Also, unifying Realdrums, Realtracks, MIDI supertracks, and MIDI tracks on one main window, would greatly simplify the program usability, specially for new users. This is one of the most difficult points to understand for newcomers, at least in my experience.

One small thing that hinders me is not being able to see all the options on one screen, when space should have been sufficient to do so. This could involve things such as MORE or OPTIONS in dialog boxes. In other words, I like to be able to see all my alternatives. Over the years, I've had to periodically visit every dialog and try out all the buttons, only to discover something I didn't know was there or rediscover something I had forgotten about because it was always out of sight.

Examples:

Options, Preferences, Notation, MORE

.MID button, OPTIONS/SET RANGE

Soloist, MORE (and finding that button requires some hunting)

Pet peeve:

To activate MIDI Chord Detection requires several operations. When you are working on a transcription, you want to be able to get to this fantastic tool quickly.

Window, MIDI Chord Detection, MIDI Chord Detection

Why twice?

I would like a hot key combo for this, too, and/or a button.

Please do not forget the up/down key volume control and left/right panning request in another thread

This may be a bit radical but in my opinion the name Band In A Box makes it sound like a child's toy. Not only that, the interface also looks a bit that way too.

As a new user I find the options all very confusing and hard to find. I would also like to see more consistency between BiaB and RB, especially regarding the options and layout.

Ideally the two programs should be combined into one. They must share a lot of functionality already? That would be a great excuse for renaming!

I also agree with a comment on the other thread about looking at other DAWs (Cubase, Sonar, etc.) and bringing the interfaces a more cool, modern look.

BiaB does nearly everything I need or might need in the future so there's very little I'd like to see changed. However, there is one thing that would potentially make BiaB more flexible to users and that is the ability to launch unlimited apps from within the UI. Not only that but launch them with command line parameters that the user can select from a list.

Examples would be the current song title, tempo, style, key etc. This way programmers, like me for example, would be able to write useful tools to work with BiaB.

Larger amounts of data could be transfered via the clipboard. Examples like the song memo.

Here's what Delphi uses to configure a 3rd party apps launcher.





Note: the params edit should have a dropdown list of params available to the developer and some clipboard options would be useful too.

If adopted this web site could use a place to host 3rd party tools for others to download.

Just a OT comment I'm going to throw in here. I can't help having the feeling that all these ideas are merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Most of us here are over 50 and a lot are over 60. I will occasionally spend a Saturday surfing youtube and watching demos of other software. Absolutely NONE of those demos involve anything that any of us here would call real music. The stuff I hear has no traditional structure to it, no verse, bridge, solo section, tag ending, etc. It's all dubstep, techno, hiphop and beats, loops, beats, loops and more beats and loops. It's all done by twenty somethings. A lot of it is very creative and I would even call some of it "good" but I can't relate to it at all and neither can any of us here I suspect. Example, I must have watched parts of 50 demo's for Ableton Live. Amazing software especially when used with the Akai controller that costs $600. Not one of those involved a real song we're used to and it's not even close. What these kids can do is really impressive but again with all my musical experience if someone gave me that setup and asked me to create something I would have no clue where to begin. My musical taste and experience won't tell me if what I did is hip to the young crowd or not. I strongly suspect they would say go back to your jazz grandpa. Exactly what we said or thought when our parents would talk about how the big bands are the real deal and this new stuff is crap.

10-15 years from now none or few of us are going to be doing this any more and what's the future of PG Music then? For Biab to have any relevance to the kinds of stuff these twenty somethings are doing now would require such a radical change of direction we would not recognize it and certainly are not qualified to even comment on it much less offer suggestions.

What we're talking about now is fine for the next year or so but what about later? I sincerely hope Peter has brought in a few young folks who know this stuff and they're already running some experiments with it.

You want to talk about having several versions of Biab? This would be exactly it. One setup for us old farts and a completely different one for young people if that's even possible without infringing on other software.

Bob

multiple chord sheets arranged on tabs, as in EXCEL

see thread:
http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=356412&an=0&page=0#Post356412

This idea would be best suited to ReaLBand, but it could also be used in BIAB if each instrument could be directed to its own chord sheet. That way, all instruments could use the same chords, as it is now... or some of them could be driven by sparser or busier chords

This is for both the main and the other screens.

I would like to either have the fonts changed or the ability to change fonts on the various messages and menus. For example the font for category in the style menu is one of them that is almost impossible to read on a high-resolution monitor. As are some of the message windows on the main screen.



They are actually a little smaller than these.

I simple way to just copy and paste lyrics into the large scrolling window. For us with hundreds of songs who play live gigs it is just too cumbersome to add note lyrics for all of these tunes.

Thanks,

Regarding the manual.I find it hard to read, I recently looked up repeats and got bogged down, subjectively I tend to avoid using it. I am not saying its not accurate, it is, I just get gummmed up in it easily, but then I am not technical by nature. Just IMO

However there are so many other ways to get excellent support, the videos, this forum...PG help all great.

I would like to suggest that the "Vary style in Middle Choruses" checkbox in the Song Settings dialog be unchecked by default, or else I would not know if the song is playing substyle A (used for what we call "verses" in pop music) B (for the "chorus" in pop music), C (for the "intro") or D (for the bridge or solo/interlude) and also I would add a fifth substyle, substyle E (for the ending bars which I would refer as the "outro" in pop music, more often than not ending with a fadeout)
I would also like to suggest that from version 2013 on, the program be shipped in Blu-ray format since DVD is way outdated, and that is be made console compatible, you know, so everyone who owns a gaming console can also make music with your program.
(The Blu-ray Disc format suggestion lies on the grounds that, as the program is bigger than it was before with the addition of MIDI SuperTrax and other new features, it would take multiple DVDs to install everything, compared to, say, 4 or 5 Blu-ray Discs, which each hold about 25GB single-layer or 50GB dual-layer.)
I would also ask that you expand the program to more than 255 bars/measures, because, for example, I made a mix of High School Musical 1 & 2 songs ("Start of Something New" and "Breaking Free" from HSM and "You are the music in me" from HSM 2) and the total number of bars/measures turned out to be 268, which is far more than Band-in-a-Box can currently handle (255)

It would be really nice if the VSTs window would stay where I put it on my second monitor. Whenever I put it on the second monitor it jumps back to the main monitor if I change the current VST. It's a real pain to have to constantly put it back where I want it while I'm trying to get the VSTs set up.

In addition, it would be nice if the location were remembered between sessions although this is much less important to me.

Could be that I'm missing it, in which case there's a documentation / helper deficiency.

But I'm a 50's guy learning jazz guitar and am very glad I bought BIAB. It is SOOOOO much better for mastering tempo and pulse and learning to do that to the flow of other instruments than learning with a metronome. What I do (right and wrong) is obvious immediately.

Thus, to the guitar neck display:

1) The default sizes don't fit my Macbook Pro, so I have to type in custom size. Fine, but I have to do that every time I open it up! It should remember my default size.

2) The phyrgean / aeolean positions with the major scales are great, but it would be very nice to be able to pick my own scale (especially for intermediates the simpler scales like pentatonic and blues - in modal if you wish).

Learning a new language in mid-life isn't easy. It's further made more difficult by differing views on how to learn. Most materials deal with chords and scales. But music is chord progressions with overlying scales (if you prefer to think the other way around, fine). You have a nice visual display that could help learn how the chord progressions interact with the scales and melody/harmony.

3) This would be somewhat complicated as an interface, but the current scales are diatonic and don't change with the progression. Fine, but since one can also change the scale to suit the chord, the scale could do that too, since BIAB knows the chord! This very dynamic interface would be useful in the tutoring mode. Right now I do it with chord/progression maps I've made on paper.

Thanks,
GEM