Band In A Box

[carmcoop]

Have you guys used Band In A Box to create songs? It's great for those "can't find" songs!

You do have to know the chords to the song. I have used the following options for this: 1) Find the song in a Fake book 2) Many web sites have chords and lyrics 3) Listen to the song and write down the chords.

Once you have the chords, use Band In a Box software to input the chords. Then, select one of their "styles" for the music. There are many styles to choose from, country, rock, jazz, etc. You set the tempo and transpose if needed. The software "band" will then generate the entire song, including intros and endings.

Once you have your song, BIAB allows you to save it as a .wav file.

Now use KHPro to turn it into a karaoke file.

available at: www.pgmusic.com

It takes time for a finished product, but the quality is really good.

Any others out there who have used BIAB?

[kjzone]

Looks pretty good..........

Which one did you get?


Band-in-a-Box Pro Version 12 for Windows - ($88 US)
Includes Ver. 12, Styles Sets 1-3, Harmonies Set 1, Soloists Set 1 + Melodist Set 1.

Band-in-a-Box MegaPAK Version 12 for Windows - ($249 US)
The MegaPAK contains “the works” – Version 12 and ALL Styles Sets (1-33), ALL Soloists Sets (1-9), Melodists (1&2), The MIDI Fakebook, PowerGuide instructional CD-ROM, and SlowBlast!

[carmcoop]

I purchased a year-end special deal, but it was the version 12 basic set, with some other freebies (piano and guitar how-to stuff). It was less than $100. The basic set comes with lots of different styles, and there is a user's group where members can post their own styles - these are free for download.
http://www.biabgroup.com/
I don't really use the melodist and soloist, at least not yet. I've only just begun. I played around with this a little, and while it sounds great as solo music, it interferes with karaoke where you really only want the background band.
I play piano/keyboard , so I also have a library of song books, most include the guitar chords, so it's easy to input them to BIAB. Try out a couple of different styles, set the tempo, and I'm done.

So far, I've done a couple of country songs - and an entire collection of Christmas songs. For Karaoke, it works very well with any song that would sound good as a piano sing along. It would be a little harder to add those unique instrument sounds that "make" a particular song (think of the opening and the drum solo from Wild Thing)

I will tell you that while the software comes with a large manual, I had a tough time getting started with the basics. Once I figured it out, I can now turn out a great song in about 10 minutes - 20 if I input the actual song melody. The instructional video might have been helpful.

BIAB lets you save your song as a midi file. Then I use Edirol to convert to a wav.

I'm having fun with it. Let me know if you try it and what you think!