Band in a Box 2008

[jpfeifer]

Hi Everyone,

I've been using Band-in-a-Box for quite a while as a practice tool. In case you've never heard of this software, it's a PC application that creates background music tracks based on a set of canned song styles. It allows you to specify the song key, tempo, song style, and the basic chord changes. Then it goes off and creates a basic accompaniment with bass, drums, keyboard, and other parts if you like.

The initial version relied on midi instruments to get it's sounds, which were fine for using as a basic practice tool, but nothing that you would want to use for recording.

However, I just upgraded to Band-in-a-Box 2008 and I'm blown away. This new version has a feature called RealDrums where it replaces the General Midi drums with digitally-sampled drum parts in various styles. It's really good for blues, jazz, and basic rock stuff. It's good enough now where I would use these tracks for real recordings.

But, as a practice tool this program is still worth the $. It's one of the best ways to practice soloing since you can set the style and tempo to anything you want along with your own chord progressions.

If you don't already have this software, I'd highly reccomend it if you're looking for a good practicing tool.
You can find it here:
http://www.band-in-a-box.com/

-- Jim

[Robert****]

Thanks Jim, I have tried earlier version of it and I found it to be a great practicing tool.

[Algonquin]

Sounds awesome Jim. Thanks for the recommendation, it looks like a very useful learning tool.

Cheers,
David

[SuperSwede]

Thanks for the recommendation.. I have slightly older version which I use quite a lot. The sounds on the mac version has been alright for a couple of versions due to the quicktime software synth (sounds from Roland) but the drums is not exactly up to par with modern synths.

[jpfeifer]

If you have one of the older versions (as I had) you can upgrade to the 2008 version for a pretty cheap price (about $59). They also have an electronic download of the upgrade software so you can get it right away and not have to pay for shipping.

Also, I forgot to mention that it includes another piece called RealTracks which is like the RealDrums but it includes things like Steel Guitar, Sax and other parts to drop into your songs. Cool.

The RealDrums are not available for every style, but I tried it last night for some Blues and Jazz styles (including Latin stuff) and it was just incredible, it's like playing with a real band. I have a bunch of practice tunes that I've put together with it to use for playing through changes and it's really fun now with the more authentic sounding drum parts. They offer more styles for an additional price and I'm thinking about picking those up too since I use this application so much for basic practicing.

It also has a feature to use soft-synths now so you don't need to have it connected to a midi soundmodule as long as you have a General Midi soft-synth on your computer.

-- Jim

[SuperSwede]

Jim, I would love to hear some sweet BIAB 2008 jazz along with your Variax