1) Is it worth upgrading to 'Band in a Box 2005' from 'Band in a Box 2004'?

2) Is it possible to easily convert 'Band in a Box' styles into Yamaha format (.sty) arranger keyboard styles? Is an additional special program required to accomplish this?

3) Has anybody here actually done this? If so, how do the results sound?

4) Instructions for converting Band in a Box styles to Yamaha (.sty) styles would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Scott

Scott. Yes it has been done....not by me though....but I remember downloading a few style converted from BIAB a couple of years back and they were passable.
Regarding BIAB2005 I have recently upgraded from 2004 but the way I use it the 50 or so improvements that they list have not yet crossed my path so to speak.

It seems logical that you could convert BIAB styles into arranger styles, even if you just exported short phrases from BIAB to MIDI files and then used those to create your own arranger styles. Don't know if there is an easier method... maybe...

I looked over BIAB 2005 and decided not to upgrade from 2004. There really didn't seem to be enough changes to warrant. You might recall our conversation about programmers needing to upgrade their software versus users needing to - this seems like yet another example. I did spring for some new styles though.

Happy New Year!

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There are 2 ways to get a style from your KB into BiaB. Both involve exporting the style out as a MIDI and importing into BiaB. Importing through the Style Editor takes longer and allows more tweaking. The "Style Wizard" is much faster. There is a good chance that this method will yield acceptable results after one or two tries.

Douglas Wolfe

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Graham & the Pro (Jim):

After re-reviewing Band-in-a-Box 2005's new features more closely, I decided it was worth upgrading to, at least in for me.

Here are the specific NEW features (among the 50) I will personally find worthwhile having:

1) Multiple 'lyric lines' now supported on printout of fake sheets.
2) Support for: Jazz Chord Symbols
3) 3 & 4 PART 'rootless style' Jazz Harmonies "in 4ths"
4) Editing of Audio Tracks now 'non-destructive'
5) Full Featured Piano Roll (finally!)

Here's the COMPLETE list of new Band-in-a-Box 2005 features: http://pgmusic.com/bbwin_newfeatures.htm

Ok guys, I'm off to work. See ya NEXT year. - Scott

New versions of BIAB are always worth the money. There may be no one particular feature in the 2005 version that stands out for you. Keep looking. There are a great many features and a nice collections of bundled add-ins.

Check out the discussion on BiaB's user group to see how the new version looks to BIAB users.
http://www.pgmusic.com

http://www.pgmusic.com/cgi-bin/Ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=005630

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Hi Scott,
easiest way of doing it would be through Jos's 1 man band program. ie create a midifile of the style you're tryin to convert in BIAB.
Then use OMB's midifile to style function.
Has great tools for any additioal style editing you may require.
Sometimes there's not enough variety between the BIAB variations to create 4 styles for a psr.
Easily fxed. OMB also allows to to save ( export ) and load ( import) individual style tracks ie drums, bass etc for a style part , so you can mix n' match and create a bit of variety.

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Scottyee:
[B]1)

Mostly, I enjoy the solo feature for improving my improvisation. I also like the straight-ahead jazz styles.
Some styles like the Wynton Kelly style does the bass note on one and three pretty bouncy for tunes like "Doxy" and then you can have it go into four at the bridge and for the second chorus for improvising and back to two for the last chorus etc. I also like the old time Jazz Ballad style that can be set to do double time at bridges and the second chorus etc.

BIAB also does a great Jazz Pedal Bass on 2 and 4 for intros on the up-tempo styles. Man it sounds like real Jazz not “fake jazz.” This pedal bass on 2 and 4 is also great on the turn-around’s before the next chorus etc. The Pedal Bass really stands out on the last 4 bars of Foggy Day also.

I type out all of my vocals with the chords above the lyrics in my word processor. I tried the lyrics feature in BIAB three years ago and found it cumbersome. The word processor gets the cheese IMHO.

Like everything else in music technology, BIAB caters to the Guitar crowd. I'll say it again; you can’t blame anyone in sales because, we're all probably related to 20 or 30 people who can strum a guitar! Right? Every year since I first acquired BIAB version 8 I’ve only upgraded 3 times. I have 2004 and this year out of the hump-teen new features 99% of them are designed for guitar. The other 3 or 4 features to me are useless.

I wrote and told them that I would upgrade again when I’d see a fade out incorporated. I’d like to see the volume settings for each back-up instrument saved with the song file. Sometimes on different styles the Bass and Drums are too loud.

I do a few songs live with BIAB while playing my sax. I have to learn to live with the volume being annoying at times. You can change the volume for the different back-up instruments, however on the next song depending on the style for the next song the bass or drums may be to soft. It’s a problem for the few people who are going to use it live as I do. In your studio it’s no problem.

I got BIAB 2005 as a Christmas present, and my previous version was 12, so it was a nice step up.

Regarding fades, the new full piano roll feature allows you to draw in Controller levels with a pencil tool. This might be a fast way to fade the ending (haven't tried it, just a thought.)

acctjm

One of the features of BIAB is that it will convert your biab midi file to WAV if you use the included DXi softsynth, then will also compress it to MP3 or WMA format. I tried this, but the resulting WMA file sounded much worse than the WAV file. There seemed to be a background distortion and a phasing effect occurring. I believe that I had all of the settings/procedures correct. The sound quality of the converted BIAB files seemed much lower when compared to the WMA versions of a song that had been copied to the computer with Windows Media player.

Has anybody else tried creating WMA files with BIAB? What were your results?