The New Real Book Volume 2.

I've never seen that song in Band in a Box format, I might have 10k songs.

Due to the jazzed up nature of the song I doubt you end up with a good result. Sometimes the arrangement is too sparse and the notes never end up making a chord.

At times that song sounds like Don't get around much anymore..and if you use that as an example it's often played just the melody for the opening bars. The a couple of crunch chords then just melody again. Put that over drums, no bass or backup instruments and there is nothing for the software to use to build a chord.

In my estimation the ACW works best with simple music. Three chord country with a straight up band all instruments playing and it's pretty good.

The other thing it's bad at is variable tempo. The tempo has to be the same bpm all the way through.

As far as I've been able to find the ACW is as good or better than anything on the market, but it can't make miracles. Maybe as computers get more powerful some backwards assumptions can be made and applied later. Heck some songs don't get to the tonic until the Gin is gone.

On that note, time for a few pills and the proverbial alfalfa and grass products will pound my ear, or I'll hit the what the hey. Or hay.

Good luck, keep plugging.

And some chords will be right, others may have a pattern that you can discern. After a while if you have enough interval training, and you get the tonic you can putter along and fix the chord grid up. On the other hand Notes Norton sells that fake book I mentioned above, he has put the chords into Band in a Box format without the melody (that's not legal), and if you get the book it has the melody and chords, and you mess about finding styles / RealTracks and voila.

I remember thinking, gee it only took me 5 hours. When I worked it was 70 bucks an hour. I could buy the backing tracks the book and a kid to cut my lawn or shovel my snow for less. I found out too that the snow melts every year and I can save time and effort and let the sun deal with it someday, unless I can't get out the door...sigh.


John Conley
Musica est vita