I started using BiaB when it was available for Atari, Mac OS6, and pre-Windows DOS. I had an Atari/St at the time.

Although I play 7 instruments, my primary instrument is saxophone. I bought BiaB when it was limited to 4 instruments with no endings, shots or holds.

I used BiaB to practice improvisation on the sax. Trying ideas out in the privacy of my own home instead of in front of critical ears, or getting the band together to play a song while I tried out different things.

The thing about improv is that it works best by creating and then releasing tensions with the rest of the band. That's hard to do without the band, but easy with BiaB.

I thought Band-in-a-Box sounded a little corny, but then Cakewalk and Mark Of The Unicorn don't sound that great either. I bought BiaB to practice with, not to impress others with the name of the app I'm using.

When user styles were introduced I made some for myself. Since I play multiple instruments and studied music theory and arranging I wanted to play with the StyleMaker and see what turned out. I made a collection of styles and gave them to my friends. My friends said they liked them better than the built-in BiaB styles (aren't friends wonderful) so I took out a classified ad in Electronics Musician Magazine advertising my styles for Atari computers.

One day I came home to find Peter Gannon's voice on my answering machine asking me to call him. I didn't know if he was going to ask me to stop or anything else so nervously I called.

Peter Gannon was warm and friendly, he put me at ease right away, and told me if I sent him my Atari disks, he would make sure they worked with the IBM-DOS (PC) computers so I could sell to his biggest market.

Peter has been nice and helpful to me from then until the present day. As a matter of fact, so has everyone else in PG Music.

I've written hundreds of styles since then, put them up for sale, and the nice folks at PG even send people my way if I have something that PG doesn't have. (And I never-ever try to duplicate PG Music styles - I'm a different musician with different ideas.)

I've also been solicited to do "for hire" work writing styles for other auto-accompaniment apps. I can't disclose the names as part of the deal, but I can say of the hardware/software and software apps that I've written styles for, BiaB has by far the most interesting and the most musical output. I think that's why it's a success and that's why we are all here.

Don't judge an app by the name, only by its performance.

IMHO BiaB is the very best auto-accompaniment product available, and the nice folks at PG Music keep finding ways to make it better.

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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