PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows In Defense of Band-in-a-Box 2019

One of the things I find most interesting about this program is the wide variety of needs it addresses, and the (often vastly) different features that are imperative to each individual consumer based on said needs.

For example, a plethora of talented songwriters who compose, record, and publish to the User Showcase dozens of excellent songs on a daily basis. I am not one of those talented individuals.

Personally, and I have mentioned this a fair amount of times on a variety of different contexts, I use the program to learn more about music theory, to improve my guitar and bass chops with some of the better notated RTs and MIDI styles, and find the huge amount of genres represented indispensable for such purposes.

Conversely, a lot of the RTs that many of the folks, that are more of the singer/songwriter types, have no interest in the Klezmer, Mariachi, Gypsy Jazz, styles. For my part, I have little interest in many of the singer-songwriter oriented RTs that many forum users have expressed an exclusive interest in.

Another thing I find I'm substantially more interested in than many of the more active users on the forum (I've inserted the "more active users on the forum" qualifier as I could not venture to guess what the hundreds, if not thousands, of other BiaB users, who do not actively post here, feel about the issue) is the FEATURES.

I've seen many users over the 2.5--3 years I've been either active or lurking in these forums complain about "feature creep," "all the features no-one cares about," etc,…and I want to gently remind those folks, as well as those who say, with regards to the RTs and styles "who needs more Latin?" "Do we really need more XYZ styles?" etc, that there are those of us who DO want those features, and those of us who DO want those styles. (Please note that I don't mean to offend anyone personally, everyone has their priorities, and all are totally legitimate).

(At this point I see this missive has become rather long winded, so I'll try to focus on my original point, lol)

I am absolutely LOVING this year's new features. I'm not gonna relist them all here, as you can look at the documentation, but WOW!

FWIW, I barely even use RB, but I've taken it for a test run and was absolutely floored by the improvements and enhancements to that program. The drum notation support (with the notation guide in the clef area!) vertical grid lines, the ability to change resolutions from a drop-down menu, the vertical zoom option, the new note entry options, the snap-to-grid option, the list does indeed go on! As for BiaB 2019, the enhanced filters (with chord complexity, chord density, and the redesigned song-picker, the way you can access subfolders and view the chord charts, these are absolutely incredible features for my particular uses for reasons I do not have the time to get into now. The harmonization feature, when used right, is brilliant, and vastly superior to what was available in v2018.

I understand that folks are extremely disappointed by the whole BiaB VST and 64-bit thing, and I'm having so much trouble with bugs in this version that I've barely booted it up until the latest builds, but I urge you guys to look past those issues for a moment and really delve into the new features.

As for the new RTs this year, I am LOVING them!

Again, I'm not gonna bother going into them right now, but I'll just say when it comes to RTs, what I look for in the yearly updates is new and distinctive varieties, over the thousands released in the past. Yes, there are a lot of the same old Campfire Acoustic Fingerpicking Guitar sw16, and the Folk16thsSlowBrushes^-type drums, but some of the new stuff is absolutely superb! The gospel Hmms, the cinematic electric guitars (beyond brilliant! I cannot even begin to dream of the possibilities the singer/songwriters can do with those.) The Natalie Haas cello tracks (those "chopping" tracks!) and 5 string fiddles (also the "chopping" tracks, the quarter note pulse tracks!). The Background Blues Shuffle horns--the crescendos! The articulations of the "growly" tenor sax! The entire section with the bright stabs and that that fluttering "fall" sound! The bass tones (a huge biggie for me) are better than ever. Alex Al is once again in fine form, as is Eddy Dunlap (easily one of top ten favorites), and of course Terry Clarke. The Byron House acoustic bass tracks are beyond reproach, with the grindy whir of the strings, percussive sonic nuances from the fretboard and position shifts coming through crystal clear and with a certain swaggering authority.

And the drums? BEST EVER! Pristine recordings and overall production values through the roof! As a huge fusion fan this is a great year for me. The Alex Acuna drums and percs are a joy! Robert "Sput" Searight? Really? Did Christmas (or in my case, Hanukkah, lol) come early? (if you never heard of Snarky Puppy I strongly encourage you to do what I did last year, and play the album "Sylva" on repeat until for at least six months straight). Oh, and speaking of Snarky Puppy, did I mention the phenomenal Mark Lettieri baritone electric guitar funk tracks? Sui Generis! Select the D.I. option. add some slapback delay and subtle flanger or phaser effects and try to keep yourself from grinning like a fool.

Now, let me come back down to earth and assure you all that I AM NOT a BIAB APOLOGIST.

I have many, many, issues with this program, and I think the company is mismanaged to the point of suicide. I hate the bugs, I hate that some of those that annoy me most would be so damn easy to fix if they just bothered! I hate the fact that the reason I stopped complaining about these issues maybe six months in to purchasing the program I stopped emailing PGM about these issues or posting to the forum because I knew it would be an exercise in futility.

So here I stand, where many of you have stood before: I've gone through the denial (oh, I'll just email PGM about this, and it will be fixed in a jiffy) anger (why the hell isn’t this being fixed?!), bargaining (if this is not fixed, I won't upgrade next year), and depression (this program sucks, why do I bother), and now I'm at that acceptance phase (it is what it is, best print out a copy of the Serenity Prayer, and keep it within sight at all times when running the program [As an aside, we've seen this process dozens of times with new forum users, and we will no doubt see it many times again, so please let the new users vent, it's hard to drop anywhere from $130 to $670 for a program that, let's be honest, does not quite work as advertised]).

So I'll just conclude with this: putting aside the 64-bit issue, bugs (many of which will get fixed…eventually), and the train wreck that is the VST Plugin), BiaB/RB 2019 is a damn fine upgrade. In fact, I would go as far as to say venture that had BiaB not introduced the 64-bit version or the plugin this year, sure there would be some grumbling (as there has been the past decade or so from what I infer from many threads), but otherwise the response would have been overwhelmingly positive.

Welp, that's my $.02 (or maybe at this point, a full $2.00, lol), and I best be getting on with my day.

Peace out,

Deacon.