Band In A Box for Gigs?

Steve Marinak · Post by **Steve Marinak** » 13 May 2019 7:48 am

Does anyone use Band in a Box for gigs?
I'm cringing just thinking about this...
However, my two sons are not always available; they play string bass and rhythm guitar.

My first thought was to record their tracks for each song in the repertoire. Then I thought of their bellyaching about doing this for dear old dad...LOL

Most of the Band in a Box tracks I have heard sound very mechanical and un natural. But I bet there are people out there that are very good at this software that could create all the tracks in my repertoire as a service, and they would sound pretty good.

I'm looking for backup tracks for solo steel guitar gigs. Hawaiian songs. String bass, rhythm guitar, Uke.

Erv Niehaus · Post by **Erv Niehaus** » 13 May 2019 11:09 am

BIAB has come a long ways.
Their program now contains "real tracks".
All the sounds have been created by real musicians playing real instruments.
The steel guitar sounds were created by Paul Franklin to name one.
I use BIAB all the time when doing a solo gig.

Erv

Nic Neufeld · Post by **Nic Neufeld** » 14 May 2019 5:24 pm

My teacher Alan Akaka uses BIAB to make backing tracks for the songs he teaches me and I use them to record with. Some are better than others but I would say they are very high quality in my experience...

Dom Franco · Post by **Dom Franco** » 14 May 2019 6:20 pm

The Band in a box with real tracks for the last 5 years or so sounds amazing. (real drummers real bass, real pianos and guitars)

I create a song backing in BIAB and then transfer it to my computer as an MP3 file That I can play back on any MP3 player. I can also can add it to an Itunes library, and then play the tracks on my Ipods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g04ynuM ... cedLlj0cw1

I perform at least 6 times a week as a solo steel guitarist and singer with these Mp3s.

The small players are awesome and portable.

Mick Hearn · Post by **Mick Hearn** » 19 May 2019 2:11 am

Band in a Box is a very handy tool and I would not be without it and has been stated the up to date version is real instruments. I have been using it for recording and backing tracks for years. This version of Lady Be Good is B in a B all through except the steel of course. Even the fiddle and piano solos are BB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4jBEN-n47c

Rick Campbell · Post by **Rick Campbell** » 21 May 2019 10:12 pm

Mick Hearn wrote:Band in a Box is a very handy tool and I would not be without it and has been stated the up to date version is real instruments. I have been using it for recording and backing tracks for years. This version of Lady Be Good is B in a B all through except the steel of course. Even the fiddle and piano solos are BB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4jBEN-n47c

Mick, that's very good. What BIAB style are you using?

RC

Harry Dove · Post by **Harry Dove** » 22 May 2019 7:00 pm

Listening to that makes me feel like I need to spend more time learning to use the solos with BIAB.

Mick Hearn · Post by **Mick Hearn** » 23 May 2019 11:37 pm

Thanks boys. The style is _WSWNGF2.STY Fast Western Swing.

Having laid down the backing I then go on a search for a decent solo instrument. It's fair to say that some work and some don't. The way BB works is to have several boxes of 1 bar clips of a particular instrument. So if we have a box of guitar clips of a certain genre in the key of C, BB will dip in at random and pull out a number of these clips for however many bars we need. Then when we change to the F chord it will reach in to the F box and pull out a few more clips and lump them together. This means you have a number of random clips that hopefully when played one after the other will appeal to the ear. In some cases I have had to resort to some cutting and pasting once I have transferred the finished wav files in to Cubase to make it more appealing. .

Larry Dering · Post by **Larry Dering** » 24 Jun 2019 8:41 am

Mick that was fantastic. You played it well. The fiddle solo was great for a generated track.