In order to provide perspective.

1. The docs are trying to get me as close to dead as possible and stop.
2. I take a LOT of narcotics.
3. The original guts of the software involves adding chords, picking a style, and then going from there by taking your mp3 or laptop on the 'road'. Or using it at home.
4. We are getting more and more 'mixer' types, who I sort of understand, but don't. I'm often curious about how producer A) did the setup and recording and how B) did the same thing. The two uses are totally the opposite in many ways. IE mixer crowd vrs Band in a Box crowd.

Taking the cowbell as an example, one could record it about 500 ways. For use in Band in a Box it needs to be generic, midi one would presume, and then you get control if you understand midi and all the gyrations you can go thru with velocity and other stuff I don't care to know. Or want to..

I want to play! If they give me a bunch of blank tracks and a scale grid and tell me put a quarter note here for cowbell, and a box pops up and I get to chose midi or RealCowbell, pitch, attack, volume, etc from the dropdown menu, then comes the effect menu and I get to add warm or ambient, or cowbell in the monastery, well, maybe I'm interested. But dang I wanted a cowbell on beat one for 3 measures and that does what for the audience (Dig?)

I'm better off, even as a one man band, to haul up an audience member and have them come up, explain when I pat you on the but you hit it. Pick..never mind...way more fun, start out with Mary had a little lamb (ding), and then do the actual song. Mess it up and laugh.

Not enough Laughter.

And I throw cow patties against the cracked worn barn door on a hot summer's day and the wasps congregate. The border collie wants me to throw a stick and the cicadas high pitch ebbs and flows in the soft afternoon light as it filters through the old barn wall, the dust in the warm breeze floats while flies buzz around us.

Don't take anything as a shove, take it as a question to be answered, for you don't state your gear, your starting nor ending point, no pointers to your work, and no examples of what you've done with the software.

Been around a while, I have, and many of those here have heard the few songs I post, I use the software to make backing tracks for friends, rehearsals, and myself for fun and practice. In reality the wife and I play gigs as a duo, flute (her) and keys (me) and we do ancient Celtic Music, most of which people don't get. They think Robin Hood. So I do a diddy on this piece was in this movie, for example Suo Gan, and some of them realize where they heard it. My wife does melody and improv, every 3 rd or 4th song she rests for a verse or 2 and I improvise, and due to more than 1/2 of it being in 6/8 12/8 I have never managed to put the sets into Band in a Box and end up happy with the end result. If required my wife, with too many years of training, and a bit short of a Masters in Music Ed at university, can lay down a piano backing track I write for 2 hands, and we use that to get us to the 'commercial' level. We were getting $250 for 3 hours, and I decided that the setup, take down, and other work did not equal the cash outcome, and I've cut that back to 3 or 4 times a year.

We have a light jazz set done with Band in a Box, it's pick nik music, and I enjoy that a lot more, play in a park, I just have to have the foolproof covers ready for my big Bose system, it would kill me if that got wet.

John Conley
Musica est vita