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This page hosted and maintained by

YOUR NAME COULD BE HERE

(A website volunteer associate)

For info on you YOU can host this or another page click HERE or send an email to wesldick@charter.net

What's New?

The 'Un-official' Band in a Box* users news letter

By and For Users.

This page revised on 2/24/2004.

* If you don't know what Band in a Box is check it out at the PG Music Home Page.

What's happenin', man?

I've been receiving such a great bunch of songs and styles along with email from other users that I feel some of 'em ought to get a little credit and publicity exposure. So, I said to myself,

"Myself, why don't you put up a News Letter page on the web site?"

And myself answered, "Good idea!"

However, I'll need some help from everybody who is interested in submitting so I'm recruiting everybody as cub reporters. When you email me some of your work add a little info about yourself. Are you amateur or pro? Do you play regularly in a group? What instrument(s)?

You got the idea? This is the place where you can "blow your own horn" and we'll all listen.

Adding Styles

From an article at PGMusic dated September 23, 1997

Adding New Styles For Band-in-a-Box

Using add-on styles or creating your own styles from scratch is one of the great benefits of using Band-in-a-Box. If you have tried to install add-on styles but were unable to add them to the Styles list, don't worry, this tip will get you on the right path.

If you want to include your new styles in the .STY list, there are a few things you need to do. The new styles must first be placed in the main Styles folder so Band-in-a-Box knows where to find them. To move your styles, open your new add-on styles folder so you can view the list of styles. Got to the Edit menu and choose Select All. Put the mouse cursor anywhere in the highlighted area, hold the left mouse button down, and then drag the list to Band-in-a-Box's main Styles folder and release the left mouse button. As your new styles are being copied to main styles folder you may see a message indicating that you have duplicate styles. Just choose OK. You should now be able to use your new styles with Band-in-a-Box.

The Tech Guys at PGMusic

Addendum: Now that you've made a new style how do you get it listed when you press the STY box? Go to Denis' web site and check out the neat utility he's written to rebuild all styles in your BB directory and make a new BBW.LST file which will allow you to categorize all styles the way you want them as well as adding notes like the PGMusic styles offer. Great program. Get's you organized!

  • Styles Librarian - Denis Ladouceur's site.

    • Email I've received and passing on for your info. If you email me and do not wish to have your mail passed on please advise when sending the mail. I will, of course, try to be discreet insofar as not putting anything here of an embarassing nature.
    And here's a note of warning from John, better known as jfz at the Forum.

    Wes:

    I discovered that if you use pkunzip on the long name files many are found to be duplicates. There is no problem using winzip. Thought you might warn others on your page.

    John

    As John points out, do NOT use PKUNZIP from DOS when unzipping these files as it only looks at the first 8 characters and if there are dupes it will overwrite files already extracted. WinZip will restore full names so it is recommended that you use it.

    Wes

    Here's how to print Lyrics Only from BiaB and PT thanks to Denis...

    With PowerTracks: 1) Select your lyrics' track 2) Select menu 'Track' - 'Copy Lyrics to Clipboard' 3) Open Windows NotePad, WordPad or any other word processor 4) In your favorite word processor, select menu 'Edit' - 'Paste' or press CTRL-V keys 5) Print the content

    With Band-In-A-Box: 1) Switch to the notation mode 2) Right-Click exactly on the lyrics' line 3) Select 'Select All' 4) Right-Click AGAIN exactly on the lyrics' line 5) Select 'Copy' 6) Open Windows NotePad, WordPad or any other word processor 7) In your favorite word processor, select menu 'Edit' - 'Paste' or press CTRL-V keys 8) Print the content

    Denis Ladouceur

    And here's a letter from Ben...

    Hi Wesley! As you may recall, I am a jazz guitarist and Band-in-a-Box user. I thought I would share with you a Charlie Parker song "Bird Gets the Worm" which has its melody transcribed _with_ solo from "The Charlie Parker Omnibook" which Jamey Aebersold edited. At a tempo of 340 BPM, its seem impossible to play even the chord changes, much less the melody, and to improvise "competently" is "mind-boggling" . Enjoy. Fortunately most of Parker's tunes are based on either blues or rhythm change progressions which can be "tiredlessly" played with BiaB as an accompaniest (and gratefully at slower tempos ;-) And all makes an appreciation of Parker's inventive melodic genius even more apparent . ------------- Benjamin Tubb AIM: brtubb brtubb@cybertron.com http://home.cybertron.com/~brtubb

    ...and in another email he said

    attached is the Joe Pass (acoustic guitar) solo for "Cherokee" as he played it on his album "Virtuoso", transcribed by Jack Peterson.

    More, Ben, more! (and thanks lots for these).

    Dear Wes,

    What's the weather like in Louisiana ??? I send you another zip file containing a few songs that I sequenced using BIAB :

    - "Our spanish love song" and "Two for the road" are transcribed from the Metheny & Haden album "Beyond the Missouri sky", two very nice melodies. For the best result, turn off the piano and strings...

    - "How intensive" is a version containing a solo played by P. Metheny. I transcribed the solo from a live version played at the Marciac (south of France) jazz festival by Metheny, Haynes & Holland. This version was broadcasted by the French TV some years ago. I transcribed about 3 choruses, as long as I could go because the song is cut by some interviews. Anyhow, this is one of the best version of this tune I have ever heard. If anybody can sound lyrical, poignant and improvised at the same time, well, Metheny does ...

    - "Little Lu" and "Cantaloupe Island" (and its associated styles) are simple melodies and nice songs to jam on ...

    A la prochaine

    Christophe

    .
    Russ (aka Bull), a regular Forum user, has written to me regarding the use if ICQ. For those not familiar with it, it is a free program which will advise you whenever someone in your 'list of contacts' is on the web. I've been using it primarily for family members and close friends and it allows us to chat privately or in small groups in real time. It would be a great way for any BiaB users to be notified of who is on the web at any given time and allow direct chat. The program also has a feature which can 'hide' your name from others if you so desire.

    Anyone interested can download the program and simply enter the email addresses of those you would like to be notified as being online whenever you're online. My email address is wesdick@charter.net if you care to add me to your list. I may not always be ready to chat, especially when working on the web page, but most of the time enjoy it.

    Update on that last paragraph. As I was typing this I was paged by Bull to join a chat with him and Denis 'Song Librarian' Ladouceur and had a ball discussing various things, some of which I'll wait and let Denis announce later. We must have chatted for an hour or so.

    Just returned from visiting the page of someone who signed in on my guest book and was very impressed. Most of you older cats out there will appreciate his Jazz Reminiscence [Sweet Memories]   by Eugene A. Confrey, Ph.D. If you were there then you will be brought back there once again. Tell him I sent you.  
    Someone wrote... Hi all,

    I have multiport interfaces and my sound modules are spread across ports. I need to use more than one port simultaneously in BIAB. The windows midi mapper will only see my multiport interfaces as one device each and will not let me specify which ports I want within those devices. BIAB only allows the selection of one global midi out...so what do I do? Does anyone know of a good third party midi mapper that will address individual ports within one device? Thanks.

    Ken answered...

    Use the Windows 3.1 Midi Mapper - yes, it is possible. This is how I run my system (although I really don't need to).

    Running the Windows 3.1 Midimapper gives the following benefits:

    - you can have 'profiles' of midi-map settings, allowing you to change devices easily - ie. change devices and switch to the profile that matches the new set of devices - sending channels individually to different devices

    - patch re-mapping (aka BIAB and PTW)

    - key remapping (example uses: up an octave, down an octave, mapping all octaves to one octave)

    Do the following from a DOS Prompt only, not in Windows 95 GUI:

    Edit CONTROL.INI

    Add semicolon to the line: midimap.drv=no ie. ;midimap.drv=no

    Edit SYSTEM.INI

    Add to the [drivers] section

    midimapper=midimap.drv

    Rename C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MIDIMAP.DRV to MIDIMAP.W95

    Rename C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MIDIMAP.CFG to MIDIMAP.C95

    Copy the files in this directory (MIDIMAP.DRV and MIDIMAP.CFG) to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP

    Reboot Windows 95 and go to the Control Panel, Midi Mapper and start configuring.

    Ken Pelkman

    Here's a letter from Jim Hughs regarding style editing.

    As far as putting bends in bb.styles, its a lot of work and luck. I've spent two weeks making this style . But here is how I do it.

    1. get a recording of a song

    2. put in the basic drums, rolls, bass, rhythm, etc.

    3. make midi files out of the bends (make sure to zero out those wheels &    transpose it to the key of C ) then import them into bb.

    Sometimes it sounds pretty good and sometimes it acts like gravity-it sucks.

    However, make sure you remember to zero out wheel events or you really will have some "wierd jazz" (unusual 2 step modulations in the bends)

    Also be aware of control 64(sustain) & other controls. I sometimes put in some control 1(modulation) on the tail end of bends but make sure you reset them if you choose to use them.

    Also, bb (that's what I've always called Biab} seems to put in some extra -8192 wheel events. So I guess I'm saying get ready for the unexpected. It would be nice if Mr. Gannon would change the notation view so users could edit all events.

    Below are the songs and styles which have been sent in by Band in a Box users. They're sharing theirs with YOU so how's about sending in some of YOURS!

    " From Users"

    These are SONG files which I've received from other BiaB users . This file will be updated whenever I receive new contributions from BiaB users. Periodically they will added to the alphabetically sorted zip files on the SONGS page and this file will be emptied. Please, if you wish recognition for any special work you've put into a particular song, put your name in the title bar behind the song title before saving in Band in a Box. You can also add your email address if you desire.
    		" User Styles"

    These are STYLES files which I've received from other BiaB users . This file will be updated whenever I receive new contributions from BiaB users. Periodically they will added to the above zip file and this file will be emptied. Please don't submit minor variations on existing styles files unless such variation really makes a difference. This is especially true of any commercially available files. Do NOT send them to me. I'll buy my own and suggest you do the same. I'm referring primarily to PGMusic styles and styles from Bob "Notes" Norton and any other commercially available styles.

     

    Send your contributions to wesdick@charter.net
    		 Links to some other web sites loaded with goodies.
    		Home Click here to go back to my home page.
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