The Steel Guitar Forum

Just ordered from PG music. It says it's on a hard drive. I assume their asking me me about downloding in case I don't want to wait.

Is Real Band just a sequencing program like Sonar or is it better?

Hi Ken, this was taken from the pgmusic website.

"RealBand is a fully-featured and powerful music arranging, sequencing, and digital recording program. RealBand is a new program that combines the most popular features from PG Music’s PowerTracks Pro Audio and Band-in-a-Box programs into an all-in-one sequencing program with automatic accompaniment.
With RealBand you can create an arrangement with Band-in-a-Box tracks; type in the chords, add RealTracks and RealDrums that follow the chord changes, add your own tracks, and then edit and produce the finished song without ever leaving the program! RealBand is loaded with powerful features that make it easy to produce your own song arrangements as if you were in the recording studio with top session musicians."

Here's the link Click Here

Thanks Andy. S'what I figured. I see you can input it into Sonar as well. Why,I don't know. It will be interesting to play with. I have spent the last couple of months designing my summer house with hardly no music playing. Now I can get back to the fun.

You know what would really be interesting? If like in other programs, you could write the notes ahead of time and have BIAB play what you want in the instrument you choose, like for kickoffs and other things. I don't think that is possible. Too bad.

Hi Ken and Andy, I just got 2009.5 BIAB and RealBand UltraPAK last month,
and I love it. I just started playing with it and took a couple of crapy MIDI
files and made some really good sounding backing tracks out of them.
Ken you said: If like in other programs, you could write the notes ahead of time
and have BIAB play what you want in the instrument you choose, like for kickoffs and other things.
I can't read or write music (wish I could) but I think you can do this.
I just orderd BIAB 2010 on a hard drive Wednesday and got it yesterday,
so I've got a lot more things to learn besides learning to play steel again.

Carl "Lucky" Kilmer

Ken Lang wrote:Thanks Andy. S'what I figured. I see you can input it into Sonar as well. Why,I don't know. It will be interesting to play with. I have spent the last couple of months designing my summer house with hardly no music playing. Now I can get back to the fun.

You know what would really be interesting? If like in other programs, you could write the notes ahead of time and have BIAB play what you want in the instrument you choose, like for kickoffs and other things. I don't think that is possible. Too bad.

This is how you could use REAL BAND. Simply port (copy) your BIAB file into REAL BAND. Add a few measures to the front of the imported BIAB file in REAL BAND Add your kick off notes and save.

REAL BAND is a sequencing program and has many good features. It is not as "full featured" as SONAR or any of the major software sequencers. But, if you know your way around BIAB everything will look a lot alike and have a short learning curve.

BIAB is based on creating and/or loading "styles" (which are simply note and rhythem patterns) and then letting the software choose different patterns of that style over the chord structure you input.

Sequencers are based on direct note and rhythem input and as such are "free form". What you enter is what you get.

They both have their place and as you are discovering their strengths and weeknesses. When used together they make a powerfull way to create music.

Best wishes, Bo

Since "the crash" and my subsequent new hard drive I haven't reloaded Sonar yet. Thought I play with Real band to check it out. It may do me just as well for the moment. The past two days I've just been nosing around 2010. What fun.