PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows 40 New Features List for Band-in-a-Box 2009

Band-in-a-Box 2009 for Windows
• Over 40 new features, including RealCharts, enhanced Audio Chord Wizard, Freeze Song, Melody Wizard and more…
• Huge number of new RealTracks available… 101! Total available RealTracks is now over 170.
• Upgrades includes both Band-in-a-Box 2009 and RealBand 2009 … until December 31, 2008
• Upgrades and First-Time purchases include a bonus “12-PAK” with 12 great music programs and add-ons for Band-in-a-Box… until December 31, 2008


40 new features in Band-in-a-Box 2009 for Windows

We’ve added a huge number of new RealTracks (101!), and also a new MIDI styles disk #77 (UK Pop). We’ve added RealCharts – notation and on-screen guitar display for many of the RealTracks. This allows you to hear the audio performances, and see/learn from the on-screen notation, tab, and on-screen guitar fretboard. We’ve enhanced the AudioChordWizard, the feature that figures out chords from MP3 files. We’ve enhanced the RealTracks, with improved arrangements and sounds. And we’ve added artist information and bios for the great artists performing in the RealTracks. There’s a Freeze Song option, that allows you to freeze and save a song arrangement so that it plays back quickly without requiring regeneration of RealTracks and other tracks. And the MIDI Wizard is improved, with a Melody Wizard that allows you to trigger notes from the Melody, including approach notes.

101 new RealTracks!
With the previous 2008 release, there were 3 RealTracks, and 70 were introduced during 2008. Now with BB 2009 we’ve added 101 more great RealTracks in Pop/ Rock/ Jazz/ Blues/ Country and Bluegrass styles.
* Pop/Rock has lots of great Rock/Pop guitars n bass (Dual Rock, StoneZ, Dire, Strumming, Finger picking and more)
* Country has great guitars, pedal steel, resophonic, slide, fiddle, banjo and more.
* Blues has elec. and resophonic guitars, bass and harmonica.
* Jazz has Waltz (bass, piano, guitar), Freddie style guitar comping (swing, ballad and waltz) and a WesComp guitar comping.


RealCharts. Most RealTracks now display notation showing the notes that are being played. Some Guitar RealTracks also show tab, and accurate on-screen fretboard guitar display to show what is being played on guitar. The RealCharts can be saved to MIDI file or Songs (MGU).

Audio Chord Wizard Enhanced. Chords may be edited in the Audio Chord Wizard. Part markers, chord symbols, key signature, and tuning setting are saved in Band-in-a-Box, and are passed back and forth to the Chord Wizard.

Artist Names and Bios for RealTracks. The RealTracks have been recorded by top studio musicians. Now the artist names and bios are displayed for the RealTracks.

Freeze Song (for rapid playback). UnFreeze Song. You can now freeze a song’s arrangement. This converts the song to audio data that plays on the audio track, while the other tracks are muted. This insures that the song loads and plays quickly, without having to wait for RealTracks to generate. This feature is useful for people performing or in other situations where you are happy with the arrangement, and don’t want to wait for several Real Tracks to generate. Even a long song with multiple RealTracks can now playback in a few seconds if you first freeze the arrangement.

Melody Wizard. The QWERTY (or MIDI keyboard) Wizard has been enhanced. Now, for songs with melodies, there are QWERTY keys (Enter,’\’, T, 6) that trigger notes from the melody as the song is being played. Other keys trigger 1-4 approach notes from below or above. Can be recorded, to humanize a stiff melody with better timing, and approach notes also useful for sight reading, rhythm practice or to perform. Works with harmonies

Melody notes: T,6 ,Enter, \ Same Melody Note 5
Approach notes qwer yuio Octave set 1,2,3
MIDI notes also work (if Thru Transpose OK to use Melody Wizard
E(40) F(41) G(43) octave set
Melody Notes. F(53) G(55)
Approach notes B(47),C,D,E A,B,C,D(62)


RealTracks dialog improved with additional information.
RealTracks Assign dialog has new columns with information for Stereo status, Set number, RealCharts status and artist name.

RealTracks dialog can now list styles and demo songs that use the RealTracks. The Songs or Styles can be loaded in easily by menu, and played within the dialog.

RealTracks improved arrangements

• Ability to have a delay in RealTracks track programmed into a style.
• Ability to have a delay in RealTracks track programmed into a song. These allow you to make a song or style with a more ‘laid-back’ feel for a certain RealTracks for example,
• Better soloing and rhythm playing, that are influenced by the key signature as well as the chords.
• Better playing of slash chords in some situations.
• Option for a “Simpler” arrangement on some RealTracks, which avoid embellishments.
• Feature for fills, turnarounds, post fills and odd/even bars to be at the right place
• Better playing on the “V” chord, since it is usually played as a V7 chord. Options added to allow a RealTrack to treat the V7 chord as a V (useful in rock styles), or to treat all 7th chords as major triads (useful in blues)
• Improved handling of Caug, Cmaug, and C7+ chords
• RealTracks, more fluid playing for complex (jazz) chords like C7b9b13
• RealTracks shots improved.

Improved RealDrums at certain tempos. When RealDrums are tempo-stretching, now favors the speeding up a slower tempo more often, resulting in a better sounding Drums track. (Threshold changed from 10% to 4%)

RealDrums Made By You (Or Others) that are added by you to the RealDrums folder now appear in the RealDrums Picker dialog.


Notation enhancement. Patch names displayed on notation, leadsheet and printout <57 trumpet>

Stylepicker List Enhanced, with separate categories for RealTracks Genres (Jazz, Pop, Country, Bluegrass, Blues), over 1,000 entries.



Save and Load Custom Preferences files, with your current settings saved and restored. For example, you can have a preferences that remembers a certain group of songs, notation transpositions etc. Return to Factory Settings now saves Preferences to disk, so that the settings can be restored at any time.


Midi Driver Dialog Enhanced. Audio Settings button displays the MME/ASIO/ASIO Always On status. Name of VST or DXi displayed

Enhanced "Chords - Search And Replace" Functionality
Search and Replace can be used with Roman Numerals or numbers for chord names. So you can replace the V chord with V7, or 5m chord to 5m7. Since these are remembered between songs, it is useful if you are changing multiple songs.

Hotkeys Added in the menus. (e.g. Edit menu (search/replace, nudge, from to, fold)
======
Easy Entry Of Section Text On Notation Window. Typing a backslash “\” followed by any text puts that text at the beginning of the current bar as a boxed section text message. E.g. \Hello would put “Hello” in a boxed section text event.


Song Limit In Song picker Increased from 10,000 to 25,000 songs.

.. and many more

This is wonderful news, PG! No idea how you manage to keep going like you do. Why don't you just keep my credit card...

Jepster

I see in the new video that BIAB 2009 still has the same old tempo format....the box where you type in the tempo doesn't do fractions...so if you have a tune loaded in chord wizard and the tempo is at 117.34 say...and you bring that into BIAB....what happens is choas!

Why or when are they going to resolve that little technical difference?...it would make the chord wizard and BIAB work way better together, or atleast on that issue work better together!

Look at real bands video...the tempo box uses the fractions in the tempo box...and chord wizard which also uses the fraction tempo should work better together....

Hi all,

I fully agree with rkl122 and other people.
There are hundreds and hundreds of user requests asking for BIAB program improvements or new features adds, and the are less implementations.
For ex., access for higher bank patches is very symptomatic of the users requests.
OK, realtracks are 'amazing' and are useful, but other developpments have not to be forgotten.
As far as now, In such conditions, I'm wondering if there room enough to have three products in parallel : PowerTracks, BIAB and Realband...

John-Luke
* Reach for Excellence *

Early last year, the tech support folks indicated that there was development going on to improve the accessibility of BIAB for those who use screen readers (such as JAWS for Windows).

Have there been any improvements in the UI of the 2009 version of BIAB which might improve access?

Thanks.

-- pete

I'm also curious about endings... has anyone who already uses 2009 noticed an improvement where the ending of a song is not as abrupt anymore???

Curious Mike would love to know!

Cheers,
Mike

One of the "and many more.." features not mentioned is that the tempo stretching is improved.
So you can use the RealTracks over a wider range, and they still sound great.

It will be much to work with now.
Thanks!
Kuguar
----------------------------------------
www.freewebs.com/olegs

Congratulations for the launch of Band in a Box 2009! It look great and plenty of superb features.
I wonder if audio-midi simultaneous recording, which did not work in 2008 and 2008.5, was fixed in this version? So interested..!

Greetings!
Carlos

Yo Petey!

That's all fine and dandy but it doesn't do us Mac users any good. When are you going to let us know something? Why are you guys being so inconsiderately silent towards your users about this whole Mac version debacle? AND WHY FOR SO LONG? I'd really like an answer about if/when the next Mac version is coming.

Can you explain in easy terms how to work the Melody Wizard I followed your intructions to the letter in the video.. but nothing changes how do I make it work....step by step please

Its 12 days now since I asked this question and no one at BIAB can answer it..so how many more things advertised dont work??

Great! And how about that new Mac version?! Wow!

Oh wait, THAT'S right. There is NO new Mac version! Silly me!

When's that going to see light of day?...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

I hear they hired an Mac programmer from Russia who is trying to get things going for the Mac. Why not use the VM software to use BIAB and RB?