Did you know that Band-in-a-Box® is more than 30 years old? I stumbled across this 1990 magazine article explaining the relatively new program, and think it's an enjoyable read for any Band-in-a-Box user - it really shows that we are always listening to user feedback when developing our program!

Read the article: Boxing Clever: Band-In-A-Box Software

A few of my favorite statements:

"The intention of PG Music's Band-In-A-Box package is to couple that speed and convenience with the improved flexibility of the personal computer. Versions are available for the Atari ST, Mac, and PC compatibles. Have the programmers succeeded? And can they rid themselves of the stigma of the auto-accompaniment section? Given the above state of affairs, the first hurdle that the program has to overcome is one of acceptance and, frankly, a name like 'Band-In-A-Box' is a bad start."

(I think our name was a great start!)

"The final results are, to say the least, impressive. Band-In-A-Box achieves something that most hardwired auto-accompaniment sections have never been able to do - inject a degree of feel into the music. It really does sound more human than so many of the computer generated pieces I've heard."

"...I'm quite convinced that PG Music will have a winner on their hands. This is one piece of software that you can get more out of than you put in."

I’ve been using it almost 30 years. It’s fun to look back.

Excellent !!!

Wow, have you come a looong way or what!

No seriously, this time you've really topped yourself, that's an absolutely brilliant find

p.s. If anyone could dig up a sample of what the program actually sounded like back then, with its 3-track limits and all, I'd be most interested to hear it

I think I bought it in 1991 or 1992, I can't remember, I used to have the diskettes. Remember those! Threw them out quite a while back when my wife said I had to clean/straighten my music room!

I well remember using BIAB on an Atari 1040ST. It certainly has advanced in all respects. Imagine how many diskettes you would need to use for the current version!

going thru the attic i recently found an atari st sequencer 1 diskette and some games...ah those were the days.lol.

the st had good midi timing if i remember.
om

30 years ago, BIAB had found the right direction.
Chord, style, generation
After 30 years of accumulation, a revolution in music production will be set off in 2021.
Many people may not realize it.

Congrats!

But there is no way anyone will ever, ever, ever compete with this EPIC demo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdpWc0hT5OQ

I recall being aware of the existence of BIAB back in the early 90s, but I never tried it out until a few months ago. Why not? Well, partly because of that name, which always had cheesy associations for me.

Great video flashback - thanks for the share!

Great video, we need Peters brother in law to join the forum.

I loved the name Band-In-A-Box way back in the midi only, floppy days... now, I think the name is "cheesy"... but I do love the program & PGM... and especially this outstanding forum.

“The computer will add a few colorful things that will add some zip to the song.”

And there it is.

I totally agree... I love this guy...

Ha, this is great

Doing some rough math, if you were using 360k floppy disks it would take nearly 73,000 floppies to fit the Pro version of BIAB 2021, which is the smallest one available. For the Audiophile edition it would take nearly 4.5 million! The stack of floppies for the Pro would be almost 80 feet high, and for the Audiophile would be nearly a mile!


Hah, great find David!

Oh wow, if there was an award issued for the "Geekiest post of a thread", then this one takes the crown for sure!

Right, so if I were to install Pro at, say, 2 minutes per disc at 8 hours per day, I could be installed in just a little over 10 months.

I suspect many of us would be dead before we'd installed that audiophile edition.

It's easy sometimes to forget just how far things have moved on. My first hands-on computer, around 1973, was a Data General Nova 3 with twin 8" 160k floppies, a "massive" 128kB magnetic memory and a "top-loader washing machine" for 5MB Winchester + 5MB removable drive, the latter taking a couple or so hours to spin up or down.

My present actual washing machine almost certainly has more compute power, though it may still be lower on storage.

Now I casually consider whether to go to 1 or 2TB on my next SSD drive.

Hmm, I wonder, though not much(!), just how many tons of paper tape even that Pro edition would need.

COOL MUSIC

*bows* I'm here all week!

But wait - there's more!


According to my back-of-the-napkin-math, just over 17 years. Incidentally, this is almost as long as it took between the Atari version of BIAB and the very first Audiophile edition.


Depends. If you wash your jeans with a couple Micro-SD cards in the pockets, your washer could easily have a few terabytes of storage. Temporarily, of course.


Paper tape apparently maxed out at 50 bits per linear inch (according to Google). Assuming 1.6 trillion bytes, or 12.8 trillion bits, that's 256 billion inches or 4,040,404 miles - which given how many 404's are in that number, it's no wonder I can't find my punched-tape Audiophile anywhere.