Hi Squeezebox,

You are not alone. I think that everyone who starts out with BiaB finds that sort of frustration. At first.

In my case, I put the thing away and didn't work with it for a year or two. To my loss.

Here's the deal:

Band in a Box is a new instrument.

Approach it in that fashion.

Just like you were to pick up some instrument other than accordian and start to learn to play it, you will likely find out that you can buy the guitar, but you aren't bery likely to sound like Django, Segovia or Joe Pass on the first day. Or the first month. Or the first year. But with daily practice and also backing up to work on the basic things first, bite sized chunks, as it were, the care and feeding of BiaB will indeed build into the ability to get a lot more out of it.

Start again, but pick a very simple song. Make it work. Put it away for a few days, come back to it with fresh ears and brain cells and make it work better than it did before.

TIP: A lot can be learned about the use of BiaB by opening up the PGMusic supplied Demo Songs in all those folders and simply push play and watch it work. As you see it go over certain things, red outlines around bar numbers, periods and letters after chord names, etc. you can hit Stop and investigate what commands were used to create the situation you just heard.

SECOND TIP: RealTracks are wonderful, but they are not the only sounds BiaB can make. Don't let the MIDI styles languish, especially when after certain genres, accompaniment patterns, etc. MIDI styles can make for wonderful backups to the French Musette music. You might take a look at some of the TOOTS styles and use your squeezevox instead of Toot's harmonica for the lead.

THIRD TIP: Audition your song with different styles from the Stylepicker. I like to check off the "Loop" to the right of the Songtitle window, then open Stylepicker, make sure that "Play on doubleclick" is checked at the bottom, then use the filter dropdown to the right to filter the style list by Tempo or by Feel and Tempo and then just doubleclick my way down the list, listening to the good, the bad and the ugly, occasionally making a note of styles that I think I might like to try on the song. Often, this leads me to a place where I would not have thought about and ends up as a different, but better accompaniment for the target song. Serendippity rules in my studio. Of course, we should never TELL people about happy accidents, just as we should never apologize for a performance beforehand. Just let it play and smile and wave at the people.


--Mac

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