-a-Box to do the same thing, with options to set this on a global basis, song basis, or individual tracks!

How?

There is an "Arrangements Options" dialog accessible within Prefs - simply choose "Arrange" and you will see on the bottom left of this dialog the option for "Natural Arrangements (re-interpret complex chords)". Within the drop-down menu for this, you can choose:
- Never (even if set in song settings)
- Disabled (unless set in song settings)
- Always for Jazz (unless disabled in song settings)
- Always for All Genres (unless disabled in song settings)

You can also choose to use this setting for just one song, using the "Song Settings" button - just choose the "Enable for this song" option within the drop-down menu on the middle right of this window.

Looking to set this for a specific track or tracks within the song? You can do this too! With the song open, go to Track Settings | Set Natural Arrangement, and select an option.

Have you used this new feature in Band-in-a-Box 2017?

Indeed many of us have, and I find it really does improve the sound. Voice leading is far better, and fewer range jumps occur. This is a terrific new feature. Even better is the ability to control it globally, by song, or by track.

Callie, I will just mention that, when we discussed this new feature in beta testing, we never did learn exactly what is going on. Several of us guessed, and there were some guidelines stated by Dr. Gannon. Perhaps this is proprietary info, and we will respect that, but if it isn't, it would be nice to know more about the algorithm at work here. As a composer, I really need to know what to expect when I want a particular upper extension, whether I can enable this feature or not.

Yeah, I completely agree with this, Matt.

Same story on our (Mac) end, now that you mention it

Yep, I agree with the comments. I have never used the feature because of these reasons and I get kinda fed up with the nagging pop-up note. Arranging and improvising are both problems

Actually, I just may be able to help you with this bit:
In the global preferences for the way you want the NA function to behave, there's also a separate setting for the messages part of the feature. There you can set the frequency of those "nagging" things quite independently of what you've otherwise set for the feature itself, including turning those messages off entirely if you so desire

I'd think getting some dedicated guideline videos with audible demonstrations of the actual differences in the outcome each time should really suffice, with greater appeal to the novice and learned alike.
No real need to get into intricate "algorithm", "proprietary info" or what have you, that might only complicate matters without cause.

Icelander, was this feature even in BIAB 2016 for Mac?

Not '16, nope. Didn't realise it had been for a year on your end either...not that I'm surprised

No, it was introduced in version 2017 for the PC also. I was just going by your signature.

Oh right, thanks for reminding me to update that bit!

Fixed, sorry for the confusion

Got it, thanks. Makes more sense now.