So I am a bit old school, from the first days of BIAB. Back then it sounded nowhere as real as it does now, BUT it had a huge menu of modern jazz (The real stuff: Bebop, Hard Bop, Cool and other straight ahead styles). Now 2 decades later I return to see this universe of a platform: real tracks, real styles and on and on. As I sort through all this, desperately looking for ways to harness all this power to simply produce backing tracks fo myself in the style of the classic quartets of Bird, Trane, Dextor, Rollins, Miles etc, all I can find is endless confusing stuff that seems more suited to producing various hybrids and versions of big band, smooth jaz, Dixieland, pop jazz, rock jazz, acid jazz and even Michael Bubble like albums (not knocking him, he's a great musician). Now dont get me wrong, I'm not trying to be a modern jazz snob, and no offense intended to those who are into all these various options, I'm just looking to do my thing, and produce hard swinging straight ahead jazz recordings of my playing (I'm a Modern Jazz Clarinet Player, think Defranco, Daniels, Scott, Robinson). It's for this reason I stick with stuff like Abersold, Session Band and RealBand. So do I give up on BIAB, or is there an easy way to harness all this power to produce the stuff I'm into with the realism that it offers.
Last edited by Joseph Cannavo; 01/13/1703:46 AM.
Joseph P Cannavo Not everything can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
Creating your own style out of midi, super midi and RealTracks is an easy process. It can be a bit tedious, but certainly doable.
Customize styles and use them and ignore the rest unless you need to create a new style.
The Stylepicker should help you cull the large quantity of styles to a reasonable number that are within the genre and groove you're seeking. You can search by song title, artist, genre, specific instrument and so on.
Learn the in's and out's of the Stylepicker and you can accomplish your goal.
I love Eddie Daniels in particular from your list.
As Charlie mentioned, you can construct what you want to hear from individual tracks. The MIDI tracks you liked long ago are all still there. Supplement these with a RealDrum track and maybe one or two RealTracks (especially bass) and you may get closer to what you want to hear.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Well, I'm not into the various flavors of jazz like you are, however, I would venture to say that what you are looking for it still in there somewhere. You just have to be able to find it.
PG has added and continues to add and improve the styles and real tracks so that one may choose from a wide variety of options. The more options you have though, the harder it gets to find the specific ones you may be looking for.
I often have to use filters on the list of styles and real tracks so that I'm able to have a useful list to select from.
If you have been out of BB for a while and are just coming back in 20 years later, yeah, I imagine it's quite overwhelming. Kinda like I experienced when I got out of digital recording and them returned a few short years later to find all sorts of wonderful advancements in the DAW world.
I'd suggest that, even though you have been a PG user in the past, since it's been 20 years, consider yourself as a beginner and look up, and view the tutorial videos. Work through them one by one. A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step followed by another.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.
The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
I am not aware that PGM took any styles away, only added new ones, many new ones. The sensational options available now may appear overwhelming, but the StylePicker should help you find what you need. Feel free to experiment with RealTracks and MIDI combo's. I believe that you'll achieve what you are looking for.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
In the stylepicker, you can filter it to show only jazz styles.
You can also control the order that the styles are listed in. The default is that it shows real styles followed by midi styles.
So you could for example, show only MIDI styles, and only show jazz styles which would show you about the same list that you used to see.
With realstyles, we have added many of the actual players from the eras that you are talking about. For sample, Ron Carter (bass), Kenny Barron (piano), Lewis Nash (drums), Pat Martino (guitar), Phil Woods (alto). As you know, those guys are Pollwinners that have played with everyone including Miles Davis etc.
Start with a style like _jazFred . That's a straight ahead jazz style, quartet with piano, guitar, bass, drums.
Joseph theres more to music than jazz! Im doing country pop and rock, some latin and other bits and bobs and i find BB brilliant at it. I think BB needs to keep its horizons broad. If it was exclusivly jazz would the sales have been enoguh to assure survival? Just looking at the stylepicker there seems to me to be TOO much jazz if you add all the variations up, but I dont mind. Theres loads of other stuff to keep me going. Wendy<
BiaB2022PLUS,927. every extras pack I can find ;-),Sonar7XL,Win 10
Welcome to the forum Joe. It's funny how we all think of genres. I wouldn't call Bird, Dexter, Miles, etc Modern Jazz. I guess it's modern compared to 40's big band. It's bebop. Modern Jazz is Spyro Gyra, David Benoit, Herbie Hancock, Eric Marienthal and everybody else from the 70's onward.
As to your question, all of your favorite midi styles are still there. Nothing has been removed. But, a whole lot of new RT's and hybrid RT/midi styles have been created plus of course you're free to create your own or buy third party styles from someone like Norton Music. Bob Norton has an absolute ton of all the Real Book stuff.
In relation to loading midi styles, it might be that you need to deactivate the auto-substitute midi styles for Realstyles (i.e. styles containing all Realtracks). With this setting active, BIAB will potentially automatically load non-midi equivalents of the older midi styles that you like.
This setting can be turned off permanently under "Prefs | Realtracks" (see below image).
Wow guys, thanks for all the useful help!! And I will venture in as a beginner again. As for the history of jazz, of which I am a long time serious student, yes so-called "modern jazz" begins with with bebop, and the very specific idiomatic transformation it brought to the improvised line. And this is the reason when one studies at, say Berklee, you study the likes of Bird etc, as this provides an initial idiomatic foundation for ALL that the follows. Simple google the phrase "modern jazz"'to explore these ideas further.
bird lives! Thanks all! Joe
Joseph P Cannavo Not everything can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
I get the "Don't give labels" pitch, that everyone from Duke to Miles has stated. On the other hand, for purposes such as choosing a style top back a particular groove, nomenclature is inevitable.
"Modern Jazz" was a term coined before most of us were born, has been applied to a certain era and genre, and does not represent a "sliding" timescale. "Funk/Fusion" will be immediately understood to represent Spyro Gyra, Hancock etc. As these styles are now more than two decades old, how is referring to them as "modern" any more accurate than applying it to Bird and Diz?
Phillyjazz, More or less agree, and the overuse of labels degenerated into its own set of problems.. At the same time I get a little tired of some of the better-than-thou "I don't do labels" thing I hear from some of my musician collegues. The bottom line is that without labels and categories we can't navigate the world. So If I want to purchase sheet music for the Weber #2 clarinet concerto, and I ask the music store clerk where the classical music section is, he/she ought not tell me "hey man it's all music". Similarly if I'm looking to find musicians to form a quartet Stylistically aligned with what Trane did with McCoy Tyner, Elivin Jones and Jimmy Garrison, I need labels and categories. (And I'm sure Mile thought very much thought in terms of stylistic labels and catagories when looking to fill out the various incarnations of his ensembles- Kenny Garrett ain't no swing alto player). As for the term modern, I agree, many confuse its meaning with that of "contemporary"-which is not what it means in the arts. So, for example, modern art begins in the mid late 1800s with the likes of Cézanne, Van Gogh, Seurat etc. Personally, and especially as a modern jazz clarinet player, the idiomatic category "modern jazz" is especially important to me, since the instrument was nearly abandoned with the bebop revolution, and is typically type cast as being wedded to a pre-bop idiom. Those of us who are devoted to the use of this horn in the modern jazz idiom (bebop, hard bop, post bob etc) are part of a very small club indeed!
Joseph P Cannavo Not everything can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
To get back to one of your original points about BiaB/RB - finding the styles you want. I was getting frustrated trying to find the midi-only styles which I prefer. There are over 1500 midi-only styles in BiaB, but they weren't easy to find.
I copied the demo songs into folders along with a text file of the style information. Now I scan the text file and listen to (part of) the 60 second demos. This is much faster than trying to do it in BiaB. Then I type the style/demo name into the Biab style filter. That style comes up and you're good to go.
You could also do something similar with Real Styles. Yes, it took a few days to get all this done. I just wish I had done it years ago.
Today's the Last Day of the Band-in-a-Box 2026® for Mac Special!
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Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac - Special Offers End at 11:59pm PDT on Friday, May 15th, 2026!
Order before 11:59pm PDT on Friday, May 15th and SAVE up to 50% on most Band-in-a-Box® version 2026 for Mac Upgrade packages... and that's not all! With your version 2026 for Mac purchase, we'll include a Bonus PAK full of great new Add-ons FREE! Upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK to receive even more NEW Add-ons including 20 additional RealTracks... that's 222 NEW RealTracks available with version Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac!
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202 New RealTracks Released with Band-in-a-Box 2026!
With Band-in-a-Box® 2026, we've released 202 incredible new RealTracks (in sets 468-488) in a variety of genres—featuring your most requested styles!
Jazz, Funk & World (Sets 468-475):
Our new jazz, funk & blues RealTracks include a groovin’ collection of RealTracks and RealDrums! These include more requested “soul jazz” RealTracks featuring artists Neil Swainson (bass), Charles Treadway (organ), Brent Mason (guitar), and Wes Little (drums). There are new “smooth jazz” styles (4), which include a RealTracks first: muted trumpet, as well as slick new smooth jazz brushes options for drums. Blues lovers will be thrilled—there are more “classic acoustic blues” styles, including guitar (5), bass (4), and drums (10) with blues master Colin Linden, featuring understated and tasty background acoustic soloing, plus brushes drums and acoustic bass. There are also new electric blues RealTracks, including electric blues with PG favorite Johnny Hiland (3) and soulful electric slide guitar from Colin Linden (4). If you love funk & gospel, there are great new options this year, including gospel organ (3) from Charles Treadway, as well as new funk, tango, and rock ’n’ roll drums (3) and bass (1). And for big, bold arrangements, we have uptempo soul horns (4) featuring a three-part hip horn section with options for a full mix or stems of each individual horn — plus an accompanying rhythm section (4) of drums, bass, guitar, and electric piano!
Rock & Pop (Sets 476–482):
Our new rock & pop RealTracks bring a powerful mix of requested favorites, fresh genres, and modern chart-inspired styles! We have more of our popular “Producer Layered Acoustic Guitars (15)” featuring Band-in-a-Box favorite Brent Mason. We’ve continued our much-requested disco styles (10), and added new Celtic guitar (5) with a more basic, accessible approach than our previous Drop-D or DADGAD offerings. There are also highly requested yacht rock styles (17), inspired by the smooth, polished soft-rock sound of the late ’70s and early ’80s — laid-back grooves, silky electric pianos, warm textures, elegant harmonic movement, and pristine production aesthetics. Fans of heavier styles will love our new glam metal (13), capturing the flashy, high-energy sound of ’80s arena-ready guitar rock. We also have a set of rootsy modern-folk rock (18), with a warm, organic sound combining contemporary folk textures and driving acoustic strumming. And we’ve added lots of new modern pop styles (16) — the kinds of sounds you’re hearing on the radio today, featuring exciting new drums, synths, and cutting-edge RealTracks arrangements.
Country, & Americana (Sets 483–488):
Our new country & Americana RealTracks deliver a rich collection of acoustic, electric, and roots-inspired styles! We have new country pop (9) with legendary guitarist Brent Mason. There is also a potpourri (14) of bouzouki, guitars, banjo, and more, perfect for adding texture and character to contemporary acoustic arrangements. We’ve added funky country guitar (5) with PG favorite Brent Mason, along with classic pedal steel styles (5) featuring steel great Doug Jernigan. There are more country songwriter styles (8) that provide intimate, rootsy foundations for storytelling and modern Americana writing. Finally, we have “background soloing” acoustic guitar (12) with Brent Mason — simpler, but still very tasty acoustic lines designed to sit beautifully behind vocals or act as a subtle standalone solo part.
And, if you are looking for more, the 2026 49-PAK (for $49) includes an impressive collection of 20 bonus RealTracks, featuring exciting and inspiring additions to add to your RealTracks library. You'll get new country-rhythm guitar styles from PG Music favorites Johnny Hiland and Brent Mason, along with modern-pop grooves that capture today’s radio-ready sound! There are also new indie-folk styles with guitar, bass, 6-string bass used as a high-chording instrument, acoustic guitar, and banjo. Plus, dedicated "cymbal fills" RealDrums provide an added layer that work very well with low-key folky styles with other percussion.
The 2026 49-PAK is loaded with other great new add-ons as well. Learn more about the 2026 49-PAK!
2026 Free Bonus PAK & 49-PAK for Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac®!
With your version 2026 for Mac Pro, MegaPAK, UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, Audiophile Edition or PlusPAK purchase, we'll include a Bonus PAK full of great new Add-ons for FREE! Or upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK for only $49 to receive even more NEW Add-ons including 20 additional RealTracks!
These PAKs are loaded with additional add-ons to supercharge your Band-in-a-Box®!
This Free Bonus PAK includes:
The 2026 RealCombos Booster PAK:
-For Pro customers, this includes 27 new RealTracks and 23 new RealStyles.
-For MegaPAK customers, this includes 25 new RealTracks and 23 new RealStyles.
-For UltraPAK customers, this includes 12 new RealStyles.
MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
MIDI SuperTracks Set 46: Piano & Organ
Instrumental Studies Set 24: Groovin' Blues Soloing
Artist Performance Set 19: Songs with Vocals 9
Playable RealTracks Set 5
RealDrums Stems Set 9: Cool Brushes
SynthMaster Sounds Set 1 (with audio demos)
iOS Android Band-in-a-Box® App
Looking for more great add-ons, then upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK for just $49 and you'll get:
20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums with 20 RealStyle.
FLAC Files (lossless audio files) for the 20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums
MIDI Styles Set 93: Look Ma! More MIDI 16: SynthMaster
MIDI SuperTracks Set 47: More SynthMaster
Instrumental Studies 25 - Soul Jazz Guitar Soloing
Artist Performance Set 20: Songs with Vocals 10
RealDrums Stems Set 10: Groovin' Sticks
SynthMaster Sounds & Styles Set 2 (sounds & styles with audio demos)
XPro & Xtra Styles PAK Sets On Sale Now - Until May 15, 2026!
All of our XPro Styles PAKs and Xtra Styles PAKs are on sale until May 15th, 2026!
It's the perfect time to expand your Band-in-a-Box® style library with XPro and Xtra Styles PAKs. These additional styles for Band-in-a-Box® offer a wide range of genres designed to fit seamlessly into your projects. Each style is professionally arranged and mixed, helping enhance your songs while saving you time.
What are XPro Styles and Xtra Styles PAKs?
XPro Styles PAKs are styles that work with any version (Pro, MegaPAK, UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition) of Band-in-a-Box® 2025 (or higher). XPro Styles PAKS 1-10 includes 1,000 styles!
Xtra Styles PAKs are styles that work with the UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition of Band-in-a-Box® 2025 (or higher). Xtra Styles PAKs 1-21 includes 3,700 styles (and 35 MIDI styles)!
The XPro & Xtra Styles PAKs are not included in any Band-in-a-Box® package.
The XPro Styles PAKs 1-10 are available for only $29 ea (reg. $49 ea), or get them all in the XPro Styles PAK Bundle for only $149 (reg. $299)! Listen to demos and order now! For Mac or for Windows.
The Xtra Styles PAKs 1-21 are available for only $29 ea (reg. $49 ea), or get them all in the Xtra Styles PAK Bundle for only $199 (reg. $349)! Listen to demos and order now! For Mac or for Windows.
Note: XPro Styles PAKs require Band-in-a-Box® 2025 or higher and are compatible with ANY package, including the Pro, MegaPAK, UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, and Audiophile Edition.
The Xtra Styles require the UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition of Band-in-a-Box®. (Xtra Styles PAK 19 requires the 2025 or higher UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition. They will not work with the Pro or MegaPAK version as they require the RealTracks included in the UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition.
Supercharge your Band-in-a-Box today with XPro Styles PAKs and Xtra Styles PAK Sets!
With the release of Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac, we’re rolling out a collection of brand-new videos on our YouTube channel. We’ll keep this forum post updated so you can easily find all the latest videos in one convenient spot.
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