Band in a box 2019 is here and it now functions as a plugin inside your favorite (windows) daw..

Would love to see this for Varranger too

yep. this is a superb program. My copy is on order and I'm looking forward to using the newest features and the 202 new real tracks!

Biab has really grown to something great during the years.
My brother in law has been using it for ages, buys every update, and he loves it.

Does anybody think band-in-a-box is any different from a backing track, midi file, sequence, Etc, versus playing live with a style? As many here judging y their posts look down upon anything but playing with a style?

Yes its very different...
Biab is a tool to easilly create your own backing tracks/midifiles/audio files..

Its much more like an arranger that only works with a chord sequencer
On top of that, you can add some instrumental solo’s..

So basically in opposite to what you ask... its the tool to create them..

Thanks Bachus,
Figured it must be round the time for the 2019 version to be released, Haven’t done a full upgrade for the last couple of years, ( just the program itself) but seriously considering the full upgrade this time round. Something different to play around with.

Hi Donny,
a lot of the styles use audio tracks so they sound great.
I would have thought anyone that is a singer, their main instrument would be their voice, would it really matter what one used for backing, be it a keyboard, midifiles, or band in a box, as long as the backing sounds good.

Maybe the same would go for an instrumentalist . my son is taking up guitar again, biab could be a great teaching tool for practicing or for backing. I think I could show him how to use biab, far easier, than it would be for him to use the keyboard I gave the grandkids a couple of years back.

I am thinking of upgrading my BIAB which is ancient. I am thinking of midi or real track sequences and wonder what use BIAB tracks would be in my Pa4X, which shows me the lead notation. I presume you have to choose midi over real tracks, and would that play in my Korg?

The second question is related to the computer that would be needed for the whole program in general. If I buy the Ultimate+ flash drive, I wouldn't have to worry about capacity so much as disk speed for audio. I haven't touched BIAB in years, so I apologize for these fundamental questions. I would appreciate any advice offered.

Bernie

I have to say...this new plugin feature has got me intrigued. Just may have to upgrade my 2017 version.

Maybe this time I’ll even try to learn it

Wouldn’t it be great if arrangers would show up in your daw as a plug-in and transfer parts
to separate tracks. Imagine the possibilities (Yamaha...hint...hint)

You can save BB songs as a MIDI file that will play on the PA4X and you can change the sounds and so forth from there-don't know about the notation. As for the computer, any reasonable computer will run it. But if you want to run it from an external drive rather than install everything on your computer, I would recommend the USB hard drive option. I just tried 2014 with the USB hard drive with my laptop and it runs fine so I upgraded to 2019. Hopefully I can pick up something from John Jarvis. Also liked the background vocals they have added since my last upgrade. Nothing fills out an arrangement like some oohs and ahhs.

This is exactly what yamaha has done for the montage....
So the technollogy is allready developed...

If the technology is there...why not implement in their arrangers. After all, they only charge significantly more for the pleasure of buying an arranger over a modx.

Oh yah...I forgot. Marketing 101 at Harvard Business School. Pricing has no bearing on the cost of manufacturing.

Fellow arranger lovers...we’re getting gouged.

PS: Don’t mind me guys...I haven’t had my coffee yet!

I agree 100 percent. With what they are charging for the Genos, it should come with "everything" including top shelf vocal harmony and the ability to plugin to Cubase.

+1

BIAB gives me an unbelievable larger palate of sounds making the purchase of a newer kb unnecessary. I find it interesting that Yamaha is bragging about its real drums that BIAB has not only had for years but gives you yhe ability to record and create your own. BIAB also provides over 2700 real tracks and the ability to create user real tracks with an active user base that is doing just that. Yes, it is not a real time arranger but it does provide exceptional back up tracks that work well with any keyboard. It takes no longer to create a backup track than it does to set up a registration or create a song style on the kb and in my opinion the final results are usually much better.

Band in a box is a fantastic program but arranger players will always think it's faking canned karaoke music vs using live styles that's where the trouble lies and thoughts all around the music community.

Thats what i have been saying since Genos release...
The most expensive keyboard they are selling should have it all

Hi Donny,
One always has the option of playing along using a keyboard ( minus styles), piano, guitar,whatever, if one feels they need to play an instrument.Style tracks can always be muted and the part can be played live by the performer.

I used to split my keyboard. Pad left hand, melody right. My piano playing wasn’t really good enough for me to mute the piano track and play the whole thing. Biab, did a better job. Haha

quote{_Band in a box is a fantastic program but arranger players will always think it's faking canned karaoke music vs using live styles that's where the trouble lies and thoughts all around the music community}

Yes and then the totally traditional musician also claims using live styles is no different then faking canned karaoke. It's been an ongoing spin by those who take the argument against arrangers in general. Using styles is cheating also. I laugh every time I see someone claim they play everything live with no Karaoke or mp3's. Yeah just the use of special styles and one finger chords!

As a performer I believe in providing the best product I'm capable of. I am going to try using the best tools available to me to do that. If I was moving cross country I would't attempt it using just a pickup. I would want the biggest box van uhaul provides!

Right on Bachus. I’ve been harping on arrangers having multiple outputs, when all along it should be a software upgrade.

Ketron, Korg, and Yamaha arrangers should all allow for software integration to your favorite daw.

With the quality sounds produced by these machines, software that allows individual tracking in your daw should be a no brainer. Especially, now that BIAB can do it.

Hi Bernie,
Your best shot would be to go to biab forums, they used to be really helpful.

As for the styles, there are “midi styles “any songs you saved as midifiles could be played in the Pa4x like any other midifile you have.
The styles using real tracks would have to be saved as audio files.

I’ve never played around with audio on the Pa4x, guessing it plays mp3 files.
I’ve never had any luck saving biab files as mp3 ( could be something weird about my laptop) but have saved as wav file to be converted to mp3 using another program. Think I tried it for the pa3x.

Notation in the korg, haven’t tried it, I read my music from fake book or iPad. Biab does lead sheets, would have to do some checking.

Laptop doesn’t have to be as powerful as one would imagine. Check with pg. or the forum.
My 3 to 4 year old laptop runs them perfectly. I got talked into a laptop with a solid state drive. Big mistake only had 70 gigs, which ended up being nowhere big enough to fit the biab audio files. Hadn’t been using the program at the time, so didn’t take it into account.
Got around it though. Bought a 128 gig ssd external USB drive. Loaded the real track instruments on it. Worked well.

More recently I bought a tiny256 gig USB stick put everything on it and it seems to run just as well as it did on the external USB solid state drive.

I’ll probably get the ultra pack plus on usb hardrive , upgrade , 2017 or earlier, as I missed out on a couple of years of real tracks. Get a clean start and just add any extras that I’ve got ,back in.

From memory you can run the program from the drive with just a minor installation of some components into the computer, you can load the program into pc and use the real tracks from the USB drive, saving you from having to load about 100 gig of files into the computer, or you can load everything in if you have the space.

I loaded my BIAB onto an external 1 terabyte USB drive..
And it plays perfect on my Toshiba laptop running Vista..

I also have it set up to run on my HP laptop running Windows 10..

I guess everything other than playing a 'solo' instrument is "cheating" ...
For ME, the difference with using styles as opposed to midi files/backing tracks/whatever is that when I'm using styles I have to know what chords to play - which are all at least 3 finger chords ... so in that sense I am playing live ... if I don't change the chord nothing changes ... if someone wants to say I'm cheating because of the accompanying instruments that are playing, then so be it ... but even they sound as they do because of my chord progression ...
I have no idea how BIAB works, but I wouldn't criticize anyone for using that or anything else in a performance ...
I would still love to be playing with the 5 piece band we had for 26 years, but life changes ...

Hi Tony, I could imagine nothing could beat that.


Biab has a lot of Jazz styles Tony and the chords are right in front of you on your laptop. Haha

Seriously though, to each his own, you do what works for you.

The program has grown, I bought it back in 1990 ( there abouts) when it first came out, I think it had 3 instruments, bass piano, drums. Probably sounded hideous, but, at the time,wow! Certainly a lot cheaper than midifiles, I think at the time they were selling for something like $10 to $30 each. Still,it’s the arranger keyboards I went for over the years.

Think I’m definitely going to upgrade biab again, been playing around with it again for a few days before I jumped in and bought it( not like me, usually buy something then think why did I do that). Sounds good, and something for me to do while my wrist hopefully heals or i’ll Be playing right hand melody jabbing with a pencil on the keys. Haha

Rikki

Thank you for your reply. It helps a lot. I have an instance of my 2008 BIAB on an i5,i7 16in laptop that is fine, but heavy. If I order an Ultra Pak+ upgrade, am I limited to that machine? In other words, is an upgrade installed over my old BIAB, or do I get the upgrade price from their records, and I can use it on any machine with the program on an ext HD?

Hi Bernie,
I’ve had mine on a number of laptops over the years. You get a code with your order and that validates it. Has to be done in 30 days. Quite frankly they seem a great company to deal with. Online chat, 30 day money back if not satisfied.
Have a chat to them. From what I remember what I did last time when I bought a full upgrade, ie I hadn’t upgraded for a few years and I sort of wanted to start from scratch, I bought the USB hard drive version, did a back up and then added any extra styles etc I may have had from years back.

Not sure how many times you can use the code, but pretty sure it’s more than once. If you have a newer laptop, that’s the one you would want to use.
I think i’ll Bite the bullet and order mine tomorrow.i’ll have To wait a couple of weeks before the USB version arrives, but they also give you a download version, which i’ll Be downloading straight away. I’ll let you know how I go.

But seriously try and have an online chat, usually they’re not around when I am because of time differences.

I can test a few bits out for you if you like.

I do always only buy the upgrade version .

I am back on their forum, in which I am still active after ten years. I will give them a chat, as I am a newbe now, especially with all the fantastic improvements they have made. I,also, downloaded their PDF manual.

3 times I believe.

Yes, I just chatted with PG and they said you are licensed for three computers and you don't have to switch, but can have three at once.

That’s great Bernie, if you haven’t upgraded in 10 years, you are going to notice a HUGE difference. Probably see you over there.

You had to be an expensive influence till the end of 2017! LOL I have 2017 BIAB Ultrapack. I don't upgrade every year though PG Music comes out with enough features every year to tempt users to upgrade yearly. The plugin feature is very interesting and I jumped on it. I, too, love to see vArranger as a plug-in. I hear it's quite a bit of work to turn a standalone program into a VST plugin, though.

I just received the receipt and download link from BIAB, saying the physical drive will arrive soon. For one thing, their soon is a couple of weeks. My question is whether or not to use the link to download this big program, although I have plenty of storage space on my desktop, i7 17in LT,and ext hard drive. I am excluding my small Asus Transformer, which I gig with, along with my Pa4X. I am planning on making tracks in the studio and transferring to them. I am leaning on downloading to my fast office laptop, so as to not tie up my main pc.

I am usually not this indecisive, but BIAB is new to my workflow. Is there any chink in my thinking?

It’s been since 2008-2009 since I used BIAB, I never used it live but was able to create lead sheets that I still have and occasionally use from my pdf library. I also used it as a practice tool to play along with.

Bernie,

I can't tell you what computer to use-I decided to install on a USB drive myself. But remember, if you do decide to download the program PG Music's download manager (help/utilities in the main program) will speed up the process. You can also use a third party downloader.

Good advice-thanks. What is a third party downloader, the cloud?

Just a download program you can obtain from the Internet. They recommend a Firefox plugin called "downthemall" but I imagine there are many. More info:


https://www.pgmusic.com/tutorial_downloading-realtracks.htm

Curious
Question for Bachus or anyone here. Is anyone running BIAB on a Mac platform? I have both Macs and Windows machines but the Mac upgrades are usually 6 months behind the Windows versions.

I have an old windows license laying around not used...

Untill a few years ago, the mac version was quite different from the windows version..
Nowerdays, its the same version, but indeed released a few months later..

Best bet is there is only a very small team of programmers at PG
And they start working on a mac conversion if the pc version is finished..


I tried upgrading the windows version to a mac version a few years ago..
But it was not possible, so i decided to say goodbye to biab..

Thanks Bachus exactly the info I was looking for.

Hi Bernie, it’s a huge download, I’m currently downloading mine, and it’s taking quite a while. Maybe up to a couple of days. I have unlimited broadband so doesn’t matter how huge and how long it’s taking. I basically wanted to try it from scratch so I haven’t installed it over my original version YET.
If you have a spare computer to download it too, and the internet ie you’re not fixedto how many gigs you can download per month. Why not try it, I figured better than waiting 2 or 3 weeks to get here to Australia, if not longer.I’m down loading mine to a spare USB hard drive, don’t ha ave the capacity to download it to my laptop. Figure it gives me a spare backup. The files basically get downloaded individually ie there’s somewhere between 30 to 40 files, but once you have dowlonded the program itself, and installed it there’s an option called” Download Manager”, which will sort downloading the files for you, it can download somewhere between 1 to 4 files at a time ( maybe more but I don’t think recommended). Basically set and forget. At the end it will even install it ,or so it says. Haven’t gotten that far yet.

If nothing else maybe just download the program so that you can play around with it, you should be able to use midi styles, but you can’t you the real styles till you download the tracks.

Hi Stephen,
If you have a choice, I think the pc version is possibly better supported. Far more users.

Rikki,

Thanks I appreciate your feedback. Yes if I decide to upgrade the Windows version would probably be the one.

I would like to know the difference, in terms of accessibility, between a full install via download and connecting to the hard drive that the physical program comes on. The reason I ask is because I have a one TB ext drive. If there is an advantage in a full install, I would choose one of my pc's to do away with the HD. Also, does the computer have to first contain basic BIAB files to operate with an ext HD.

The download is the same thing you are getting on the external USB. You can run completely from an external drive if you want with the possible exception of a few files. Here is a thread on this:

https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=303262

Thanks a lot. I appreciate the help.

Hi Bernie, I run my biab 2018 completely from a 256gig thumb drive ( with only a few necessary files loaded into my laptop) I’m guessing the files should still all fit even though there are some new ones. I finished downloading last night, I should be set up later today.

Thanks for that Rikki. Hopefully, I can learn from you after we both get up and running. Aside from the wait for the HD, which shouldn't be that long for me, I can't see much advantage of downloading 25GB into a machine. I always have the option later.
Bernie

Called PG yesterday and they assured me the HD's would be shipping by the end of the week. Then an hour later FEDEX dropped it off on ty doorstep. Oh my, I am going to be tied u for a while!