PG Music Band in a Box - or similar

L

lasagne

I fancy Fancy
Hi

Does anyone use this, or any similar product and could give me their experiences of it ? I have basic guitar and keyboard skills and these kind of products look like they could help me a lot with backing instruments for my recordings.

Cheers
 
I have used Band-In-A-Box alot. I work with a songwriter that does everything in BIAB and then gives me a disk to load into my machine to add guitars, etc. In fact, a song I co-wrote with this guy was placed in a movie and other than the vocals and an electric guitar solo the entire production was BIAB. Keep in mind BIAB is basically a sequence program to drive MIDI sound modules.

That being said some BIAB styles are decent and some are as already indicated "cheesy". It depends alot on the style of music. Some of the jazz styles, blues shuffle, country, etc are decent. But BIAB won't cut it for rock or pop.

In most styles the piano parts are decent and the bass lines are functional, but the "guitar" parts are weak and the drums can be hit and miss (basic grooves aren't bad but the fills can suck)

You can go in and edit many parts (how deep into the programs you choose to get is a matter of getting to know the software), but you can do some serious tweaking of the sequence patterns if you choose.

I will be honest, for my own projects, I will start in band in the box just to get a basic song arrangement together, then I start to replace most of BIAB with actual performance (via MIDI). Sometimes I keep the BIAB piano parts or bass line, but everything else gets replaced.

Depending on how MIDI savvy you are vs. using samples & loops - you may find that something like ACID (basically a Sony loop based platform) may work better for your needs. Like BIAB, ACID has many style "disks" that you can buy - but the ACID disks are much more expensive than the BIAB disks.
 
I've owned BIAB since the early days.

Yes, it could be considered a bit cheesy, but I will never run short of the capabilities in it. There is a HUGE library for BIAB, many of which are on my web site in a ZIP file.
 
I own both Band in a Box and Jammer Pro. I like the layout and ease of use of BIAB but I find the styles to be, all that jazz. I am not knocking Jazz, but I prefer Jammer Pro for Pop and Rock styles. BIAB could use a major style upgrade and Jammer Pro could be more user friendly.

I convert a song I made in either program to a midi file and export it to PowerTracks. I then can change all of the patches to my Korg midi sounds and record my own instruments to finish up the song.
 
Thanks for your responses. I'm not midi savvy at all. I write songs on either guitar or piano, but I'm interested in getting a program to do some backing stuff with - drums, bass, maybe brass etc.

I suppose mostly I want to have fun with it.

Sajs - you own both BIAB and Jammer pro - which is better for vox ? From memory I believe that BIAB has pitch correction and backing harmonies ? Does Jammer have this as well ?

I've just downloaded Jammer demo, but at the moment can't get any sound out : - (

I think it's to do with the way my sound card is configured.
 
You could try the PG Music forums too....I'm sure they can provide for a lot of insight into BIAB. :)

This used to be a PG Music forum of sorts, but that has long since ended.
 
I am not an expert on these programs. I only use them occasionally. BIAB does have Harmony Enhancements. They use TC-Helicon Audio Harmonies.
They offer allot of plug-ins. I am not sure about Vox. If you go to their web page and go to the forum, you can find out anything you want. It's a great forum with very helpful people.

I am not sure about the harmonies on Jammer Pro 5. I believe there is a newer version out, I guess it's #6. I got an email to upgrade and I never did.

As I said earlier, if you are into Jazz then BIAB is for you. I feel even the Rock Styles have a jazz flair with diminished chords,etc. I also stated that it is a very intuitive program. Very well thought out and easy to use. I don't think I ever had to open the manual.

Jammer Pro is just a bit confusing to me. Maybe the newer version has been cleaned up. I still feel they have the best styles for Rock musicians.
In either program you can start with one of their midi styles and render the midi to a wav file to send to a DAW or burn a CD. Just my $.02.
 
Well I just called the folks at Jammer Pro and apparently version 6 has addressed all of the concerns I mention above about not being user friendly and bunch more options and styles. For $59.95 I am going to give it a go. I will let you know how it works.
 
Brilliant ! I'd appreciate hearing your opinion of version 6 - I think I'm definately going to go for that or BIAB, but my musical style leans more towards rock, so it sounds like Jammer Pro might be more appropriate for me.
 
I'm a bassplayer, and I use band in a box for educational purposes regularly (playing along with jazz standards, speed trainig etc.)

For productional purposes I'd skip it on, for reason already mentioned.
 
I've been using BIAB since the very first version and have learned to grow with it and it's shortcomings. Presently using version 2006 as a scratch pad for arranging. I'm a percussionist, so my piano skills are very weak. I use Smartscore to scan in the piano sheet music and turn that into a midi file. Then use the guitar chords and enter them into BIAB and generate keyboard fills, horns, strings, etc. and mege that midi file with the one from smartscore with the piano . Then I add my own guitar parts and percussion. You can get some pretty good sounding arrangements using a Roland sound canvas or something with good quality sound banks.
 
jdwoodward said:
I've been using BIAB since the very first version and have learned to grow with it and it's shortcomings. Presently using version 2006 as a scratch pad for arranging. I'm a percussionist, so my piano skills are very weak. I use Smartscore to scan in the piano sheet music and turn that into a midi file. Then use the guitar chords and enter them into BIAB and generate keyboard fills, horns, strings, etc. and mege that midi file with the one from smartscore with the piano . Then I add my own guitar parts and percussion. You can get some pretty good sounding arrangements using a Roland sound canvas or something with good quality sound banks.
Click to expand...

So you are entering your own style, or hybrid? Please explain.
 
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