Thanks David for bringing some perspective to the AI conversations. It's always worthwhile to take all sides of these situations into account.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
<...snip...> But something that people can do - that AI can't - is understand which of their decisions are derivative, and which are not.<...>
That's a good assessment.
At least until AI becomes sentient. (Perhaps I've read too much science fiction)
Also, humans exhibit something called “taste” (the ability to discern what is of good quality or of a high aesthetic standard). Well, at least some do.
Example: Will this chord change sound better than this other one, in the context of the lyrics I wrote?
But for so many pop songs that use the same chord progressions, I guess that doesn't come into play. But perhaps the lyrics do. A little twist of the lyrics can make a big difference.
And even humans have their limitations. I've heard what scholars created for Beethoven's 10th symphony. They used notes and notation sch etches he had. The result sounded a lot like Beethoven's work, but paled in comparison because it didn't have the spark of creativity that he did with every symphony.
But AI is still growing. Who can predict how fast and how far? Will it someday write a symphony as creative as the masters and not be obviously derivative?
I guess we have to 'stay tuned' to find out.
I'm going to keep gigging until either it replaces me, or when Rap becomes the choice for the retirement audience here in South Florida. Then, I'll retire.
I know it may seem like I have come full circle with this topic. But it is clear to me now that the initial feelings I voiced regarding "disrespect" had nothing to do with AI or playing covers, it was entirely the selection of music. Frank singing Teen Spirit was simply wrong to my ear. Here we have an example of the same thing and this rendiction almost brought tears to my eyes. Somethink about the right song for the right singer.
We called lots of things "artificial intelligence", but that doesn't make the manifestations of "intelligence".
The good news is that, so far, everyone that has contributed to this discussion has been "adults in the room".; knock on wood. Ever attend a dinner party where you are engaging someone at an intellectual level on a fascinating subject but then chaos breaks out because someone decided to bring their 10 year old twin boys who are wrestling under the tables? I have. Better for such children to play with other children so the adults can engage with one another.
Back to the subject. If an artificial sweetner is a sweetner; If an artificial hip is a hip; If an artificial smile is a smile; If artificial turf is turf; And if artificial insemination is insemination; Then, I claim artificial intelligence is intelligence, and this form of intelligence is getting stronger by the year. We can only guess at what has already been developed behind those thick 3 inch doors; the kind where you need to swipe your badge to get in.
To me this is reminicient of when some folk were convinced that the earth is at the center of the solar system; they were wrong.
Or "humans are the only creatures that can communicate"; wrong.
Or "humans are the only creatures that can fashion tools"; wrong again.
Note that intelligence is not equivalent to awareness, likewise intelligence is not consciousness. This may be the source of our differing views.
I've given you my definition of "create". Care to give me your definition of "intelligence"?
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
But AI is still growing. Who can predict how fast and how far? Will it someday write a symphony as creative as the masters and not be obviously derivative?
I guess we have to 'stay tuned' to find out.
Good point. If I put my romantic, poetic, musical and perhaps mystical hat on, I hope that an AI will never create a symphony as good as Beethoven or any other master. I revere these brilliant musical geniuses; I can't see myself revering an AI bot.
But when I put my technocrat/engineering hat on; then logic, cognitive reasoning, an understanding of history and a quest for truth prevent me from putting my head in the sand and adopting a wishful thinking stance. Clear-eyed I must be.
Herein is the quandry. I suppose this is one price I pay for being a thinking, pondering human . . . or am I really a bot ? I wonder if anyone else has this split-thinking going on.
[Actually, I can't be a bot, a bot would play much better bass ]
It's been said that Shakespeare is regarded as a master of human emotion. I wonder what he and Einstein would have to say on this subject.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
If I put my romantic, poetic, musical and perhaps mystical hat on, I hope that an AI will never create a symphony as good as Beethoven or any other master. I revere these brilliant musical geniuses; I can't see myself revering an AI bot.
Did you know Ludwig very well?
You need to be able to separate the dancer rom the dance. Many people don't know what that means so I will explain.
You can go to a dance performance and it can be a sloppy dance routine, but the dancer performs it well.
You can go to see a band and they do a horrible original song, but the singer performs it will.
The bad song doesn't mean it's a bad singer.
That works the other way too. You never met Beethoven. Maybe he was a gigantic [*****]. That doesn't take away from his creation.
So what you should REALLY "revere" is his music. If an AI composing robot can create music of a caliber as the great composers, why doesn't it matter to you that bits of the master's phrasing, chord structure and pacing are referenced in creating a new piece of music?
You are FAR too hung up on a concept that I have yet to see you display a true definition or understanding of. If there is such a thing as artificial intelligence, doesn't logic say that there should also be artificial stupidity, (See: chatGPT)?
Look at a packet of lemonade mix. Everything on that packet is artificial flavoring, artificial sweetener... Yet look at a can of Lemon Pledge. It says "Contains real lemon."
So if AI can give a generation of people who loved Sinatra's work, and I am speaking of his work, not of the man, why deny those people more work that sounds exactly like SInatra despite him having died 25 years ago? You really want to get into some conversation about royalties due to a dead guy when no one cent of it would have gone to you? Why not just enjoy artificially created art rather than lament not having it available anymore?
I don't know what area of engineering you work in, but I see very little structural or electrical engineering done on a drawing board anymore. Only people approaching 100 years of age who have never accepted computers continue to hate them. I will never forget the day in 2002 when a managing partner at a law firm, then 73 years old, who called me on "new computer day" and told me "You have 5 minutes to get this appliance from hell off my desk." I was tempted to ask, though I wisely declined to do so, "So where do you park your horse and buggy anyway?"
Embrace technology and the possibility it offers rather than resist it. And keep using BIAB, which is essentially an AI composition tool.
Care to give me your definition of "intelligence"?
Sure - "awareness" is a key element. There are many useful behaviors that have utility that don't necessarily demonstrate intelligence.
For example, my cat Nigel will perches on the edge of the litter box and poops onto the mat outside the box. He'll then paw some of the kitty litter into a pile, and leave the box.
He's clearly got some awareness of what's happening, but it's obviously more instinctual than intelligent.
Similarly, neural networks are trained to be able to solve specific problems in specific ways. Vision processing reduces the problem space down to pixels, while text reduces the problem space to words. Each requires a specific architecture, and is custom designed to work in the problem domain.
This is to some degree modeled after what designers of neural networks have found in nature. For example, there's a lot of processing that takes place in the eye before the information is passed onto the brain. And it's not simply a one-way trip - there's a lot of interaction between the layers.
But despite all this useful activity taking place - by my definition - the eye is not "aware".
Programs like ChatGPT can be trained to manipulate information, but they have no "awareness" of what that information is.
People used to thing that if a computer could play chess, it would then be artificially intelligent. There's an embedded assumption here: something must have intelligence to play chess.
But it turns out that you can create a computer program capable of playing chess without there being any artificial intelligence involved.
Or consider Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
"Sufficiently advanced technology" is not the same as magic, it's just "indistinguishable" from magic.
Similarly, you can have a program capable of passing the Turing test, but that doesn't mean it's artificially "intelligent", merely that it can pass the Turning test.
I have a fairly solid understanding of how neural networks work. They are neither intelligent nor creative - their works are only derivative.
That's not to say that these systems aren't useful. But consider if you'd written a program to discover all the prime numbers between 1 and n. It's tedious work, but fairly easy to implement. The resulting system would be a useful tool for performing a task, but it's got no understanding of what it's doing. It's merely running an algorithm.
Similarly, AI tools are useful in performing much more complex work, but although they are much more sophisticated, they are still no more "intelligent" than a program that lists prime numbers.
I'll grant that my definition of "intelligence" is limited to my personal experience of intelligence. I'll also grant that I don't really know how my mind actually works, or if these mental models are just illusions.
On the other hand, simply because tools are useful and allow me to do things I couldn't do without them doesn't mean I'm willing to consider them partners in the work. The idea of granting a program co-ownership of a Nobel Peace Prize seems to me a fundamental misunderstanding of the current state of AI, granting it attributes that don't yet exist.
Intelligence is a hard nut to crack, and I don't think we're anywhere near a good understanding yet. Knowing what the current AI programs can't do helps us understand what we don't know about intelligence.
Unfortunately it didn't answer the question of what you think intelligence is. You provided several dots to connect but I'd rather not connect them and end up making inaccurate assumptions.
You did provide some interesting statements and examples, some of which I agree and others I don't. But we need a crisp working definition of intelligence to locate where our views diverge.
Maybe this will help. Here is my crisp definition for "create":
Create: To produce, reveal or give rise to something unique or sufficiently dissimilar from that which came before. To bring into being or awareness a novel thing, idea or relationship which did not exist prior. “Create” and “discover” can be very close cousins.
I'd request a similarly crisp 1, 2 or 3 sentence definition of what intelligence is from your perspective; not what it isn't, but what it is. Think of the form used by Merriam Webster or other but don't necessarily copy from them unless that is what you believe.
This is important because I believe you have an overly restrictive idea of what intelligence is, but I can't be sure until you articulate [crisply] what that idea is.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
Create: To produce, reveal or give rise to something unique or sufficiently dissimilar from that which came before. To bring into being or awareness a novel thing, idea or relationship which did not exist prior. “Create” and “discover” can be very close cousins.
Interesting. Noting that there are only 12 notes (see what I did there?), the case could be made that everything since the people from the Paleolithic Period made tones through bone flutes has been derivative. If Grog the Caveman arranged those notes in a different pattern than what he had heard before, he "created". Now some mathematician could probably calculate the number of combinations of those 12 tones and come up with a huge but finite number. (Google says that number is 479,001,600.) Constrained by that, there could only be 479,001,600 completely unique songs that are not copied yet created, even if somewhat derivative. Is there a way that AI can squeeze out more than that finite number of combinations? Logic would say no. To follow that thought to conclusion, we have to ask if to this point in time there have been more than, less than, or exactly 479,001,600 songs written.
And does it matter is real intelligence (humans) or artificial intelligence (computer models) wrote them? Unless an AI model can be programmed to add inflection, that music that lacked those dynamics that a human performer can add, (I don't know if that is possible) that music would lack character and feeling.
I love this topic! I hope Frank would love it too.
Remember, somebody (Louis Washkansky) was the first human to receive another human's heart and a December day in 1963. That man lived 18 days and did NOT die from a problem with the heart, but from a lung infection and pneumonia. Remember that we now have artificial hearts that act as a bridge while a patient waits for a donor heart. If there can exist an artificial heart, why not "artificial" music?
Remember, in the early days of heart transplants 56 years ago, thinking, sane people wondered if putting a female heart into a male body would result in that man becoming a woman. (Insert your own Bruce Jenner joke here.) There is no evolution in any field without exploration of possibility. If somebody can create a "new' Sinatra song, bring it on. And Beatles fans who can't accept that John Lennon is dead can delude themselves into thinking that Now And Then is really a Beatles song. I didn't like "the song" itself, but I loved the concept and technology that allowed it to be created.
So use AI to bring back Frank, bring back Freddy, bring back John Entwistle, being back Buddy Rich, hell, go back to 1791 and bring back Mozart. Just do it well.
Maybe this will help. Here is my crisp definition for "create":
Create: To produce, reveal or give rise to something unique or sufficiently dissimilar from that which came before. To bring into being or awareness a novel thing, idea or relationship which did not exist prior. “Create” and “discover” can be very close cousins.
For the purposes of AI, I consider this to be an insufficiently "crisp" definition, because it lacks intent.
For example, and earthquake can "create" chaos, a flood can "create" ruin, and a river can "create" a canyon.
Yet none of these forces have intent to create any of those things.
Similarly, AI doesn't have the intent to "create" art - it is the result of running an algorithm. The intent was put there by the creator of the AI. The only way that the AI "recognizes" that it's created art is by applying criteria given though training (again, error minimization). But that criteria didn't come from the AI, it came from the people who chose the training data.
Replace the training data with randomly generated values, and the neural network will generate garbage. The program can't discern the difference, but the person monitoring the program will notice that it can't seem to bring the error term down. (It's hard to predict what something should be when the data is random).
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This is important because I believe you have an overly restrictive idea of what intelligence is, but I can't be sure until you articulate [crisply] what that idea is.
I think you can safely believe I've got an overly restrictive idea of what intelligence is.
I've already given a key criteria for intelligence. That's not a negative definition, but it's also not a complete definition.
Intelligence isn't a single thing. I'll go back to the chess analogy. At one point, people thought only intelligent things could play chess. There are plenty of elements of the game that require intelligence. But it turned out that playing chess could be encoded into an algorithm. But having computers that could play chess did little to advance AI, other than make computer scientists realize the problem was much more difficult than they thought.
The ability for a tool to "create" useful outputs is a credit not to the tool, but the developer and the data. You're no doubt familiar with Musikalisches Würfelspiel, where music is composed with a lookup table and dice. Would you say the people rolling dice "created" music, and give co-authorship to the lookup tables? (Actually, it's very much like BiaB, but that's a different tangent).
I've been following AI for long enough remember SHRDLU, Shakey the Robot, and ELIZA. Remember when Prolog was going to take over the world? Makes me feel old.
AI has come a long way since then, but no amount of semantics is going to convince me that neural networks are intelligent. There's just too much that's invisibly supplied by people.
Ooh Whee you better believe I am going to read up on that and experiment with it.
Much like the time I got a paint by number kit with 40 colors and I threw them all into a bag, then made slips of paper 1 thru 40 and then picked a number slip and then a paint color and said "Okay. Now paint with the new numbers." The painting looked ridiculous but it hung on my office wall for like 3 years. With the orange grass and trees many shades of yellow, blue and red. That's just the kind of weirdness that I do, so dice deciding musical things is right up my alley.
Eddie, I would imagine some of those 479 million and change songs are probably awful!! There is a reason there are standards, standard chord progressions etc. Some things work really well and are pleasing to a large number of listeners while some are not. I am stating the obvious, of course. AI is only as good as the programmer and what they give it to "learn". Garbage in, garbage out still applies.
My wife asked if I had seen the dog bowl. I told her I didn't even know he could.
I've already given a key criteria for intelligence. That's not a negative definition, but it's also not a complete definition.
So what I'm observing is that despite the very real fact that you are unable to define "intelligence" you somehow can claim whether or not something is intelligent. I find this quite baffling. This is no different if I were to claim whether or not that object is a pop-up toaster but when pressed to define what a pop-up toaster is I throw up up my hands and say "I don't know !"
Vocabulary terms are the "atoms" of logic, and logical ideas are the "molecules" of science, and scientific principles and observations give rise to the "compounds" of truth. Without an agreed upon vocabulary you're stuck at the logic-less state. Key criterias are far less valuable than crisp definitions. With observations, this is how we know the earth isn't the center of the solar system. We crisply define earth, we crisply define center and we crisply define solar system.
Several years ago I was asked to write a book review for the National Science Foundation or some Academy of Science; I frankly don't remember (not important). But the book was titled "Writing in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics" by Meier and Rishel; the book was written to help college-level mathematics professors build better curicula for their students. I wrote a very positive review and the upshot of the book might best be summarized by their words.
"Writing requires thinking; and thinking is what we, as teachers want to encourage. In what follows, we hope to convice you that to get students to absorb mathematics, or any other subject, better, you need to have them think about, then write about that subject".
Later in the book, they imply that if you can't describe (in writing) the complex ideas associated with multivariate calculus or differential equations in a way that your high school educated grand mother can understand, then you really don't understand the material. Clearly, vocabulary is "atomic" in this process. This little paperback was an enjoyable read all those years ago and has paid me dividends throughout my career and beyond. If you can't articulate it, you don't understand it.
You and I threw around some BIG terms like create and intelligence; and to ensure we could effectively communicate I met you halfway and gave my definition for create. When asked to define "intelligence" you are unable to. As we say in aerospace "We are experiencing a massive flame-out"; meaning it's time to pop the canopy and eject.
But before we end this and FWIW, since my college days I 've been facinated by psychology, brain science, and complex systems. During my career I trained multi-layer ANNs (artificial neural networks) and began studying emergent properties, cellula automata and complex adaptive systems. I am now interested in today's rendition(s) of AI, animal psychology, music and music therapy. I'm also interested in how all of these subjects interact on various continuums with what we call morals and ethics and what the near to medium term future might look like in these fields. As such, I was hoping that someone here with overlapping interests might want to explore these subjects on a semi-formal basis.
Originally Posted by dcuny
AI has come a long way since then, but no amount of semantics is going to convince me that neural networks are intelligent. There's just too much that's invisibly supplied by people.
This is the second problem I have. Nothing can convince you. Not semantics, not logic, not truth. A calcified brittle-bone approach is not how good exploration is done, neither how good science is done. The fields of thermodynamics or structural mechanics for example are centuries old and can be considered mature. AI on the other hand is far from mature and might even be considered infantile. At this time, there is little convergence among theorists who have begun to study complex systems as a class. It is not a field in which a crisp and unified theory has already been developed; and I don't expect to see one in the next few years. But if you'd like to take a week, a month or even a year to ponder and articulate what you think intelligence is, I'd be happy to resume this conversation publically or privately. Some may come to this forum to die, I come to this forum to grow
One thing is for sure. In the big scheme of things, your opinon doesn't matter, neither mine. But the work of Sam Altman, Microsoft, Google and other movers and shakers does matter. And I'll be having fun watching and pondering what emerges. We are living in a truly exciting time.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
This is the second problem I have. Nothing can convince you.
Steve, I've given my explanation multiple times of what I consider the difference between intelligent and non-intelligent behavior.
If something cannot explain what it's doing, to me it's not an intelligent behavior. It may have utility, value, and mimic behavior that would require intelligence. But it's not an intelligent behavior, because intelligence knows what it's doing.
I've also explained why I don't consider them knowing what they are doing. That all may change tomorrow, or have already changed and not yet been published.
Sorry that it's not in the form you'd like, but I've also explained why I can't give a definition of intelligence: my understanding of intelligence is evolving. You should have asked me before I knew much about the topic. (Like you, I've been following this since, well... forever).
As you've noted, AI is not mature. We also don't have direct insight into much of how our brains work, and so throughout history, we've used analogies which have proved imperfect, from cogs and gears to switchboards to computer memory banks. The words we use are loaded with archaic implications - even the ones we hope are "crisp".
And while I find all this fascinating, I also find that there are many incomplete songs on my hard drive that I should be working with.
So thanks for the pleasant conversation, but I think I need to finish up some music instead of looking like I'm trying to move goalposts.
I really don't know how to define the point where software becomes Artificial Intelligence.
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Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information; and to retain it as knowledge to be applied to adaptive behaviors within an environment or context.
Which of these does AI need to become the I in AI?
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I'm waiting for AI to become self-aware, and have self-preservation instincts like some sci-fi novels/movies.
When it will fight you in its own way if you try to unplug it.
And also have original ideas that were in no way entered by humans.
Then I'll consider it truly intelligent. Perhaps, not “Artificial” anymore.
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I agree with Eddie here, if you can make another great symphony, or have Sinatra sing a new song, or have Stan Getz interpret Costello's “Almost Blue”, why not? But I do believe that some label should be added so that it gives credit to the AI as well.
Will it be as good as if Getz came back to life and played “Almost Blue”? That's a meaningless question. BTW, Chet Baker did a real nice job of that song
If I like it, I like it, if I don't perhaps someone else will.
Someday, AI might take my job as a musician/entertainer away. But I suspect in my case, old age will do that first, so I'm going to gig as much as I can, when I can, for as long as I can. It's the most fun I can have with my clothes on.
I can't give a definition of intelligence: my understanding of intelligence is evolving. You should have asked me before I knew much about the topic. (Like you, I've been following this since, well... forever).
Got it. I thought you were just being coy in not giving a definition; my thoughts also are still evolving.
This discussion will again play out in the future, here and elsewhere; if not between us, then between others, keep thinking.
Good luck with your songs.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
David Cope wrote a program called EMI, for Experiments in Musical Intelligence. EMI was basically a bunch of specialized pattern matching code written in LISP. Cope created databases of various composer's music that EMI was able to re-constitute into fairly cohesive music that matched the style of the original composer.
For example, here's a rendition of music in the style Vivaldi:
In this article Cope describes turning on EMI, going out for lunch and coming back to 5000 new pieces of music in the style of Bach. So what do you do when you have thousands of pieces of music? He says:
Originally Posted by David Cope
He realised that what made a composer properly understandable, properly "affecting", was in part the fact of mortality. Composers had to die, and the ending made sense of what had gone before. With this in mind, Cope unplugged Emmy six years ago; her work – which he limited to 11,000 chosen pieces, was done. Emmy – housed on an ancient Power Mac 7500 (discontinued in 1996) now sits idle in the corner of his office.
But there I go, putting off working on lyrics again.
Unlike EMI, I can't crank out 5000 pieces of music in a lunchtime.
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Country, & Americana (Sets 483–488):
Our new country & Americana RealTracks deliver a rich collection of acoustic, electric, and roots-inspired styles! We have new country pop (9) with legendary guitarist Brent Mason. There is also a potpourri (14) of bouzouki, guitars, banjo, and more, perfect for adding texture and character to contemporary acoustic arrangements. We’ve added funky country guitar (5) with PG favorite Brent Mason, along with classic pedal steel styles (5) featuring steel great Doug Jernigan. There are more country songwriter styles (8) that provide intimate, rootsy foundations for storytelling and modern Americana writing. Finally, we have “background soloing” acoustic guitar (12) with Brent Mason — simpler, but still very tasty acoustic lines designed to sit beautifully behind vocals or act as a subtle standalone solo part.
And, if you are looking for more, the 2026 49-PAK (for $49) includes an impressive collection of 20 bonus RealTracks, featuring exciting and inspiring additions to add to your RealTracks library. You'll get new country-rhythm guitar styles from PG Music favorites Johnny Hiland and Brent Mason, along with modern-pop grooves that capture today’s radio-ready sound! There are also new indie-folk styles with guitar, bass, 6-string bass used as a high-chording instrument, acoustic guitar, and banjo. Plus, dedicated "cymbal fills" RealDrums provide an added layer that work very well with low-key folky styles with other percussion.
The 2026 49-PAK is loaded with other great new add-ons as well. Learn more about the 2026 49-PAK!
2026 Free Bonus PAK & 49-PAK for Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac®!
With your version 2026 for Mac Pro, MegaPAK, UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, Audiophile Edition or PlusPAK purchase, we'll include a Bonus PAK full of great new Add-ons for FREE! Or upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK for only $49 to receive even more NEW Add-ons including 20 additional RealTracks!
These PAKs are loaded with additional add-ons to supercharge your Band-in-a-Box®!
This Free Bonus PAK includes:
The 2026 RealCombos Booster PAK:
-For Pro customers, this includes 27 new RealTracks and 23 new RealStyles.
-For MegaPAK customers, this includes 25 new RealTracks and 23 new RealStyles.
-For UltraPAK customers, this includes 12 new RealStyles.
MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
MIDI SuperTracks Set 46: Piano & Organ
Instrumental Studies Set 24: Groovin' Blues Soloing
Artist Performance Set 19: Songs with Vocals 9
Playable RealTracks Set 5
RealDrums Stems Set 9: Cool Brushes
SynthMaster Sounds Set 1 (with audio demos)
iOS Android Band-in-a-Box® App
Looking for more great add-ons, then upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK for just $49 and you'll get:
20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums with 20 RealStyle.
FLAC Files (lossless audio files) for the 20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums
MIDI Styles Set 93: Look Ma! More MIDI 16: SynthMaster
MIDI SuperTracks Set 47: More SynthMaster
Instrumental Studies 25 - Soul Jazz Guitar Soloing
Artist Performance Set 20: Songs with Vocals 10
RealDrums Stems Set 10: Groovin' Sticks
SynthMaster Sounds & Styles Set 2 (sounds & styles with audio demos)
XPro & Xtra Styles PAK Sets On Sale Now - Until May 15, 2026!
All of our XPro Styles PAKs and Xtra Styles PAKs are on sale until May 15th, 2026!
It's the perfect time to expand your Band-in-a-Box® style library with XPro and Xtra Styles PAKs. These additional styles for Band-in-a-Box® offer a wide range of genres designed to fit seamlessly into your projects. Each style is professionally arranged and mixed, helping enhance your songs while saving you time.
What are XPro Styles and Xtra Styles PAKs?
XPro Styles PAKs are styles that work with any version (Pro, MegaPAK, UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition) of Band-in-a-Box® 2025 (or higher). XPro Styles PAKS 1-10 includes 1,000 styles!
Xtra Styles PAKs are styles that work with the UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition of Band-in-a-Box® 2025 (or higher). Xtra Styles PAKs 1-21 includes 3,700 styles (and 35 MIDI styles)!
The XPro & Xtra Styles PAKs are not included in any Band-in-a-Box® package.
The XPro Styles PAKs 1-10 are available for only $29 ea (reg. $49 ea), or get them all in the XPro Styles PAK Bundle for only $149 (reg. $299)! Listen to demos and order now! For Mac or for Windows.
The Xtra Styles PAKs 1-21 are available for only $29 ea (reg. $49 ea), or get them all in the Xtra Styles PAK Bundle for only $199 (reg. $349)! Listen to demos and order now! For Mac or for Windows.
Note: XPro Styles PAKs require Band-in-a-Box® 2025 or higher and are compatible with ANY package, including the Pro, MegaPAK, UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, and Audiophile Edition.
The Xtra Styles require the UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition of Band-in-a-Box®. (Xtra Styles PAK 19 requires the 2025 or higher UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition. They will not work with the Pro or MegaPAK version as they require the RealTracks included in the UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition.
Supercharge your Band-in-a-Box today with XPro Styles PAKs and Xtra Styles PAK Sets!
One of our representatives will be happy to help you over the phone. Our hours of operation are from
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One of our representatives will be happy to help you on our Live Chat or by email. Our hours of operation are from
6:00AM to 6:00PM PST (GMT -8) Monday thru Friday; 8:00AM to 4:00PM PST (GMT -8) Saturday; Closed Sunday.
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