Band-In-A-Box 101 by Joanne Cooper [PDF]

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Contents Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 2 Chapter 1: Purchasing and installing BIAB .......................................................................................... 2 Mac vs. PC ..................................................................................................................................... 2 Where to purchase BIAB ................................................................................................................ 3 Which version to purchase ............................................................................................................ 3 Purchasing add-ons ....................................................................................................................... 4 When to purchase ......................................................................................................................... 5 Obtaining your software ................................................................................................................ 5 Installing your software ................................................................................................................. 5 Chapter 2: Getting to know the BIAB interface .................................................................................. 8 The menu bar area ........................................................................................................................ 8 Tracks area .................................................................................................................................... 9 The banners................................................................................................................................... 9 The mixer window ....................................................................................................................... 10 The song ...................................................................................................................................... 10 Chapter 3: Capturing the song structure and choosing a style .......................................................... 12 Choose a style ............................................................................................................................. 13 Get the chords ............................................................................................................................. 16 Get the key .................................................................................................................................. 19 Capture song name, start, end, number of choruses and key ....................................................... 19 Capture the chords ...................................................................................................................... 20 Change the key ............................................................................................................................ 23 Experiment with style and tempo ................................................................................................ 24 Try out MIDI styles....................................................................................................................... 25 Chapter 4: Refining your backing track ............................................................................................ 29 Swap out specific instrument tracks............................................................................................. 29 Make specific instruments play only in certain sections ............................................................... 31 Add another instrument .............................................................................................................. 32 Add even more instruments ........................................................................................................ 33 Add instrumental solo ................................................................................................................. 33 Add backing vocals ...................................................................................................................... 35

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Use stops and holds to add interest ............................................................................................. 35 Add lyrics to your BIAB file ........................................................................................................... 36 Make a backing track from a MIDI file .......................................................................................... 39 Record a live instrument or vocals ............................................................................................... 43 Convert your audio to a harmony track........................................................................................ 50 Performing with your track .............................................................................................................. 52 Use the actual BIAB SGU files on a computer or tablet ................................................................. 52 Write the BIAB track to an MP3 or WAV file................................................................................. 52 Make a video of your BIAB chords and lyrics window ................................................................... 53 Make karaoke style MP4 videos ................................................................................................... 54 Make MP3+CDG files ................................................................................................................... 55 Final words on performing with BIAB ........................................................................................... 55 Conclusion....................................................................................................................................... 56 About the author ............................................................................................................................. 56

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Introduction Welcome to this eBook. I do hope you are going to enjoy it and that it will take you forward, in leaps and bounds, on your journey with Band-in-a-Box from PG Music. From here-on-out, I will often refer to Band-in-a-Box using its well-known and widely used acronym “BIAB.” I will also be referring to Digital Audio Workstation software as a “DAW.” This book is aimed primarily at beginner users, but I hope that even experienced users can gain some useful tips from it. Note also that although there are as many ways to use BIAB as there are satisfied users, this particular book is based on how I, as a singer-songwriter, recording artist, performer, and educator, use the product in my day-to-day life. I do understand that I have not even scratched the surface of this fantastic tool in both my use and in this book. This book is designed to take you on a journey through purchasing and installing BIAB, making a backing track from scratch right through to performing to your fans, or even your cat, with the help of Band-in-a-Box. I recommend that you start at chapter one and work through the book in chronological order. At the end of this process, you will be performing like a pro. More experienced users will probably want to skip the first two chapters and start on chapter three “Capturing the song structure and choosing a style.” Of course, you are welcome to use this book as a reference and pop in and out of the chapters where the fancy takes you. I have based this book on Band-in-a-Box 2019, and I will update it as and when PG Music releases new versions. You can be kept informed of new releases via my email list. You can join the mailing list on my website. It is also a good idea to join the Facebook user group so that you can exchange ideas with other readers. Please note that I am not affiliated to PG Music in any way whatsoever. I am a satisfied customer. PG Music did not commission nor do they endorse this book.

Chapter 1: Purchasing and installing BIAB Mac vs. PC It may seem like a simple suggestion, but you should think carefully about whether to buy the Mac or PC version of BIAB. Even if you have a Mac computer and do all your other work in a Mac environment, you may want to consider purchasing the PC BIAB version. The first reason is that PG Music originally developed BIAB as a Windows product. It was born in the MS-DOS era. Users of the Mac version often complain that the Mac version seems to be the secondclass citizen when it comes to upgrades. For example, the Mac version of BIAB 2018 only came out in July 2018 whereas the Windows version came out in December 2017 already. PG Music appears to have been following this release pattern for quite a few years. If you are one of those ultra-keen people who love upgrades and you purchase the Mac version, then you may get slightly frustrated waiting for the latest version of BIAB to come out.

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Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Secondly, BIAB for the Mac does not come with RealBand. That means that if you are a Mac user and are planning to record and release radio-ready songs you are almost certainly going to have to choose and invest in another DAW. However, there are many well priced and even free DAWs that you can choose. You can install the windows version of BIAB on an NFS - New Technology File System - formatted partition on your Mac. Here is a link to PG Music’s FAQ on this.

Where to purchase BIAB PG Music has many official Band-in-a-Box resellers. They encourage potential users to research the various options and select the option that suits them the best. Some resellers offer only digital downloads, while others provide the shippable product. You will need to consider what version and add-ons you are considering purchasing before deciding on a vendor. I have only ever purchased products directly from the PG Music website for a couple of reasons. Firstly, PG Music’s service is excellent. Secondly, I always order my updates on a hard drive. It is often difficult to get physical products delivered from vendors such as Amazon to South Africa. PG Music does not seem to be afraid to deliver my software to me even though I live in the sticks. The third reason I always buy directly from the PG Music website is that I always purchase the Xtra and bonus tracks and some resellers do not offer these add-ons.

Which version to purchase You will need to decide which version of BIAB is right for you. Should you choose the entry-level Pro version or should you go all out and buy the Audiophile Edition? It is important to note that, unlike other tiered pricing software packages, both the Band-in-a-Box and RealBand program functionality is identical for all the different price points. The main difference between the various versions is in the other “content” delivered alongside these two programs. I can summarise the content differences as follows: 1. The difference between the PRO, MegaPak, and UltraPAK is in the number of styles, instruments, and loops that PG Music delivers with your purchase. The PRO version is a 15-gigabyte installation, the MegaPak is 25 gigabytes, and the UltraPAK is well over 120 gigabytes. That will give you some idea about the differences between the various versions. 2. The UltraPAK Plus comes with everything in the UltraPAK version as well as additional songs and lessons. 3. The AudioPhile version comes with songs and lessons and also has high-quality WAV versions of all the RealTracks 4. The OminPAK version is the full set of music creation and productivity software. It includes PowerTracks (which is PG Music’s premium DAW) as well as other music creation software, documentaries, and trivia. It is quite literally the whole hog, barn, and field. So you can see that this is going to be a personal decision and one that I can only guide you on.

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Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

1. If you have a limited budget and music making is your hobby, or if you only want to experiment with BIAB before making a more significant decision, or if you want to use the program to practice your guitar playing then you should consider the PRO or MegaPak version. I would also say that if you are installing the software on a laptop and have a minimal spec computer in terms of hard drive space, you should consider the PRO or MegaPak (see the section below on installing BIAB on your computer). 2. I use the UltraPak and highly recommend this version if you have the funds to invest. The UltraPak is an excellent choice if you want to perform with your backing tracks. It is also suitable if you would like to record and release radio-ready songs. If you are a songwriter and like to experiment with a variety of styles that you would not usually try then the UltaPak will provide you with plenty of material from which to choose. 3. If you are an earnest music student or are a professional musician and want to use BIAB to take your musicianship to the next level, then the UltaPAK Plus would suit you. (I am not personally at this level…yet) 4. If you are a studio owner and professional producer who is charging other people to create radio-ready songs for them, then the AudioPhile Edition or the OmniPAK would be the one for you. (Maybe in my next life ☺) Please note; these are only suggestions. What I can say is that having access to all the styles, instruments and loops in BIAB has given me such freedom, growth, and opportunities in my own musical life that it has been well worth the initial investment.

Purchasing add-ons If you bought your version of BIAB from the PG Music website, you would have been offered various add-ons. Here is my take on these. 1. Xtra Styles: These Xtra styles consist of exciting and unorthodox combinations of existing RealTracks. For example the exotic sounding, “Baffin Old Canadian Fiddle Waltz” is described as follows: “This Canadian folk waltz features a fiddle soloist. Joining in are strumming acoustic guitar, tenor banjo, acoustic bass, and ethnic waltz drums”. Isn’t that just wonderful? Doesn’t it make you want to write an old Canadian waltz? I am sure you can guess that I would highly recommend that you purchase at least some of these Xtra styles. They will provide you with hours of entertainment. Please note: The Xtra styles use pre-existing RealTracks so if you purchased the PRO or MegaPAK version you may not get full value from the Xtra styles. 2. JBridge: This is a plugin for use within RealBand that allows you to use third party 64-bit plugins. You would only require JBridge if you are going to use RealBand as your DAW. Please note: the use of RealBand or any other DAW is outside the scope of this eBook. Suffice it to say the RealBand is a “32-bit DAW,” and many modern third-party plugins are “64-bit plugins.” JBridge will allow you to use these plugins within RealBand. I do use this add-on since I use RealBand as my DAW. 3. PGMusic Key chain. Come on… support your favorite music production software company by buying a key chain ☺

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

When to purchase PG Music will usually offer the software (for both new users and upgrades) at a discounted price from their website for the first month or so after release. So if you are a windows user, look out for the special offers during December each year. For the Mac version, keep an eye out in June.

Obtaining your software I have always obtained my software by instructing PG Music to ship each new upgrade to me on an external USB hard drive. Bear in mind that I live in Johannesburg, South Africa which is approximately 15,000 km away from the PG Music headquarters and yet I have always received my upgrade within a couple of weeks of ordering it. On one occasion the drive did not work, and I had to request a replacement drive, which PG Music provided without question and extra charges. Please note: I do have to pay South African import duties, which are paid over to the courier when the drive is delivered. If you are getting the PRO or MEGAPAK version, then you probably want to download the software rather than pay the extra shipping costs associated with the shippable product. Once you have made your initial purchase, all the software will be available for download on your account on the PG Music website. I do know some users who are super keen to check out the new features each year and will download the actual program and then later obtain the complete upgrade and RealTracks via hard drive.

Installing your software Depending on how you ordered your software, you may have received it via external hard drive, USB flash drive, DVD or download. PG Music has some great videos on how to install the software so my advice would be to check out the video that relates to your operating system (Mac or PC) and the version of BIAB that you purchased. Here is a link to PG Music’s YouTube channel. There are a couple of things to consider when installing your software. Whether to install 32-bit or 64-bit Firstly, if you are installing on Windows, you will need to decide whether to install the new 64-bit version or stick to the old 32-bit version. Nerd alert: the “32-bit vs. 64-bit” thing relates to two things. 1. What generation of processor your PC has physically inside it. 2. What generation of processor your operating system (Windows) was written for. “64-bit” is newer than “32-bit” and “64-bit” computers can run software that was written for a “32-bit” processor, but a “32-bit” computer cannot run software written only for “64-bit” processors… Makes sense? If so, I can officially grant you a level 1 nerd status. Suffice it to say that if you bought your computer new in the last 7 or 8 years and you installed the latest version of Windows (at that time), then the chances are that your system is 64-bit. You can check for 64 vs. 32-bit by going to Windows File Explorer and right-click on “this PC” and pressing “Properties.”

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

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Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

You see here that my PC has a 64-bit operating system and a 64-bit processor. So, I decided to install the 64-bit version, and I can now tick that off my list! Whether to install on your computer’s drive or not Secondly, you will need to decide how much of the program you are going to install on your computer’s hard drive. If you are installing the PRO or MegaPak you should install the entire program, RealTracks and all, on your computer hard drive. End of story. If you are installing the UltraPak version or higher you are going to need quite a bit of disk space (at least 120 Gigs). My advice is as follows: 1.

If you are installing on a laptop computer that you travel around with and boot up on the plane while going to your sales conference in Los Angeles, I would strongly recommend attempting to install the entire software suite on your computer’s hard drive. I do all my music production on an entry-level laptop. (By the way, one of the advantages of BIAB and RealBand is that coming from an MS-DOS background, they are very light on resources. Unlike other high-class DAWs they can run on just about any old junk). Besides the fact that it doesn’t look cool, I don’t like having things hanging out the side of my laptop, and I don’t use an external mouse. I don’t have to worry about whether I have remembered to bring my hard drive along when I get the urge to make a track and most importantly I do not have to worry about dropping my hard drive. I have heard of computer users having years of expensive therapy to recover from the trauma of losing a hard drive. I needed to purchase extra hard drive space for my entry level laptop to provide the space necessary for BIAB. It was totally worth the investment and I have never looked back.

2. If you are installing on a desktop computer and you have the luxury of plenty of additional USB ports, then it doesn’t matter whether you choose to install the entire program on your computer hard drive or not. You can leave the external USB drive permanently attached to your computer, tuck it safely away where you cannot knock it off the desk and BIAB will pull the RealTracks from the hard drive when they are needed. 3. If you are installing on a desktop computer and you do not have sufficient USB ports to leave your hard drive permanent attached, then I would recommend trying to install the entire program on your computer’s hard drive. If you operate the software from the external USB

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Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

drive, then you run the risk of knocking the drive off the table and also, those USB ports are very unreliable and can stop working without warning. Once you have worked your way through all of your USB ports by continuously plugging and unplugging devices, you will need to take a trip to the computer store. Amplitube Amplitube is a guitar plugin made by IK Multimedia. You can modify the sound of certain electric guitar RealTracks using Amplitube. This plugin is included free in BIAB and maybe worth experimenting with if you are interested in getting unique sound electric guitar sounds. Sforzando Sforzando is a set of MIDI sounds or patches that come free with BIAB. If you are planning to do any work or experimentation with MIDI (and I highly recommend that you do), I would go ahead and install the Sforzando Hi-Q Instruments. Keeping your software up-to-date PG Music offers free upgrades for both BIAB and RealBand throughout the year. You need to keep an eye on the website and download and install patches as-and-when they are released. I do not know of a way to automatically keep your software up-to-date. Note also that experience has taught me that it is very uncool to ask technical questions on either the forums or on the support line when you have not attempted to keep your software up-to-date. Backing up your work Everyone who has ever worked on a computer has lost some work that they would rather not have lost at some stage of their career as a computer user. My suffering has included; pouring hot tea over, not one, but TWO computers at the same time; losing my laptop in an armed house robbery (the price I pay for living in sunny South Africa); dropping my external hard drive; the external hard drive that inexplicably stopped working; a backup drive installed in the roof of my house that is now full and is sometimes inexplicably inaccessible. The best solution I have found to back up my work is to subscribe to a cloud backup service such as Cloud drive from Amazon. I set it up to automatically backup a specific directory, such as the one I use to for all my BIAB creations. Changes to files in this directory are automatically backed up to the cloud every few minutes without me even knowing about it. It gives me the added value in that when somebody asks me for a high-quality WAV file of one of my songs I can share it directly from the Amazon directory. Licensing your software PG music will provide you with a serial number that you put into the program the first time you start it. If you do not have the license number handy, the program will run without any loss in functionality for 30 days before you will be required to find the license number. You can license the software on a few computers at the same time. I have had one particular year where I needed to

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Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

license the software on more than my allotted number of computers, and PG Music was happy to oblige. Reselling your software This is going to be a quick one. You are not allowed! So if somebody offers you a second-hand copy of BIAB or if you buy it or try to sell it on Craigslist then know that you are breaking the law and taking the food out of the mouths of starving musicians all over the world.

Chapter 2: Getting to know the BIAB interface So now you are ready to start diving in and playing with BIAB. In this eBook, I will be using the original BIAB interface so if your version of BIAB does not look like this, then press CTL-T to change the display.

In this section, I will be covering the areas of the BIAB interface that I use the most as well as those areas that will be needed to accomplish what we will set out to do in this book, i.e., make a backing track, practice with it and perform with it. This eBook is certainly not an attempt to cover all the available BIAB functionality or features.

The menu bar area This area of the screen provides drop-down access to many of the BIAB functions that can also be approached via the buttons in the “File,” “Song,” “Transport,” “View,” “Tools” or “Tracks” banners.

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Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Tracks area This area summarizes the actual tracks that are in use in this song. You can also access these via the mixer window.

The banners BIAB provides quick access buttons via banners for most BIAB functions. We will be referring to various functions and accessing them via the banners while making our backing track throughout this book.

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www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

The mixer window The mixer window is the place on the screen that shows you and allows you to work with the individual tracks within this song. You can change mix settings (such as panning and volume) and apply plugins.

The song Within this area you can see and change various settings in the current song: 1. The name of the song. It is always a good idea to label your songs nicely 2. The style that this song is currently using. We will be exploring this functionality in detail later on in this book.

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www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

3. Start, end and number of choruses. This area takes a little bit of getting used to. BIAB defaults these values to 1 – 32 * 3, which in plain English means that bars 1 to 32 repeat 3 times (and then a 4 bar outro plays). That is fine if you have a song with three identical choruses of exactly 32 bars and no intro. Most of the time, however, you will want to change these parameters to suit your song. I almost always start by ensuring the “start” is 1, changing the number of choruses to 1 and changing the “end” to something arbitrary (say 200). That gives me a nice “blank” slate and enough space to work in the chords area. 4. Feel. “Feel” is usually something like Sw8 or Sw16 (for “swing”) or Ev8 or Ev16 (for “even”). BIAB will get this value from the style that you choose for your song, so don’t worry too much about this now. 5. Time signature. I’m going to try and restrict my explanations of music theory to an absolute minimum. Here is what you need to know about key signatures. As a beginner, there are a few time signatures of which you need to be aware. The first is 4/4 (four beats per bar and every beat is worth a ¼ note). This is what is known as common time signature since it is the most common time signature used in the world of music. Many BIAB users will not venture too far from 4/4 time. The other time signature you are likely to want to use is 3/4 which is three notes per bar, and each note is worth a ¼. 3/4 time is known as a waltz. Another favorite time signature that you will want to use is 6/8. With 6/8 time each bar gets six notes, and each note is worth an eight. Those of you who are wondering what a bar is, it is not a place where you go to get a beer. A bar is a way of segmenting music into containers each with the same number of beats. A “bar” is synonymous with a “measure.” A vertical line represents the end of a bar on the music staff. 6. Key. Again, you don’t need to know much music theory to work with BIAB, but it does help to at least understand the concept of “keys” in music. In short, a key is a collection of pitches that go together nicely. In western music, there are 12 pitches. A key is a collection of 7 of these pitches, one of which (the tonic) is the “main man.” There are major and minor keys. The major key is “the happy one” while the minor key is “the sad one.” So if a piece is in A major, then A is “the main man” and the piece is in “the happy key.” If you are going to sing along to your track, then you are going to want to mess about with the key. Some keys may be too high for your voice (for a particular song) while others are too low. If you are going to play a musical instrument you probably already know quite a bit about keys. If you are making an instrumental track to accompany your wedding video, then you probably don’t need to know much about keys and can use the default key of C major. 7. Tempo. This is the number of beats per minute in your song. Here is Joanne Cooper’s quick tempo guide. 65 bpm = smoochy 85 bpm = ballad 100 bpm = I don’t know whether I am a ballad or dance track 120 bpm = most pop rock dance or exercise tracks 140 bpm = mad dance or exercise track (or bluegrass!) 180 plus bpm = manic (or gypsy jazz!) 8. Chord area. This is where the magic happens. Without doing anything else, you can type the chords of a song into this area, press play and voilà you have a backing track. Okay, it might not sound exactly how you want. It may not have the right instruments or be the correct

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www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

tempo, but it is a song none-the-less. We will be working with the chords area extensively later on in this book. 9. Part markers. The little blue box that you see at the top left-hand side of the chords area is what is known as a part marker. Part markers are how you tell BIAB what is introduction, verse, chorus, bridge, and outro. BIAB is very smart in that it can put little drum rolls in where the part markers are and also change instrument patterns for the various sections of your song. For example, it can play more hectic drums for the chorus if you use a green part marker for that section. More about this later. 10. “Play” banner. I usually use three “play” options. “Play and Generate” or (press F4) will regenerate all the tracks in your song and start playing the song from the beginning. “Regenerate” means that BIAB will generate new versions of your tracks regardless of whether you have made changes to your song or not. Regenerating may result in slight changes to your RealTracks. If nothing has changed, you may want to press the “play” button (or the space bar), and the song will start playing a lot quicker than if you use “Play and Generate.” The other option to play your song that I use quite a bit is “Play song from bar” (or press CTRL-F) which does what it says it does and means that you don’t need to always go back to the beginning of the song to listen.

Chapter 3: Capturing the song structure and choosing a style In this chapter, I am going to take you through my way of setting up a song structure and choosing a style from scratch for the beautiful public domain song “Amazing Grace.” I have chosen this song for a few reasons. The first is that it is a well-known song that anyone can sing. The second is that it is in the public domain which means I won’t run into trouble with the copyright police. The third is that you can perform this song in a wide variety of styles, tempos and time signatures and lastly, it is a sweet song! My workflow is as follows:

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Band-in-a-Box 101

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Decide on a style Get the chords Get the key Capture song name, start, end, number of choruses and key Capture the chords and part markers Press play Experiment with key, style, instruments and tempo Press play Repeat steps 7 and 8 until satisfied

Choose a style I am going to be going into more detail on this topic later in this chapter because it is one of the strengths of this fantastic product and one that I highly recommend you spend some time exploring. For now I am going to say, let’s choose a suitable style that will enable us to get going on capturing the song structure. Later on, we can mess about with song settings, instruments, and style to jazz up our song. There are three basic types of styles available within BIAB. RealStyles, MIDI styles, and styles that are mixed (i.e., they contain both MIDI tracks and RealTracks). I will discuss these styles and the differences between them later in this chapter. For now, we are going to use a RealStyle. To help us select a RealStyle for this song I am going to use the song titles database. Click the “Style” button and choose “Style Picker (browse all styles).”

Click the “clear button” to remove any filters that you had set up previously.

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Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Type Amazing Grace in the space provided for “Song Titles.” You will see that PG Music has very kindly given us information for a few different versions of Amazing Grace.

The first is labeled “American Trad.” If you select this version and then press the “Find Titles” button, BIAB will bring up additional information about this version of the song. It will show you tempo, original key, genre, feel and time signature. It seems that traditionally, this song was arranged as a waltz and is around 85 bpm, has a feel of even 8 and was composed in the key of G major.

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Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Press “OK find matching styles” and BIAB will display all the styles it recommends that you try out if you are trying to recreate this version of the song. You can audition each one until you decide on the one you like by pressing the play button. Once you are happy, press the “OK” button. I have chosen “CWALTZP.STY (Country Waltz w/ Piano Swing).”

BIAB will pull the selected style into your song. You will see that BIAB has populated five tracks with the RealTracks that PG Music has specifically chosen to go with this style.

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Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Get the chords There are a couple of methods of obtaining the chords for a specific song. a. www.ultimate-guitar.com This site will give you user created lyric and chord sheets of almost any song. There are usercreated versions, and there are “user-created versions”! In other words, some are rubbish, and some are better than others. I usually select the “chords” version that looks relatively simple and has a high number of 5-star ratings. I will usually go with that as a starting point.

For this particular song, this would be my preferred method to get the chords of the song and the one we will use for our example. For Amazing Grace, I got this nice chord and lyrics chart.

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Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

b. BIAB’s Audio Chord Wizard (ACW) I have to tell you a little secret. I have not been able to use BIAB’s ACW very successfully despite having tried many times. I resort to using it only when I have entirely run out of other options and if a particular chord is bothering me. Sometimes BIAB’s opinion of what chord is being played will help me in my quest. I do know that other users have had great success with this feature and will highly recommend it. You may want to persevere with it.

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www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

To use the feature first open the actual MP3 or WAV file in BIAB and then press the “Audio Chord Wizard button on the Tools banner. Tell BIAB where the song starts by putting your mouse in the bar where the song actually starts and then selecting “Set bar one” and select “Ok to send to BIAB” and voilà, BIAB will tell you the key, the chords, and the tempo.

c. Third party chord pick-out software I use third-party chord pick-out software called Chords! that is a plugin for WinAmp. The bad news is that neither WinAmp nor the Chords! plugin is available anymore. There are two other options that I found. The first is called Chordify. With the free version of Chordify you can just type in the name of a song, and if the song is on YouTube and has already been “Chordifed”, the software will show you the chords. For a monthly premium of $6.99 per month, you can access all the premium features which include the ability to transpose and upload your own song. The second option is a software program called Chord Pick-Out which seems to be more like what I am used to. It is available for a once-off fee of only $19.95. Disclaimer: I have not personally used Chordify or Chord Pick-Out. Nerd alert: If I am using chord pick-out software and the mp3 is in a horrible key like Eb, I will pitch shift the MP3 into a more user-friendly key and then use the pitch-shifted MP3 in the chord pick-out software. You can pitch shift an MP3 in Band-in-a-Box by opening up the MP3 in Band-in-a-box and then changing the key of the BIAB session. I.e., If you are trying to take the MP3 down by one half step then change the BIAB “key” from the default “C” to “B,” confirm that you would like the audio track also to transpose and then export the audio track to a new MP3. You can also use the free DAW, Audacity to pitch-shift an MP3.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

d. Get the sheet music There are loads of places on the internet where you can purchase the sheet music for a particular song. The one I use is Music Notes. If you buy the sheet music for a specific song, you can also transpose it into the key of your choice. So if the original sheet music is in a lousy key, like Eb, then you can transpose it into a more user-friendly key (like G. I end up with almost everything in G!). e. Work out the chords yourself If you play an instrument like guitar or piano and are good at playing by ear, then you can probably work out your own set of chords for any song. If you can already do this, then you probably don’t need any more help from me!

Get the key Determining what key a piece is written in may seem like an easy step, but sometimes it is one of the hardest! Sometimes songwriters move around the circle of fifths like a hamster on a wheel, and you will never figure out the key of the song even with hours of music theory behind you. On most songs, however, you will be able to figure out the key. Most songs are written in one key. Tip: If the song you have chosen for your backing track appears to play around with keys for the sheer enjoyment of it, I would strongly suggest you select another song! The version of Amazing Grace that we have obtained from Ultimate Guitar is in the key of G Major. I know this because I know enough music theory to be distinctly dangerous. I also know this because the last chord used in the song is G Major. Nerd alert: I also know this because the three major chords used in the song are G, C, and D, which are the tonic, sub-dominant and dominant chords in the key of G Major. If I wanted to be 100% sure that the song is in G major I could look at the sheet music (using something like Music Notes). You can also use the BIAB’s Audio Chords Wizard to figure out the key of a specific recording of a song. Open the MP3 of the song in the ACW as described above and then say yes when you are asked to send the chords back to BIAB. It will tell you what key it thinks the recording is in. You can also “ask google.” Try typing in “What key is Stand By Me Ben E King in?” Google tells me it is A Major. Google is very clever!

Capture song name, start, end, number of choruses and key It is always a good idea to label your songs nicely, Capture the name of the song in the appropriate space. Set the start bar to one and the end bar to something arbitrary that will give you enough space to work in (say 200). Set the number of choruses to one. Set the key to G by clicking on BIAB’s default key signature of “C” and selecting “G” from the drop-down on the “Transpose and set key signature” side of the drop down.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Capture the chords So now you can type in the chords you obtained in step two. First set up a short 2 bar intro in G. You can always come back and set up a more intricate introduction at a later stage. Type “G” into bar 1 and then double click your mouse on the “3” of the 3rd bar. BIAB will put a little blue box around the 3 and move it onto a new line. In this case bar 3 will be where the singing starts. Type in the chords for the first chorus from the Ultimate Guitar chord sheet. It may take a bit of messing about to get the chords in the right bar, but if you know the song well enough, then you can sing along while typing in the chords. Keep pressing the “play” button to check you have the chords in the right bar. Once you have the first chorus sorted, click your mouse on bar 19 and BIAB will put another blue box. This blue box will mark the beginning of the first verse. Type in the chords for the verse. If you are smart, it won’t take you long to figure out that the chords for the chorus and the verse of this song are identical. So you can copy and paste instead of retyping. To copy and paste put your mouse on bar 3 and left click your mouse and move to bar 18. Press CTLC. Move to bar 19 and press CTL-V. BIAB will magically copy the chords from bar 3 (for 18 bars) into the bars 19 to 34. In this particular version, I want the following format: chorus, verse 1, chorus, verse 2, chorus, verse 3, instrumental verse and final chorus. I will paste the chords into bars 19 (verse 1), 35 (Chorus), 51 (verse 2), 67 chorus, 83 (verse 3), 99 (instrumental verse), 115 (final chorus). The last bar of the song is bar number 130. Go back and change your end bar to 130. BIAB will put a four-bar outro in for you automatically.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Tip: If you are having trouble seeing what is going on with your song structure, go into full-screen chord sheet mode by pressing the little button on the top right-hand side of the screen or by pressing CTL-T.

You can also increase the number of lines you have on the screen by going to options>preferences>display and then changing the max rows setting.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Now is your chance to differentiate between the choruses and verses. You may want your choruses to stand out a bit more and the verses to take more of a back seat. One of the techniques you can very easily use in BIAB to make this happen is to use the BIAB concept called “sub-styles.” Each style has at least two substyles associated with it. The default substyle “a” is shown by the blue box. A second substyle “b” is shown by the green box. The drums on the “b” substyle are generally “busier” than those on the “a” substyle. I generally use the “a” substyle for the verses and the “b” substyle for the choruses. Sometimes, other instruments, like an electric guitar, will also change between the substyles.

To implement these substyle patterns on Amazing Grace, right click on the blue box and choose substyle “b.” BIAB will show this as green. Go ahead and click bars 3, 35, 67, 99 and 115 and change these par markers to substyle b. Your choruses will have some extra vroom now. Tip: For songs that start with a chorus, like this one, I may consider leaving the very first chorus as substyle “a.”

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Congratulations, you have your very first backing track in BIAB. You can download Amazing Grace version 1 from my website and compare it to what you have. Now let’s have a little fun with the basic backing track.

Change the key The first thing you are going to want to play around with is the key. If you are a vocalist, you will need to find out what key suits your vocal range. If you are an instrumentalist, you will probably want to learn to play the song in various keys. Pull down the “key” and select the desired key from on the “Transpose and set key signature” side of the drop-down — press play to regenerate the tracks.

Sing along to the track. Make sure you can reach all the high notes and the low notes comfortably. Don’t be scared to make drastic key changes. For example, if the key is currently G, try changing it to D and then sing along. You will instinctively know when you have chosen the right key for your voice.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Experiment with style and tempo The second thing you can do is change the style of your song. I think you can probably guess that I love PG Music’s styles and recommend that you spend a couple of hours experimenting with them. You can quite happily change Amazing Grace from a ¾ waltz to common time swing 16ths to jazz swing or even rockabilly. I am going to run through some of the ways that I use style filters and the song titles database to play around with the style of my song. Firstly, you can use the song titles database as described above and audition the different styles recommended by PG Music for the various versions. For example, the Chris Tomlin version is 4/4 (common time) and is 65 BPM so selecting this version brings up a whole lot of different recommended styles.

Tip: always remember to press the “clear” button to reset any previous style filters before using the song titles database to explore styles. The second way to select styles is to use the style filter buttons. Let’s say you want to try a Dixieland version of Amazing Grace. First, clear all previous selections. Then pull down the “category” pulldown and select “more” under JAZZ styles. Select the “Dixieland” category. Press enter and spend a few minutes auditioning all the styles suggested by the style filter.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

You will notice that you have a whole lot of styles listed here. Some may have a different “feel.” Some may be in 4/4 time signatures, and some may have a different recommended tempo to your original song. If you select a style with a similar tempo as your original song, you can usually choose the style and leave the tempo in your song as it is. So if your song is currently at 85 BPM, you can try out styles with a recommended tempo of between 65 and 120. Tip: If you want to select a style that has a wildly different tempo to your original song you will need to take a different approach (otherwise you will get some weird sounding RealTracks.) BIAB will try to stretch (or shrink) the RealTrack to fit the tempo of your song! So, if you were to select a style recommended at, say, 190 BPM, and your original song is at 85 BPM you will have to do the following: 1. Select the style and go back to the main BIAB window. 2. Go to “Edit>Song Form” and select “Expand chord duration by 2” and press enter. You will see that BIAB will automatically double the tempo of the song and space the chords out. So where we had one bar of G followed by one bar of G7 we now have two bars of G followed by two bars of G7. Note: it is not against the rules to select a style in a completely different genre, with a completely different feel and a different time signature. Do not be scared. Who is making these rules anyway? Tip: If you have purchased any of the Xtra styles you can use the “Choose and show user category” to filter out only your Xtra styles.

Try out MIDI styles Up until now, we have only talked about RealStyles and RealTracks. I will tell you, at a high level, a little bit about MIDI Styles. I mentioned earlier that BIAB has three different types of styles. The first is RealStyles. These are made up of 5 or less “RealTracks.” “RealTracks” are audio recordings of REAL living and breathing musicians playing REAL instruments. For example, there are loads of guitar RealTracks that have been explicitly recorded for PG Music by legendary Nashville session guitarist Brent Mason. The second type is MIDI Styles. These are made up of 5 or less “MIDI Tracks.” MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. The use of MIDI is a highly complex area of study and is mostly beyond the scope of this book. Suffice it to say for now that MIDI is musical notes that are stored as

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

data and not as audio. The computer can interpret this data in various ways and turn that data into musical notes that we can hear on the instructions you give it, the machine can turn the data into flute sounds or piano sounds or even kazoo sounds. This transformation happens via a MIDI synthesizer or MIDI sound module. The third type of style is where PG Music has put together a style based on a mixture of RealTracks and MIDI tracks. There are many of the older BIAB styles that fall into this category. Often these styles will have MIDI bass and rhythm instruments, and yet the drum track is “RealDrums.” PG Music first started recording drum RealTracks (known as RealDrums) and added those to many of their existing styles before progressing onto recording real audio of other instruments. MIDI offers some advantages over RealTracks in that it gives a musician precise control over what is being played. You can change just about everything about the way BIAB plays a single note. The caveat about using MIDI is that you need a high-quality synthesizer or MIDI sound module to make MIDI sound even half-way decent. Without that, you will end up with some tinny tickling sounds that you would expect to hear on a circus carousel or when you open a child’s music box. A good synthesizer such as Garittan Jazz and Big Band, SampleTank or Kontakt can cost you thousands of dollars to purchase. If you are planning on composing orchestrations for film and television, then you are going to want to invest in a good synthesizer and learn as much as you can about MIDI. This is all, however, beyond the scope of a beginners guide to making backing tracks with BIAB! All that being said, you should not be put off playing around a bit with MIDI styles, even if that is only to see what is possible or to add some MIDI strings to your song. I invite you to explore MIDI styles by using “type” pull down on the style filters. Select some other filtering options such as ¾ time signature, tempo 85 and “EVERYTHING COUNTRY.” Pull down the “type” drop-down and select “MIDI only (no real).”

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

The first thing you will notice is that the colors of the tracks changed from green to yellow. You can decode the colors of the tracks as follows: Green = RealTracks or RealDrums. Many of the MIDI styles have Real Drums Yellow = MIDI tracks Blue = MIDI SuperTracks. (More about these later) Select a MIDI style and press play. I selected the ZZWALTZ style. You probably won’t like what you hear straight out of the box because BIAB takes the MIDI data and interprets it back to you via your computer’s MIDI sound module. Typically the MIDI sounds that come with your computer are not very good. BIAB comes with a set of free MIDI sounds (or patches) that sound slightly better than the general MIDI sounds that come with your computer. It is called “Sforzando.” If you installed these sounds (see section 1 on purchasing and installing BIAB), you can set up each MIDI track to play the appropriate Sforzando sound. Solo the strings tracks. Then click on the track and choose “Select MIDI instrument patch” and then “Select Hi-Q MIDI patch plugin.”

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

To see the power of MIDI use the drop-down menu to change the instrument to something completely different, like a flute.

You might still not love the sounds that Sforzando gives you and might be tempted to try other MIDI sounds (free or otherwise) that you can find on the internet. I have been using Dimension Pro from Cakewalk for all my MIDI sounds, and it has proven good enough for my purposes. Some instruments sound better than others with Dimension Pro. I have never been happy with MIDI guitars, ukuleles, and accordion sounds. But have been pleased with the piano, string, and woodwind instruments. If you really want to jump into MIDI with both hands and feet, it is a good idea to spend some time determining which product and supplier will suit your particular needs. You should then sign-up for the newsletter. In that way, you will stay informed of sales and Black Friday discounts. Be aware that once you have decided on and purchased a particular product, there will be a learning curve in getting it set up on your system. The PG Music forum is an excellent resource in helping you to do this because there are always one or two helpful folks who have chosen the same path as you have.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Before leaving the topic of MIDI styles, I want to talk a little about MIDI SuperTracks. These are the ones that come up in blue after you have selected a style.

The standard MIDI tracks (the ones in yellow) are standard MIDI patterns generated by a style. MIDI SuperTracks are MIDI recordings of real musicians playing real MIDI instruments. As a result, they already have nuances that only a live musician can produce during a live performance. An example of this type of nuance would be the way that a musician varies how hard he or she presses down on the piano keys while playing. The long and the long of it is that if you are going to use MIDI and if there is a suitable MIDI SuperTrack then it would be preferable to choose the SuperTrack over the standard MIDI track.

Chapter 4: Refining your backing track When you have gained a bit of experience making basic backing tracks, you are most certainly going to want to experiment with some of the more advanced capabilities of Band-in-a-Box. This chapter will only scratch the surface of what you can achieve with this product. I aim to whet your appetite and encourage you to do your own research, get involved in the various BIAB communities, watch some YouTube videos and find out as much as you can.

Swap out specific instrument tracks I am pretty sure that at this stage of the game you will want to swap at least one instrument for some other instrument. The ability to exchange one instrument for another is powerful and easy to achieve with BIAB. Cowbell! I need more cowbell! As an aside, if you want more cowbell in your song you are going to have to use a MIDI track. Sadly there does not seem to be a suitable RealTrack. I do,

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

however, live in the hope that PG Music will provide one in a future release so that we can easily add more cowbell to our songs. So let’s say I want to remove one of the guitars and add a cello to my Amazing Grace song. Right click on the guitar track and choose “Select RealTracks.”

This will open the RealTracks selection screen. Click the “Show All” button to ensure that you don’t have any filters applied. Now type the word “cello” and “waltz” (since I am only interested in waltz RealTracks at this time) in the “Filter by” box and press update.

BIAB will show you all the cello RealTracks that you have purchased (tracks that you have not purchased will have “N/A” up front.) You will see that you will be able to choose from two “waltz” cello tracks. I auditioned and selected “Cello Background SlowWaltz.” Press return and BIAB will replace the guitar with the selected cello RealTrack.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

If you would like to use a MIDI track instead of a RealTrack then right click on a track and choose “Select MIDI Instrument (patch).” I can highly recommend trying out the MIDI strings tracks. While you are about it, try experimenting with the MIDI SuperTracks. Right click on a track and choose “Select MIDI SuperTrack for this track.” Type “waltz” in the space provided and try out the strings.

Make specific instruments play only in certain sections So now we are going to get very fancy. Say you want your cello to only play in the last chorus. Here is how you do it. Right click your mouse in the first bar of the song and select “bar settings.”

A whole world of possibilities will open up. Pull down the menu option for the “cello” track and select “Mute.” Press “OK.”

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Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Right-click your mouse on the first bar of the last chorus (in our case this would be bar 115), select the pull-down for the “cello” track and select “back to normal. You will see that BIAB will put a little red line underneath the bar number to show that there have been some changes to bar settings in this bar.

Add another instrument Most BIAB styles will have five instruments already in them. You can use up to seven instruments at the same time song by using the “Melody” and the “Soloist” tracks. To add a new instrument rightclick any track that does not already have an instrument assigned and then select the required RealTracks, MIDI tracks or MIDI SuperTracks as described above.

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www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Add even more instruments Say you have used up all 7 of your BIAB tracks and you still want a different instrument (say a piano) to play in the chorus. The good news is that you can do this using the “bar settings” menu. The bad news is that you cannot have more than seven instruments playing in BIAB at the same time. If you really want to do this, you will have to learn how to use a RealBand or another DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). The use of RealBand or another DAW is outside the scope of this particular eBook. You can change the instrument via the “bar settings” menu by right-clicking at the bar you want the piano to start playing, choose the track where the instrument that you want to stop playing is located and select the RealTrack you want to start playing at this time.

You can do this for every bar in your song and for all seven BIAB tracks. In this way, you can end up with a zillion different instruments in your song. Well maybe not a zillion but you get the picture ☺ I strongly urge you to experiment with the other settings and parameters that can be changed in the “bar settings” menu because the possibilities are endless. In addition to bringing instruments in and out of your arrangement, you can change the whole style of a song halfway through. You can change key, tempo and number of beats per bar. You can make the song as complex as you want.

Add instrumental solo One of the practical uses of bar level changes will be to introduce an instrumental solo only in a specific section of the song. I am pretty sure you don’t want a shredding electric guitar solo playing throughout your whole song (unless, of course, the shredding electric guitar IS the entire song!). Here is the workflow I recommend for instrumental solos. If the style you select has a solo instrument in it, then use the “bar settings” menu to silence the solo instrument at the beginning of the song, bring it in where the solo should play and then silence it again afterward.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

In my version of Amazing Grace, I substituted the third verse for an instrumental solo. I selected Harmonica, Background CountryWaltzSlowJellyRoll Sw 085. To find a good solo instrument I right clicked on the blank “soloist” track and selected “Select RealTracks” and then “Select best soloist RealTracks.”

BIAB then shows me all the best choices I have for a solo instrument based on the current style and tempo.

I then went to the first bar in my song; right clicked and muted the harmonica. I then right clicked in bar 83 (the start of the third verse) selected bar settings and set the harmonica “back to normal.” I then right clicked in bar 99 and muted the harmonica again. You will see the red line under the bar numbers. These show you that I have made bar level changes

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Add backing vocals In the last few years, PG music has started introducing backing vocal RealTracks. These are oohs, aahs and mmms. The RealTracks consist of female, male and mixed vocals. Let’s say I want to create some build in my last chorus. One of the ways of doing this is to introduce backing vocals but only in the last chorus. Right-click on a blank track in BIAB. Choose “select RealTracks” and “select RealTracks” again. Type “vocal” in the track filter box and press “Update.” You will be able to see all of the backing vocal RealTracks. You can choose female “aahs” or male “oohs” or even some “mmms.” I have chosen “vocal mmms” since this is a gospel song that we are making here. Note: I did not specifically find any “waltz” background vocals, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. Who is making these rules anyway? As before I muted the vocals at the start of the song and brought them “back to normal” in bar 115.

Use stops and holds to add interest Nothing catches the attention of a listener more than... the sound of silence! Hello darkness my old friend. Okay, so now I have your attention, I will tell you how to use silence (or rather stops and holds,) to make your track more interesting. Say you want your bass and the guitar to finish off each verse with a long solid strum before launching into the chorus, but you want the rest of the “band” to continue playing. You can do this using the “chord settings” menu. Right-click in the last bar of each verse (in my case that would be bars 34, 66 and 98). Pull down the “rest shots and holds” button and select “hold.” Select “all except” and tick all the other instruments other than the bass and the guitar.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

In my backing tracks, I use mainly the “hold” function, but you are most welcome to experiment with the “rest only” and “shot” options.

Add lyrics to your BIAB file So now when you press play in BIAB, you have a fantastic backing track, customized to your choice of chords, key, tempo, style and instruments and you want to sing along but can never remember the darn lyrics! (At my age even the words for Amazing Grace present a problem!). So you go the old fashioned route of printing out the words on a piece of paper and writing the chords above the lyrics. However, there is a better way, and that is to use chords and lyrics that scroll along in sync with the backing track, like karaoke for guitar players (or keyboard players or ukulele players, you get the picture). One way to achieve this is to use what PG music calls "bar based lyrics.” Here is how to do it. 1. Get the lyrics into notepad. Just google “Amazing Grace” plus the word "lyrics" and cut and paste the lyrics into notepad. Here is what came out of Google. Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me I once was lost, but now am found T'was blind but now I see T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear And Grace, my fears relieved How precious did that grace appear The hour I first believed …etc. 2. Format the lyrics The trick is to format the song so that the lyric for each bar starts on a new line. Use a blank line if there is a bar with no lyrics on it. Here is what I ended up with on Amazing Grace.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Amazing grace how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me I once was lost, but now I'm found Was blind but now I see …etc. 3. Set up Band-in-a-Box to use bar based lyrics Pull down the chord display button Select layers>bar lyrics

You will see a blue line appears above your chords.

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Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

4. Copy your lyrics to the lyric bar Select your lyrics from your notepad file and copy them to your clipboard by pressing CTL-C. Double click your mouse in blue space above the chord in the bar where the lyrics start (in my case it is bar 2). The color of the bar will change from blue to purple. Press CTL-V to paste the formatted lyrics from your clipboard into Band-in-a-Box.

5. Fine tune If you find that Band-in-a-box has placed the lyrics into the wrong bar, then click your mouse at the start of the lyrics you want to move and press "enter" to move them one bar to the right and "backspace" to move them one bar to the left. Note; this gets easier the more you do it, and you

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

learn pretty quickly how to format the lyrics (as described in step 3) so that Band-in-a-Box puts them in the right place the first time. 6. Change the size of the lyrics If you are like me and not be able to see the lyrics very clearly, you may want to increase the font size of the words. You will need to use the Band-in-Box display settings. These settings will depend on whether you are using the "Normal screen mode" or the "Minimal screen mode." My examples all show Band-in-a-Box in "Normal screen mode." To change the display settings enter Options>Preferences>Display. You will need to mess about with the settings and parameters highlighted below. Warning: some of these parameters don't always work as expected. When you are happy, you should SAVE THE SCHEME so that you can use the same scheme each time you set up new lyrics in Band-in-a-Box. The following picture shows which parameters with which you will need to experiment.

I have two schemes saved. One for when I am in "Normal screen mode" (this one is named "lyrics half screen") and the other for when I am in "Minimal screen mode" (which is named "Lyrics video" since these are the settings that Band-in-a-Box uses to make the videos).

Make a backing track from a MIDI file The method that I have been describing thus far is to make a backing track from scratch. There is an alternative method that some of you may want to try and that is to create a backing track using a MIDI file as a base. First, find and download a MIDI file that you like by searching in google for “Amazing Grace MIDI file.” You may have to download quite a few versions before you find one that you like. It is a good

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

idea to find a version that has the melody in it (like karaoke files.) I typed “Amazing Grace MIDI file with melody” into google and found a version that could work.

Now open the MIDI file in Band-in-a-Box. You will probably notice that, when you open this type of file in Band-in-a-Box, the MIDI file plays in one track only (in my case this is the “guitar” track.) The rest of the tracks will not be playing. This is because the “style” is disabled by default when you open this type of file.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

The first step is to isolate the “melody” in the MIDI file. Press “Play” and then while the MIDI file is playing, the green “SEQ” button and select “Sequence on Melody track.”

You will now see all the instrument channels that are present in this midi file. Find which channel the melody is playing on by “unticking” all the instruments and then “ticking” each in turn until you hear the melody playing. In my case, the melody is playing on channel 4 by the harmonica.

Delete all the other channels by clicking the “Edit” button a choosing “delete.” Repeat this process for all channels except channel 4.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Press “Ok.” Band-in-a-Box will ask you if you want to convert this to its own channel. You should answer “Yes.”

When you press “play,” you should hear only the melody playing. The next step is to select a suitable RealStyle to accompany your melody. Select “Style” and type “CWALTZP.STY” in the style selection filter.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Choose “Yes” to enable “style” for this song.

You will see that Band-in-a-Box has populated the first five instruments with the RealTracks associated with this style and that the “guitar” track still has the MIDI melody on it. You can make this backing track sound exactly like you want by changing the key, chords, instruments and part markers as previously described.

Record a live instrument or vocals Let’s say you want to add a recording your vocals to your track. Perhaps you want to record yourself playing the flute. Maybe you want to hear how your guitar playing sounds when played back with

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

the track so that you can monitor your progress. Perhaps you want to record yourself adding some vocal harmonies to your backing track so that these will compliment your live performance. To achieve this, you will need to open a whole can of worms under the banner of “recording audio.” Be aware that in attempting to record audio you will go down a rabbit hole of audio interfaces, microphones, pre-amps, mic placement, room treatment, etc. You can spend the rest of your life with this stuff. An in-depth analysis of the process of recording audio is a study in itself and beyond the scope of this book. I do cover the process of recording and editing vocals in quite a bit of depth in my course First Song with BIAB for Windows Anyway, we will soldier on with a high-level attempt to record and edit audio in BIAB. First, you will need some way to record. The built-in microphone on your computer will not cut it, especially when compared to the pristine recordings provided by RealTracks. The cheapest and easiest way to record audio is via a USB microphone. I have a Samsung Meteor USB Mic that provides pretty good quality. There are loads of USB mics available. If you are going to be going down this route, I suggest you spend a bit of time doing some research and watching “comparison” type videos on YouTube. With microphones, I think you get what you pay for. So if you buy a mic for $49.99 your tracks will sound like they are recorded on a $49.99 microphone. I am NOT saying you need to spend thousands on a microphone. I am saying that a good quality USB microphone is an excellent place to start your recording career. You can always find some good bargains on Craigslist. Once you know that you are hooked and have a nice tax refund coming your way you can look at upgrading to an audio interface and a good studio microphone. Then with your second tax refund, you can look at acoustically treating your room. With your third tax refund, you can look at building a vocal booth, etc. You will have something to spend your tax refunds on for the rest of your life! All that being said, I firmly believe that a great approach to recording audio is to start with what you’ve got. It was advice that I got when I first started using BIAB and excellent advice at that. Don’t wait until you have the perfect acoustically treated basement studio with a recording booth and a $5,000 microphone before starting. You will never get there! If you have got a computer and a good USB microphone you have enough to get started. When you are ready to get started with an audio interface, I have found the Focusrite Scarlett Solo is perfect for my needs (after all I am not recording a whole band at once, I have BIAB for that). For a long time, I just used a Rode NT3 condenser microphone. I recently upgraded to a new studio microphone. I am using a Rode NT2-A studio mic and a vocal shield.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Tip: In choosing this mic I went to the music shop with my laptop and a song already setup in RealBand. I then recorded myself singing the same song into four separate tracks with four different microphones. I then switched between the tracks with studio headphones and through the music shop’s (beautiful) studio monitors before settling on the mic with the best price to quality ratio for my voice. Once you have decided on the way to record the audio, you will need to download device drivers and set up BIAB to record. Device drivers will be particular to the microphone or audio interface that you purchased, so I am not going to be able to go through this with you. You should note that whatever set up you choose there will be ten people on the PG Music forums with a similar set up that can guide you through if you are having trouble. Go into “options>Audio” and check that the correct device driver is loaded. My Scarlett Solo uses an ASIO driver, so that is what is set up under my audio settings. If you are recording a mono signal, then set your audio track to “mono.” You will only want to set up your track to stereo if you are recording a stereo instrument like a piano or keyboard. For now, we are recording a mono signal since vocals by their nature are mono.

When you have your recording gear setup nicely and BIAB set up you can try and record some audio. Press the “Record Audio” button.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Test your recording levels first by singing into the microphone. You should never be in the red zone. You should be just kissing the yellow at the loudest parts.

You can adjust the levels in windows by double-clicking the “Set recording levels” and the doubleclicking your audio device. The click the “levels” and adjust the levels. My audio device is a Focusrite Scarlett Solo, and I also have a volume control knob on the front of the device that I can adjust.

Record your performance from start to finish. You will get the opportunity to re-record as many times as required until you are happy. Have a look at the directory where BIAB saved your song. You will notice that there is a Wav file with exactly the same name as your BIAB file. This is the recording of your audio. BIAB does not store the audio in the SGU song itself. You will notice that the BIAB song is tiny (8 KB in my case) while the audio Wav is big (23 MB in my case).

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Once you have saved your performance, you may want to edit it. There are quite a few things you can do in BIAB to edit the audio. If you are like me, you will almost certainly want to remove some coughs, splutters and dogs barking in the background. Tip: Before you start messing about with editing your vocal, it may be an idea to take a backup copy of your original recording. In that way, you won't have to re-record if you make some undesirable edits. When you have done that select the Audio>Audio Edit Window. Alternatively, you can press CTR+SHIFT+A to switch between the audio edit window and the chord display window.

You will see your full performance as an audio waveform. A waveform is a graphic representation of sound levels over time. You can zoom in and out. You can cut things out; you can silence the dog barking and, if you are feeling brave, you can move items around. I have highlighted some of the functions you are going to want to use. You are going to want to learn how to zoom in and out. You are going to want to see the whole track, and you are going to want to get to know how the functions in the “edit” drop-down work. I suggest you experiment with these functions on a copy of your vocal.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Before leaving the topic of recording audio, I would like to introduce you to the topic of effects. The two effects that I would recommend trying are compression and reverb. Compression is an effect that is typically used to even out the levels of your performance. It will reduce the loudest parts of a performance and boost the quietest parts. To apply compression, click the “Plugins” tab on the mixer window. Right click on the “audio” channel. Select “PG Dynamics” from the pull-down menu for the audio channel.

Experiment with the “threshold” setting until you see the compressor working. You will know that the effect is working when you see the red line coming in and out as you play through the track. The red line is showing you where the compressor is reducing the loudest portions. You may want to untick the “auto gain” option and manually adjust the gain to taste. “Gain” is a term used in audio engineering for loudness levels.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

The other effect I would recommend that you experiment with is reverb. Reverb is the effect that is created when a sound bounces off a solid surface such as a wall. Sort of like an echo but more subtle. Most modern recordings you hear will have some artificial reverb added to them. The amount of reverb that you add to your recording is a matter of personal taste. I generally apply the reverb effect until I can hear it and then dial it back a touch. To apply reverb to your audio track select the plugins tab and right click on the audio track. Select the second drop-down box so that you do not lose the PG Dynamics effect you have already applied. Then select the PG Reverb option.

Experiment with the “wet” slider until you can only just hear the reverb and then dial it back a touch. The picture below shows the amount of reverb I will typically add to my vocals.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Convert your audio to a harmony track BIAB has the most incredible tool in its built-in TC Helicon audio harmony generation tool. You can convert the audio that you recorded to a harmony track, using the actual audio track and the chords of the song. Select Harmony>Audio Harmonies, pitch tracking (TC Helicon).

Select the “Harmonize to the chords of the song” and then select an option from the drop-down. A nice one to try is 2 up 2 down.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

You can experiment with the slider for “dry voice level.” This slider will mix your lead vocal in with the generated harmony. If you want to perform live with your backing track and you want to sing the lead vocal over the harmony, then you will want to move the slider right to the bottom. This will mean that there is no lead vocal mixed in with the resulting track. If you want to publish a finished song, complete with lead vocal, then you may want the slider in the middle. Press the “Preview” button until you are happy and then press “generate.”

Once you are back in Band-in-a-Box, you can listen to the result. If you press play, you will hear the harmony track playing along with your backing. You can press “undo” if you don’t want to keep the harmony or “save” if you want to overwrite your original audio with the harmony. If you want the harmony only in, say, the choruses, you can use the edit audio functionality described above to insert silence in the verses. If you would like to download version 2 of my backing track (along with the harmonies), you can do so here.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Performing with your track There is always a lot of discussion on the PG Music forums on how to perform in a live situation with your BIAB backing tracks. There are just about as many options and opinions on the best way to do this as there are users on the forum! You will need to experiment and find the way that suits you the best. Here are a few suggestions for you to try.

Use the actual BIAB SGU files on a computer or tablet You can use your computer, tablet or iPhone to play the SGU songs themselves. BIAB has a “Jukebox” function that will allow you to play all the songs in a specific directory one after the other without you having to load the songs. Select the “Jukebox” function from the “Transport” banner and select the directory where all your SGUs live. Untick all the options so that BIAB does not mess with your arrangement. Select at least 20 seconds between songs so that you have time to halt playback (by pressing the spacebar) while you are telling a joke.

The easiest way to set up a playlist is to put a number in front of the SGU name and then set up the Jukebox to play in alphabetical order by unchecking the “random order playback” tick-box. Of course, this is a bit of a pain if you want to make changes to the order of your song on the fly or set up a specific playlist for a particular gig. If you decide to use this approach and you have added the lyrics to the BIAB file you will not need to have a separate chord and lyric sheet.

Write the BIAB track to an MP3 or WAV file Writing your song to an MP3 or Wav file is, in my opinion, is the most straightforward and foolproof way of performing with backtracks. To save your BIAB song as an MP3 or WAV file, select File >Save special> and then select save as an MP3 or WAV.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

You can play these MP3 or WAV files through any audio device you have at your disposal. These devices include your computer, your phone, and your tablet, a flash drive, an MP3 player, CDs or looping pedal with an SD card. Tip: if you use your phone or tablet make sure you turn off mobile data and Wi-Fi so that song playback does not stop (or get interrupted by a beep) when you get a call or a message. MP3 files take up a lot less disk space than WAV files. If disc space is an issue, you should choose to use the MP3 format since there is only a small sacrifice on quality. Use whatever playlist functionality you have available in your selected audio player to organize your tracks. In the past, I have used an audio player such as WinAmp where I can press the space bar to start the next song. Some people use an SD card and a looping pedal so that the foot pedal can start the next song. Plug your audio player directly into your PA system and turn up the volume! You may also want to print out hard copy versions of your chords and lyrics and keep them in a folder. You can also use an application such as Onsong or Piascore for your chords and lyrics. Onsong provides the ability to scroll the chords and lyrics in synch with an MP3 backtrack. The main disadvantage of this approach is that you cannot make changes to your BIAB songs “on the fly.” It is a bit of a fiddle if you suddenly decide you don’t want the saxophone playing. Tip: If you are playing an important gig (like one where you are being paid to perform) then you may consider taking a “backup” audio device with your tracks already loaded in case the one you have suddenly stopped working (or gets stolen from the stage, which, in South Africa, is entirely possible.)

Make a video of your BIAB chords and lyrics window A slightly more sophisticated approach will be to write the BIAB file to an MP4 video file and copy this file to a device that can play video files. These types of devices will include your computer, a smartphone, and your tablet. You can have the chords and the lyrics scroll along in time with the audio.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

To export your BIAB song to an MP4, choose “Video” from the views banner and then choose “Render videos.” Pick the “chords” section up with your mouse and place it on the video layout section of the screen. Make sure that video layout is “single (1)” and “Best fit (100%) 1280 X 720” is selected. Then press render.

You can copy the resulting MP4 file to your device, plug your device into your PA system and away you go. There will be no need for pesky pieces of paper on the stage with you while you perform. You may need to look for third-party video player software for your device so that you can organize your songs into playlists. As with MP3s, the disadvantage of this approach is that you cannot make changes to your song on the fly. If you find it difficult to read the scrolling the standard BIAB chords and lyrics, try changing the display options as described above. It is still a good idea to have a backup plan in case your device goes on the blink during your gig.

Make karaoke style MP4 videos If you battle to read the lyrics and chords using the method above you may want to make your own video with scrolling chords and lyrics like this. I make these video files using a software program called YouTube Movie Maker. This software is free if you are making videos of less than 5 minutes and is easy to learn. Here is a link to a video with basic instructions on YouTube Movie Maker. If you are interested in making these types of videos, I wrote a blog post about it a while back. Here is the link. As above, once you have your MP4 files, you should copy them to any device that can play video. These include your computer, your smartphone, and your tablet. You then plug your video playing device straight into your PA system. As above you may need to look for third-party video player software for your device so that you can organize your songs into playlists.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

Make MP3+CDG files MP3+CDG files are the old fashioned way of making karaoke tracks. The MP3 is the audio, and the CDG is the video that plays along in sync with the MP3 track. You need to purchase special software to make these files. The software I used is called MP3+CDG maker from Power Karaoke. There is a bit of a learning curve associated with this software. Here is a link to a YouTube video explaining this software. Your audio player of choice will also need to be able to play MP3+CDG files. Many audio players will play these kinds of files so you can choose from have loads of options. In the past, I have used WinAmp (and a plugin that plays the CDG files). WinAmp also provides great playlist functionality. BIAB itself can play these types of files. To play the CDG file in Band-in-a-Box, you will need to first, render your song to a WAV or MP3 file and then open the audio file in BIAB. Select window>lyrics>show karaoke window. If you are interested in making these types of videos, I wrote a blog post about it a while back. Here is the link.

Final words on performing with BIAB Whatever method you choose to perform with your BIAB backing tracks you must make sure that you know exactly what is going to happen, when it is going to happen and be prepared for every contingency. There is a lot involved in playing live with backtracks, and sometimes there may be a lot at stake. Please imagine for a moment that you have been paid quite a bit of money to perform at somebody’s wedding at an out of town venue. You choose to use BIAB backing tracks and have been practicing for weeks. You get to the venue, set up your gear and then plug in the device where you have your BIAB songs stored, and…nothing happens. What are you going to do except head quickly for the nearest exist never to be seen again? Here is a checklist for you to use when considering performing with BIAB: • • • •

• • • • •

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Keep it as simple as possible Run through your entire set beforehand using the exact setup you plan to use on the night. Do this a couple of times Set up your PA system in your lounge and practice through a mic. Make sure you can easily reach your audio device. Do you have a way to mount your audio device so that it is easy to reach between songs instead of having it balance on a barstool Make sure you know exactly how to move between songs Make sure you know how to halt playback in an “emergency.” Like when a loud buzzing noise comes out of you PA at 110 decibels Make sure you are not going to be interrupted by calls and messages on your audio device Make sure that your computer does not suddenly reboot in the middle of a song. Windows PCs have a habit of doing this when they want to update windows. Make sure you have a backup audio device with your songs already loaded and also a backup of your chords and lyrics (if required).

Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

• •

•

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

It may be an idea to have a backup for your backup. Make sure that all the audio tracks are at the same level and that a quiet folk tune does not blast out at an unexpectedly loud volume. There should be no volume shocks at all. You can use a program like MP3gain to normalize the levels all your audio files Make sure you cater for all contingencies. Over time you will get better at this. In the meantime, it is an idea to list all the things that can go wrong and make a plan for how you will deal with each one.

Conclusion Well, that brings us to the end of our journey in making and performing with BIAB backing tracks. Here is what you learned: • • • • • • •

You learned how to choose the right version of BIAB to purchase and how to install it on your computer Then you learned how to get hold of the chords and key of a song and to set up the basic structure in BIAB You learned how to choose a suitable style for your song You learned the difference between MIDI styles and RealStyles You learned how to spice up your backing track by changing tempo, key, style, and instruments and by using stops and holds You learned the basics of recording audio Finally, you learned how to perform live with your tracks.

I would love to hear your feedback on the eBook so please do not hesitate to contact me on https://www.joannecooper.co.za/contact If you feel you are on the way to recording and releasing your very first song using Band-in-a-Box and RealBand, then check out my video course First Song with Band-in-a-Box for Windows If you would like to join the Facebook user group you can do so here www.facebook.com/BIABusers

About the author Ever since I can remember I have loved to sing. One of the earliest memories of my childhood is sitting on the floor of my bedroom in Harare, Zimbabwe, with one of those suitcase type gramophones and singing along to “Two little boys had two little toys” on repeat. Then when I was about 14, I persuaded my mum to buy me a guitar. Playing the guitar and singing has given me years and years of pleasure and comfort and I often thank my mum for buying me that first guitar. In about 2013 I wanted to start writing songs. I set about learning all that I could about the art of song-writing. Then I tried to record those songs, and that’s when the fun started! After some initial messing around with a DAW (Mixcraft) and then going into a

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za

Band-in-a-Box 101

A Beginners Guide to Making and Performing with Backing Tracks

By Joanne Cooper

(rather crummy) studio, I started an intensive period of online research. I found and purchased Band-in-a-Box, and I can honestly say that it has transformed my musical life. In between my “real” job of being a computer analyst and my other job of being a wife and mother, I have recorded and released 12 full albums and some singles, all using Band-in-Box. None of that would have been possible without PG Music’s fantastic products. In 2017 I published a video course on how to record and release a song using Band-in-a-Box for Windows and have had well over 200 people take the course. Since then I have remained committed to sharing the knowledge I have gained on this fantastic software via eBooks, courses and blog posts and by participating on the PG Music forums.

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Copyright Joanne Cooper 2019. All rights reserved

www.joannecooper.co.za