Do any of you use band in a Box software? I hear it's very popular with jazz musicians....

hectim said:

Wow, haven't really heard that name since i was in 8th grade or so which was like 7 years ago.
I know my school conducter used it, and there was a computer backstage in our auditorium, and so i was backthere jamming and he comes back and goes on the computer. he opens this software, band in a Box, i had no idea what it was. but he was playing blues tracks on it or something and had me jam on them.
I don't know much about it than that though.

ha, just a little story.

It's a very powerful piece of software - but yeah, it's much more suited to Jazz standards or stiff midi stuff - the results are usually far from organic, but it's very easy to program a song using chords and a style (of which there are TONS- from "sinatra swing" to "Wes Montgomery Jazz" to "Louis Jordan", and the styles are pretty accurate) and the software assembles a complete song for you - from walking bass line to keys to horn parts, rhythm guitar lines, etc... ALL notated in tabs or regular music notation.

On top of that, you can then go and select a guitar soloist style, and it'll write out a guitar solo FOR you, with complete notation.

So from a educational perspective, it's very useful. I learned some tricks from it, just from following along on the solos, seeing how the notes flowed on the guitar neck (there's all sorts of visual aids, from a keyboard that shows the notes played, to a guitar neck that shows the notes played, etc.)

And you can select the level of difficulty on the solos, so for an idjit like me, I'm slow, I need a simple solo, don't go all crazy on me - it's really awesome.

But from a home studio/recording perspective, no, I don't think it's very useful.
[Edited 12/23/04 19:47pm]