HI Peter, nice to hear from you...:-)

The way I understand (and use) your program is either as a pedagogical tool, or as a live performance tool. In case of a studio recording, I would definitely hire musicians... because there's no replacement for the real thing...

As a teaching tool, BIAB is great, I recommend it to all my students who want to learn to improvise. But then, I also recommend them to get the Aebersold's books.

As a live performance tool... well, i was just hoping that, since the last time I bought the program, several versions back, it would have become more developed and useful by itself. AND it would work on a mac...

I am also using it in a workflow that is more of a nightmare... and every time I do a new piece I have to go through my notes to see how to do it. Here it is:
- I start in BIAB, entering the chords, generating an accompaniment and saving the song as a MIDI file.
- I import it in Logic, and "fix" things like stops, breaks, rhythmical figures and crash cymbals that sometimes seem to be missing after a drummer's fill.
- I scan the lead sheet (i need music in front of me... most of the time)
- I put it all together in a program called MidiMaestro, which has 2 crucial features: (1) it allows me to set up unlimited "vamps", which are choruses of improvisation- to get out of them and finish the piece I have to press a button, and, (2) it has a karaoke function which allows for a picture background- this feature allows me to load my music sheet and see it while the sequencer is running.
- unfortunately, this program lacks some advanced song tagging features- composer, singer, style, etc,then a search, setting up sets of songs, and so on. So I had to program myself such a database in FileMaker, and then hook it up to the sequencer program by means of sending events to open MIDI files.
- so the next step for me is to create a record in my database with the song, and enter all the information I need about it. Then, maybe assign it to one or several sets and give it an order number.

I was hoping to be able to do all this with just one program- yours, and i was hoping to do it from the Mac partition, in a nice and elegant design. In stead, I get annoyed by the same small things that I was annoyed 5 years ago- like the chords window that wouldn't scroll one row at a time so I wouldn't be able to copy chords starting in a page and ending in the next... and, every time i open any preferences dialog I sigh...

What do you think? Can Band In A Box become the one program "to rule them all"?... I really wish so.

thanks
Alex