Click on your PG Music link this time of year and hope you see a new year showing? You know the one that says Band-In-Box (20XX). Or should I say the All-New Band-in-a-Box (20XX)?
I'm so thankful that I found out about this program back when I did. I was just Googling anything to help me find anything that would help me make music. Unlike a lot of you people that purchase this. I'm not a musician at all. Meaning I can't read or write or understand musical theories. I just knew I loved music and Particularly Jazz music and especially Jazz guitar music.
Could I pick a harder element in music to try to learn? Jazz, at least in my mind is so hard to learn because of the complexities of chords and such. I know that when I hear a Jazz guitar playing a wonderfully crafted tune that it just melts my affairs away that I need to learn how to make this happen.BIAB was the answer. Having said that. I'm no closer to being Jazz Musician than when I first bought this program. Though no fault of the makers of this great piece of software. You know the routine, it's called life and it gets in the way whenever it's got the opportunity especially when it's something enjoyable.
But, that doesn't stop detracting me from trying to improve and without BIAB I would still be googling something to make me a better musician and coming up empty.
Don't think that there is not a lot of other programs out there claiming to do the same as BIAB does because there are many. Some work a lot don't. The ones that do work are very complicated, Again from my point of view they are. Others just suck and a promise of something that it cannot deliver.
The other ones I've bought to help me in this process and none in any particular order are and I'm willing to bet a lot of you other have done the same.
1) Synfire Express-Haven't made the complete jump to pro yet. I don't know if they had a cyber event this year or not. If they did I forgot to check. Maybe next year or I'll just take the plunge anyway. In my opinion a very good piece of software. It's just uber complicated to understand. I personally think their a little jealous of BIAB because in their links to other resources they don't even mention BIAB.
2) This program did make their list and that's Improviser. Maybe the fact that it's free made them pick this. I have used it a few times with no great results.
3)RapidComposer. Used it a few times again no great results. I just don't understand how it works. I don't think it's intuitive at all.
4)I've bought all the Professional Notation products, Sebelius and Finale. Both have their good and bad. But, since I cannot really read or write music my assessment means nothing. To be honest I bought both hoping there would be a plug-in in either program that would for argument's sake just make a melody out of thin air and then I could adjust it. To me and again only my opinion. If BIAB notation editing were as simple as either one of the other two it would jump leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. BIAB note edits again my opinion just are not that great. No offense.
That's it for other programs.
Now my fantasy BIAB feature would be that every single note, nuance, noise and whatever else you can think of would be integrated into the real tracks. Meaning that if you wrote a note the real track would play it note for note and also express the feeling you were trying to convey. I know that's impossible and that with midi you can achieve such results with a lot of tweaking. Haven't figured how to do to that yet either. Ok I've rambled on long enough.