Barton
Polot
is Assistant Professor of Music Education and Music Technology at the University
of Michigan
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 BARTON
POLOT
 he
first time you see Band-In-A-Box — usually on a friend's computer
— you are struck by the elegance of it all. Simply type in the chord
symbols, and the application generates a full accompaniment. A hip and
musical combo, emanating from a MIDI synthesizer or the computer's internal
sound card, lays down chorus after chorus of swing, samba, salsa —
you name it. If you're like many musicians, you now feel compelled to
purchase your first computer — just so you can run Band-In-A-Box.
PG Music's Band-In-A-Box has little
competition and no peers among computer-based applications. It is compatible
with practically every computer (Macintosh, Windows and Atari) and practically
every multitimbral synthesizer. The price ($69 retail) is one of the best
bargains in music, and it comes packaged with a veritable fakebook of
songs and styles.
The recent release of version 6.0 prompted a fresh critical look at Band-In-A-Box.
It quickly becomes clear that each successive upgrade has been grafted
onto the previous version, with no overall master design.
The main window of Band-In-A-Box is as cluttered as a flight cockpit.
Eschewing the palettes and tool bars of today's current software, Band-In-A-Box
instead squeezes all its features on one small screen. Employing little
color and no organizational sense, the main window is a disarray. The
menu bar is worse, with a whopping twelve menus; compare this to powerhouses
like PageMaker or PhotoShop with just seven. Among the twelve menus are
two called Style (oops, sorry, one is called STY) which function almost
identically. Some menus are swollen with more than forty items.
First-time users will probably have little trouble focusing on the central
task: keying in the chords of a favorite song. Here, Band-In-A-Box still
excels, with a vast vocabulary of chords and a simple typing scheme. For
example, an E-flat dominant 9th chord with a flatted fifth is simply typed
eb9b5. You never need the shift key for any chord symbol (type 3 instead
of #, for example). After entering all the chords, click the Play button.
Within moments, your synthesizer plays an eight-beat count-off, followed
by some surprisingly musical accompaniment. You can record the melody
using your MIDI keyboard, and then print out a full lead sheet.
Band-In-A-Box allows you to enter fills, metric and stylistic changes,
and codas. Version 6 can create a two-bar ending automatically, a feature
that has been available on battery-operated keyboards for a decade. The
software still does not create an automatic introduction.
Creating your own styles is possible, but is not for the faint of heart.
The StyleMaker window is arcane, and the manual is little help.
Still, Band-In-A-Box represents a breakthough for teachers who need to
create accompaniments for their students. Simply create a set of chords,
then make an audio cassette of the accompaniment in different tempos.
Or different keys. Or different styles. Be it a recent pop tune, a jazz
improvisation vehicle, or the daily scale regimen, your students need
never practice unaccompanied again.
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