mike’s music pages

You may have heard about Band-in-a-Box from PG Music, Inc. It is the best tool I know of for quickly creating original music. Band-in-a-Box is designed to help you quickly generate musical accompaniments or complete songs. To make a song you just select a key, set the tempo, select a style and enter your chords.  There is a Band-in-a-Box for Windows and a Band-in-a-Box for MAC. Band-in-a-Box is an affordable, effective tool for creating original music quickly for making practice tracks, backing tracks, or complete songs; and it costs much less than the other digital audio workstation (DAW) programs that I use.

Band-in-a-Box main window

The main entry window looks like a spreadsheet. Each cell has a bar number, and you enter your chords into the cells using your computer keyboard or a MIDI keyboard. After entering your chords you tell Band-in-a-Box to play your song and it generates the song based on the chords you entered and the style that you selected.

Band-in-a-Box can generate music in any genre by using the style sets. There is a large selection of styles covering country, jazz, rock, pop, hip-hop, world music and classical. You can even create your own styles.

Most Band-in-a-Box songs feature drums, bass, piano, guitar and strings. You can also have a melody track using any other instrument. The latest version of Band-in-a-Box includes a sequencer called RealBand. RealBand lets you create music with up to 48 tracks, and it fully integrates with Band-in-a-Box.

Finally, Band-in-a-Box lets you print lead sheets, complete scores and parts. Though I use Band-in-a-Box along with other notation programs and sequencers, you really don’t need to buy any other software if you have Band-in-a-Box. It is now a complete digital audio workstation (DAW). You can even use DXi and VST software instruments with it.

With Band-in-a-Box you can also record vocals along with your song and create a WAV or mp3 file for burning to CD. So you have all the software that you need to make your own music and make your own CD.

When I use Band-in-a-Box I export a song as a MIDI file and then import it into an external sequencer. I started using Band-in-a-Box before it included its own sequencer, so I am comfortable in using it with external sequencers. As my external sequencers I use Sonar and Propellerhead Reason, and I use Sibelius as my main notation program. I also use Notion for the quality of its playback.

If you don’t currently own a DAW, Band-in-a-Box is a good place to start. If you already own a DAW, Band-in-a-Box makes a great addition to your music making toolbox.