PREVIOUSLY...

The previous version of Band-In-A-Box was a low-cost, yet sophisticated, auto-accompaniment program for the PC, Macintosh and Atari ST: you entered chords into bars of a song, then choose a performance style, and the program would generate a Format 1 MIDI File consisting of drums, bass and piano parts on separate tracks — or alternatively, it would play the song out via MIDI. Because the styles were fixed, post-processing with a sequencer was almost essential to avoid the familiar auto-accompaniment feel, and the fixed tempo meant that using Band-In-A-Box simply as a way of providing three parts whilst you played the melody line on top resulted in rather lifeless music. The update to version 4.1 changes all this, and provides a more flexible accompanist, as well as a fascinating compositional tool.

NEW VERSION

Version 4.1 gives you fine control over the song by allowing modifications for each bar to style, tempo and other important parameters, which improves the basic 'feel' of the generated parts quite considerably. The text-based user interface still shows the program's PC ancestry, but there are many keyboard short-cuts which can be exploited by the experienced user. Of the three versions, that for the Macintosh has perhaps the most graphical interface, followed by that for the Atari — but remember that complex graphical user interfaces cost money to develop, and Band-In-A-Box is low-cost software.

The PC version requires an MPU-401 compatible MIDI interface, whilst the Mac version will work with any of the Mac MIDI interfaces. The ST version uses the built-in MIDI interface, and is now also compatible with the new Ataris: the STE and the TT. I tested the ST version 4.1 of the program on 1040STs with both old and new operating systems — V1.0 (old STs) and V1.4 (similar to the V1.6 found in STEs) — with no problems. There is a special cut-down version included in the package for 520 STs.

I found that MIDI Files could be transferred to my RealTime sequencer easily, although the MIDI channels of the parts were reset to the Band-In-A-Box track defaults, not to how I had set it up to suit my equipment.

STYLEMAKER

The Stylemaker, which allows you to define your own styles by creating a set of patterns, forms almost a separate program. You can't mix preset and user defined styles in a song, but the complexity available within a user style means that you don't really need to. There are only two screens within the Stylemaker section: one displays the patterns which have been recorded, and their weights (how likely Band-In-A-Box is to choose a pattern); and the drum grid, which has the usual vertical instrumentation axis and horizontal time axis. There is plenty of room to place patterns — there are 30 empty spaces for each of the A/B and fill variations of the drum patterns, and a further 15 fills.

For the piano and bass parts, you can create up to 30 A/B patterns in each of four categories — 8, 4, 2 and 1-note patterns, see below for explanation — and 15 ending patterns. There is an overall maximum limit of 150 patterns.

The piano and bass patterns are entered via an external MIDI keyboard. Regardless of what time signature and key the pattern will later be changed to, the 'template' that you play in is in 4/4, and notes will be transposed on the basis that you were playing along to a C7 chord. Recording is easy — you press 'R', and start playing, using C3 or C2 (piano or bass mode respectively) as the root or home location for the part.

In drum pattern recording mode, you use the cursor keys to move around the screen, and use the Z, X, C, V, B, N, M, comma, point, and oblique keys on the computer's QWERTY keyboard to define the velocity of a drum event. There are 18 different drum tracks, or instruments, available for use, which is probably enough for even the busiest latin rhythm, although you are limited to a maximum 16th note resolution (12th note for triplets).

STYLE CONTROLS

Weighting and masking are the most important controls for determining the behaviour of the song generation. Weighting lets you choose how often a particular pattern will be used. The piano and bass patterns are subdivided by note lengths — the 8, 4, 2, and 1-note types referred to above. Different patterns will be used at different points in a song, depending on how many 4/4 quarter note beats remain until the next chord change (you can enter chords at up to four per bar, or leave bars empty, in which case the last chord holds sway), hence the names of these pattern types. If Band-In-A-Box finds that an odd number of beats remain until the next chord — say, five, perhaps — then the odd interval will be split into chunks of 1, 2, 4 and 8 beats, in order to assign patterns. This system means that you can assign different patterns to specific gaps, perhaps limiting busy bass lines to long gaps, or choppy piano parts to short gaps. Masking provides another means of determining when a pattern plays: on odd or even bars, before or after a fill, and so on, and there are more complex masks for use with particular chords — so you can set patterns to play only with certain types of chords, or even specific triads. Tempo masks let you fix which patterns will be chosen at slow or fast tempos, which is especially useful for drum patterns.

The careful use of pattern weighting, masking, and the automatic piano embellishment and walking bass options, gives great scope for customisation. It is really just a question of thinking about what you would do in a given musical context, and entering it into the program — so if you want to have a couple of quick stab chords just before a drum fill, so be it!

You save and load user styles from disk, one at a time — but remember how much can be in a single user style. The first PG Music Styles Disk contains 25 examples of styles (and songs that use them) which you can use on your own chord progressions, but which you can also edit to your preferences, or even pull apart to get some ideas about how to program styles. A future Style Disk will contain versions of the preset styles as user styles, so that you can alter them as well.

It requires careful reading of the manual and a good deal of experimentation to learn how to use Stylemaker, but it is well worth it, especially if you have used the preset styles and thought that you would do things differently (or better).

ROUGHING IT OUT

One of the primary uses for a program such as this is for quickly roughing out song ideas — you just enter the chords and then see how the chords, cadencing and verse/chorus structure work together in the song. Tweaking a song's chords and overall structure is much easier on Band-In-A-Box's bar grid than in most sequencers, and when you have the feel of the piece right, you can import it into your favourite sequencer and use it in much the same way as a guide track in conventional multitrack recording.

The facility to define your own styles takes Band-In-A-Box from filling an accompanist role to being much more of a compositional aid. The user-defined styles can be very complex and flexible, to such an extent that if you are prepared to put in the time to learn how to exploit Stylemaker, you could end up with a powerful creative tool which is personalised to you alone.

Given that it provides you with a backing band that actually does what you want, Band-In-A-Box must be a good investment. The example chord progression for Stevie Wonder's 'You Are The Sunshine Of My Life' in the manual shows the power of the program — the song as rendered by Band-In-A-Box feels so idiomatically correct that I defy anyone to listen to it and and not want to whistle along or play the tune on top!

FURTHER INFORMATION

Band-In-A-Box £45 inc VAT.
Band-In-A-Box with Fakebook Disks (pre-recorded songs) £69 inc VAT

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