Band-in-a-Box is a MIDI music arranger software package for Windows and Mac OS produced by PG Music Incorporated. It was first introduced in 1990 for the Atari ST. Since then, PG MUSIC has been a recipient of numerous awards.
Band-in-a-Box can create a background for almost any chord progression used in Western popular music. It can then play that song back using the user's choice of one of thousands of different background styles. In addition to playing back the users' songs with built-in, additional, or aftermarket styles, users can edit these or create their own styles from scratch or from existing MIDI files.
Users can play the songs back and vary the key and/or the song's speed independently or even change the number of times any section of the song repeats. The program has a Melodist and Soloist allowing users to choose instruments and specify almost all details regarding the Melodist or Soloist, Band-in-a-Box will create these tracks based on the users selections. The Melodist and Soloist tracks can be edited note by note in the Notation window. Leadsheets can be printed for each track for a live band to play, or for learning the parts individually for practice.
Songs can be exported as either a MIDI or audio file. Exporting to a MIDI file allows the user to edit the background generated by Band-in-a-Box in a MIDI sequencer, like RealBand or PowerTracks. Songs created in Band-in-a-Box can be burned to a CD or put on to an MP3 player to share with others when saved as audio files.
Band-in-a-Box used only MIDI sounds until 1999 when digital audio was added to the program, letting users record voice or an instrument directly into their songs. The introduction of audio lead to the creation of the Audio Chord Wizard released with the 2007 version. This was included with Band-in-a-Box and allowed for users to choose any audio song from their computer and the Audio Chord Wizard would analyze the song and get the chord progression for that song.
In November 2006, PG Music released "RealDrums", allowing users to have real drummers 'play along' with their songs in the Band-in-a-Box program. Exactly one year later "RealTracks" were introduced, giving users "real" pianos, basses, guitars as well as soloing instruments such as saxophones, guitars, pedal steel and much more to add to accompany songs. RealTracks combine the flexibility of Midi with the quality of real audio recordings by award winning musicians. This means that not only is the audio quality vastly improved but the accompaniment has the feel of "human/real" musicians. With this technology, Band-in-a-Box can now offer real audio sound (in addition to MIDI) to accompany chord changes, avoiding the need to use MIDI modules and high end sound cards for better sounding songs. The limitation of Real Tracks is that the tempo is very much limited to a range close to the recorded tempo, and that each Real Track sequence is now limited to a fixed style. Because of the size of the audio files, the larger Band-in-a-Box packages, like the UltraPlusPAK and EverythingPAK) ship pre-installed on a 160GB hard drive. You can also purchased the uncompressed RealTracks and RealDrums in what's called the "Audiophile" version of Band-in-a-Box. This includes the WAV or AIFF files (depending on your OS), and ships on a 750GB hard drive. (the files are huge) A lot of users find the Audiophile an unnecessary investment ($669 for a First-time purchase) - however if you do a lot of home production and demand that lossless audio, the Audiophile would be what you want. Even though the RealTracks and RealDrums ship compressed, they still sound amazing. All the demo songs on their website, www.pgmusic.com, are made with the compressed files that would ship with the regular version.
As of August 2011, more than 29 RealDrums Sets and 136RealTrack Sets (with over 700 tracks) have been released. Also there are 77 Styles Sets, 16 Soloist Sets, 4 Artist Soloist Sets and 8 Melodist Sets. There are also video tutorial paks; and a Songs & Lessons PAK.
BIAB also works with programs like Finale, and Garritan Personal Orchestra(just to name a few) to achieve even more capability and flexibility.
In BiaB, styles refer to musical styles encapsulated in style files (*.STY). There are thousands of styles included with most BiaB installations. Styles can be midi only, a combination of midi and RealTracks/Drums or RealTrack/Drums only (called RealStyles).
Users can create their own styles in Band-in-a-Box. The simplest method is to create a hybrid style. Another method is to import a style from a MIDI file, Finally, a user can create a style using the StyleMaker.
Band-in-a-Box MultiStyles are styles that can have up to 24 substyles; original Band-in-a-Box styles had two substyles, “a” and “b.” These might be used for (a) chorus, and (b) bridge, for example.
The following solos were created by Band-in-a-Box without any user interaction (except picking the style from the list).