Band In A Box: A Force in the Classroom

BAND-IN-A-BOX® is a powerful music creation tool with potent applications in the classroom. The program lends itself to xperimentation, exploration, and rapid development of musical ideas with near-instantaneous feedback. As an educational tool, it adds new dimensions to instruction at any level.

Along with the ability to instantly generate automatic accompaniments in hundreds of musical styles, Band-in-a-Box provides examples for listening to, viewing, and printing the music. It is also an inexhaustible reserve of improvisation and sight-reading material, with the added ability to create "minus one" arrangements, record live performances, and burn audio CDs.

Over the years many features have been added to the intelligent accompaniment of Band-in-a-Box; Notation, Lyrics, Melody tracks, Harmonization, and a programmable StyleMaker™. The Soloist and the Melodist are two major "intelligent" features. The Soloist can generate professional quality solos over any chord progression. The Melodist creates songs from scratch with chords, melodies, intros, solos, and even an original title!

Now Band-in-a-Box for Windows® records voice or acoustic instruments together with its own MIDI accompaniment. With the inclusion of digital audio recording and editing features, Band-in-a-Box is the quick and easy tool for creating, playing, and recording music in any style - with MIDI, vocals, and acoustic instruments.

Print out single or multiple parts in regular or jazz fonts, or save them as graphic files to insert into print documents, or publish on the web, or to e-mail to a student, teacher or friend. And when you're ready to let others hear your composition, you can "burn" it directly to an audio CD. Convert the completed composition to Windows Media Format for a file that’s "Internet ready."

LEARN NEW STYLES

If you want to teach or learn different styles of music there is no better tool than Band-in-a-Box. Simply type in the chords and choose the style you wish to study. Band-in-a-Box does the rest by automatically creating an arrangement for you. For further study review any part in the notation window, with the on screen piano, guitar fretboard or animated drum window.

IMPROVE IMPROVISATION AND SIGHT READING SKILLS

It's easy to improve improvisation and sight reading skills with Band-in-a-Box - the program delivers an endless supply of material at the press of a button. The Melodist feature will compose a new song, in the style of your choice complete with intro, chords, melody, arrangement and improvisations, all created instantly by the program! Just choose a Melodist style and press [OK] - you can go from nothing to a completed song in less than 1 second! Open the lead sheet window for an immediate display of the notation. With Band-in-a-Box 2005 for Windows you can display as many parts as you like, all at once. Print the parts individually or all together. Learn to interpret melodies in different ways with the new Melody Embellisher in Band-in-a-Box version 2005 for Windows. The Melody Embellisher automatically adds life to existing Melodies by adding slurs, grace notes, vibrato, legato changes, extra notes and more to simulate the varied interpretations that different musicians make when playing a Melody. When enabled, the Embellisher will embellish any melody as it is played. You can then save the file with or without the added embellishments.

Creating solos for existing songs is also a snap with Band-in-a-Box. Use the preset Soloist settings, or choose your own, the Soloist Maker gives access to the advanced settings where you can edit existing profiles or create new Soloists of your own. To view or print the Soloist part in notation, open the Notation window or the lead sheet notation and select the soloist part.

IMPORT ANY MIDI FILES

The Band-in-a-Box "MIDI File Chord Wizard" will read any standard MIDI file, interpret the chords, and write them to the Band-in-a-Box chordsheet. It might be enough to just read the MIDI file into Band-in-a-Box so you can follow the chord symbols and play along. Or you might want to apply more of the powerful features of Band-in-a-Box to the song – play it in a variety styles, add a solo, add harmonies, overdub new parts or add live parts, print out any part, and much more.

CREATE A PRACTICE CD OF YOUR OWN "MINUS ONE" PERFORMANCES

Need to practice somewhere when a computer is not available? Use Band-in-a-Box version 11 for Windows to burn your arrangement to an audio CD and play it on any conventional CD player. The Roland Virtual Sound Canvas bundled with Band-in-a-Box for Windows converts your Band-in-a-Box song to an audio WAV file in seconds. Before burning your "minus one" CD remove the tracks you wish to perform yourself by muting one or more of the Band-in-a-Box tracks. You can decide which tracks get written to the MIDI file and subsequently rendered to the audio file.

RECORD LIVE PERFORMANCES

Recording performances is an excellent way to track students’ progress. Band-in-a-Box has 2 built-in sequencer tracks allowing you to record and edit melodies or solos – or record two takes for comparisons. These tracks are recorded from a MIDI controller connected to Band-in-a-Box by your MIDI driver. You can create a standard MIDI file, convert the file to a wave file and burn it onto a CD, or compress the file for Internet use. With Band-in-a-Box for Windows you can add your own live performance by recording it as a digital audio track. When the recording is complete add effects like reverb and delay to your playing and then have Band-in-a-Box mix it with the MIDI performance. The captured performance can then be burned to an audio CD. A great tool for testing students and building their portfolio.