Soloist,

Welcome to the forum.

The easiest way to get started is to view some videos. Visit the PG Music video page ++ HERE ++ and scroll down the page until you get to the Beginner's videos.

Another choice is to buy the professional made Band-in-a-Box video training by Groove3.com. I've got it and it's really good. The two hours of video watching will save you much frustration and many hours of grief. Plus, if you purchase the video series you'll always have the videos available as a quick reference resource. You can find out more about the videos ++ HERE ++

In addition to looking at the videos there is no better way to learn than by doing. Pick a short song you know well and enter the chords into the Band-in-a-Box (BiaB)chordchart. Make a folder on your desktop (Name the folder the name of your song) then save the song in the folder. It's a good idea to save each song in a folder. After you make some changes, save the song under a new name in the folder (Good Song, Good Song RevA, Good Song RevB, etc.). That way WHEN something goes wrong you can close BiaB, open BiaB then load the last GOOD version of the song.

It's important to understand how BiaB looks at a song. You have eight tracks. One track can contain audio you recorded and the other seven tracks can load instruments. Piano, Drums, Guitar, Bass and Strings are the default names for the rhythm instruments. Melody and Solo are "special" tracks with extra features to create melodies and solos so don't use them until you investigate the track features as they don't always react as you expect them to.

Style determines time signature (3/4 or 4/4), initial instrumentation and if the initial instrument loaded to a track is midi or RealTrack. You CAN change styles and instruments as you desire.

Each bar (or measure) can have up to four chord changes (3 if it's 3/4 time) with chord entry every half bar. Even and odd beat chords are separated by a comma. Bass notes are enter as slash chords.

By default, Band-in-a-Box "reads" the chordsheet as one chorus (or verse) that repeats three times then has a two bar ending. Most songs have an intro. If your song has a four bar intro, change the number in the START box at the top from the "1" default to "5". Bars 1 to 4 will play once and the chorus will start on bar 5. If you don't want the verse to repeat three times, change the number in the CHORUSES button from "3" to whatever you want. Many songs have a 12 or 16 bar chorus so you can change the END box to 12 or 16 to correct the chorus length.

Jim Fogle - 2025 BiaB (Build 1128) RB (Build 5) - Ultra+ PAK
DAWs: Cakewalk Sonar - Standalone: Zoom MRS-8
Laptop: i3 Win 10, 8GB ram 500GB HDD
Desktop: i7 Win 11, 12GB ram 256GB SSD, 4 TB HDD
Music at: https://fogle622.wix.com/fogle622-audio-home