I made a response to this once, and accidently closed Firefox while researching an answer to it, so I have to type it all over again. Meh!

What I need to emphasize is that Band In A Box is actually a very simplistic program. You take a simple chord progression, and select a style, and it will create the backing track based on the style that you choose. That really is the entire basis of BIAB. Of course, it's much more elaborate than that, but that is the basic core function of the program.

So, what IS a style, anyway? In a nutshell, it's a combination of up to five parts, the drums, bass, piano, guitar and strings that when combined make up a backing track. It's how that style is put together that is the real genius of Band In A Box. In an 'arranger keyboard' like the Yamaha, Casio or other manufacturers, you play a chord with your left hand, and the keyboard builds a backing track around that. Now, I'm not dissing arranger keyboards, since that is what I use, and have two very expensive ones. But, you play a C chord, and the arranger keyboard will play a singular backing track for as long as that C chord is input, only changing when you put a new chord it. That chord NEVER will change, it will ALWAYS play exactly the same notes. If you put in a progression, every single time, the keyboard will play back an identical track. Band In A Box is not that way.

The five 'parts' of the BIAB backing track are composed of stylistic patterns. Peter Gannon designed BIAB so that you can have multiple patterns for each element. He also designed it to 'look ahead' and know how long that chord is going to last for, and choose an appropriate pattern for the chord length. In detail, depending on how the style was written, you may have 1 bar patterns, 2 bar patterns and four bar patterns. You may have ten slightly different patterns for the one bar patterns, five slightly different patters for the 2 bar patterns and five slight different patterns for the four bar pattern. So, for a major chord, you may have up to 20 different patterns that can be selected depending on the length of the chord. Which pattern gets selected is determined within the program and based on the designer's weighting of the pattern. Now, that is just for say the drums. That same thing may apply to the bass, the piano, the guitar and the string parts, giving you 20 different patterns for each instrument for any given bar. This is why BIAB sounds so good.

Given a two bar C chord, a one bar F chord and a one bar G chord, and then a four bar C chord, played over and over again, it is possible that it may play 100 times before repeating itself. Again, it depends on the weighting of each pattern, but it's possible to have so many different combinations that you'll be hard pressed to hear the same thing repeated over the course of those eight bars, at least very often.

Now, for a song like 'Wipeout!' or 'Peter Gunn', certain parts of the song have a very specific motif to them, and you would have to build a style to match that song. For 'Peter Gunn' the bass is very unique, and the bass pattern would have to be written not to change each time. For 'Wipeout!' the drums are very unique and would have to be written to reflect the song. You could select another style, but it would not have the specific motif of the song, and hence would sound 'wrong.' For me, doing 'Wipeout!' or 'Tequila', I bought certain styles from Norton Music that had those styles already created.

You can make your own styles. Most of us do not because of the time involved in doing it, and for me, the lack of musical knowledge to actually do it. Bob Norton makes excellent styles, and you can pay him some good money for some great styles. Or, if you are talented, you can do it yourself.

For something like Folsom Prison Blues, Hot Rod Lincoln, or any song for that matter, the Audio Chord Wizard only determines the chords. It does nothing for the style. The ACW doesn't know style from melody. YOU get to select the style, and if there is a style similar to what you need, you can use that. If not, then you need to find someone who has created it, or create your own. The that end, you may also use the Hybrid Style maker, which allows you to take a stylistic element from one style and combine it with elements of other styles to come up with one that works.

Does this answer some of your question?

Gary

I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!