At 08:26 AM 1/24/01 -0600, "Clemmons, Scott" wrote:

I guess I will have to purchase BIAB, then. It sounds like what I've been looking for.
Thanks all for the information.

Please consider buying Band-in-a-Box from Norton Music. If you do, I'll include one of my style disks, free ($32.95 value). Go to http://www.nortonmusic.com/biab.html for details.



FREE Midi Files ... Band-in-a-Box improvement software ... links to MIDI file search pages ... download and print sheet music directly from the web ... a few jokes to brighten your day ... and some way cool stuff of interest to musicians!!!

I guess I will have to purchase BIAB, then. It sounds like what I've been looking for.
Thanks all for the information.
-Scott

Band-in-a-Box@egroups.com writes:

If you feel inclined please introduce yourself to the group, telling
us a little about your background, musical interests, how long you
have used BIAB, other software etc. Use the following subject:
New Member Introduction
If we all use the same subject, it will enable any newbies to "View
by Thread" all the introductions.

OK here's me ...
lifelong jazz listener and record collector ...
recently started to learn to play ...
on the early 1920's - 30's songs for starters they're easier!? ...
BiaB backing tracks are a real help, great ...
I'm transcribing Louis' Hot 5 & 7's into BiaB to learn and understand,
anyone want to help?
also I'm collecting a song repertoire in BiaB format ...
wonderful every musician should have it ...

cheers and beers
john p birchall
Bush sax player from Chester.

Hello, BiaB list!

I just heard about this list yesterday and joined in the afternoon! I
am delighted to find such a list. Thank you all for organizing it. Can
I assume that Alisdair is the list owner? Thank you for doing the work.

I am a private music teacher in southern New Hampshire who teaches
woodwind and brass instruments (I also repair them all) and I have been
using Band-in-a-Box since the Dos version 4, and it has been amazing to
watch the fantastic improvements in the program over the years.

My equipment includes a SoundBlaster Live! (the original one), a
Kurzweil PC88mx keyboard, a Yamaha WX5 wind controller playing through a
Yamaha VL70m module, and the new Sound Canvas 8850.

I am currently turning my BiaB song files into midi files to be able to
go out and gig as a solo act, nothing fancy or exotic, just playing at
nursing homes and small parties.

My other big music programs which I use all the time are Cakewalk and
PowerTracksPro for sequencing and Finale for notation.

David



--
David H. Bailey
dhbailey@ix.netcom.com


Alisdair MacRae Birch wrote:

At 11:12 PM 1/23/01 +0000, "Alisdair MacRae Birch" wrote:

If you feel inclined please introduce yourself to the group, telling
us a little about your background, musical interests, how long you
have used BIAB, other software etc. Use the following subject:

New Member Introduction

If we all use the same subject, it will enable any newbies to "View
by Thread" all the introductions.

Here we go.

Hello! My name is Bob "Notes" Norton.

I have played sax since I was in junior high school. I played in the school band and the Band Director was a great person and a great teacher. I started on drums and when a sax rental became available, I switched to tenor sax. It was a small town and the only way to get an instrument was to "inherit" one when somebody moved.

I started gigging about a year after I picked up the horn. I was a quick learner, and way back then, you didn't have to be very good to be in a rock band (we were terrible, but so was everybody else). I immediately found I could make more money in one night than other people could make in three days. I really enjoy music and performing, and it didn't even seem like I was working. Partying and getting paid for it -- pure bliss!!! Plus as an added bonus, the girls who never even noticed me in English or Math class smiled at me after they saw me play sax in a band. For a youth with raging hormones, this settled it, I wanted to be a sax player for the rest of my life.

For most of my life, I have been a professional musician. I tried a couple of "day gigs", always playing music on the side, but they really didn't agree with me. It's hopeless, I am happiest when playing music for a living. It is like a drug habit, but it is legal and as far as I know, there are no negative side effects. Since life is a journey, not a destination, I want to enjoy the ride.

I have played quite a bit since then, from sleazy dives where they passed the hat, to warming up or backing major stars, to jam sessions, to recording with Motown and other record companies, to concert stages, to an appearance on MTV, and as a session player on other people's records, I've played just about every venue a commercial musician can.

I picked up flute, guitar, bass, keyboards, drums and a few other instruments along the way. My latest "toy" is a wind synthesizer and I am having a ball with it. I use the Yamaha WX5 controller and the Yamaha VL70-m synth module. I now play wind synth on the gig more than the sax, but I still also play sax, flute, a little keys, and I sing.

I play professionally (that is how I make my living) with my wife (an excellent vocalist and a synth player) in a duo called "The Sophisticats". Although we started playing in Bars, Cruise Ships and other public venues (back in the mid 80s), we mostly play Yacht Clubs, Country Clubs and private parties now. The pay is great, the hours are superb, and the clients are great.

If really interested, I have a short bio at http://www.nortonmusic.com/info.html#top

I have had Band-in-a-Box since version 3 on the Atari (I still have one). When version 4 came out, allowing to write three instrument styles, I took the plunge and wrote some for myself. I was playing commercial music at the time and a friend of mine started a jazz jam session. My friend taught jazz guitar at the University of Miami and gigged with some jazz greats. Since my jazz chops were rusty, and I didn't want to embarrass myself, I practiced with the BiaB and my own styles. I gave my friend a copy of my styles and he said, "I like these better than the ones that came with Band-in-a-Box!"

That is all it took for me, I took out an ad in Electronics Musician magazine. The rest as they say is history. The disks started selling, Keyboard, Electronics Musician and other magazines wrote short features on my disks, and slowly this turned into a part time business. It has taken me by the nose and forced me to learn how to be a businessman, and I must say it has been interesting.

PG Music has been very kind and helpful to me all the way and I need to say that publicly. Peter Gannon and his staff have helped me solve problems, given me inside tech information, and have even referred their own customers to me.

Besides for writing styles with Band-in-a-Box, I use it as a starting point for many of the sequences that I write for my duo. It depends on the song, sometimes the sequences might be 90% BiaB, sometimes zero% BiaB. Whatever gets the job done for the specific song.

I consider BiaB one of the greatest tools a musician can have, and I truly feel that every musician, singer and songwriter should have the program (and also my Norton Music Styles )

Come visit my web site http://www.nortonmusic.com and if nothing else, read the jokes.




http://www.nortonmusic.com

At 11:00 PM 1/23/01 +0000, "Alisdair MacRae Birch" wrote:

Thanks for your great note on .ls3 files.

You are welcome, my pleasure.

I'm going to put all this
information together in a Styles.faq for inclusion in the Styles
folder.

Thanks. Feel free to share it with anyone.

BTW, great note on what this group could become. As we grow we could
become a great source of knowledge etc. Documenting "stuff" that PG
Music have not had the time or the inclination to do.

It is nice having a group that is not under the control of PG Music. Not that PG ever abused its control in its forum, in fact they were very tolerant of criticism. But having them lead the group makes for a feeling of a company group (for loss of a better term). I don't know how to explain it. It just seems like we are looking to PG instead of each other for everything. Perhaps Parent/child might be a better term.

Of course that is not a negative, just different. And the PG Forum is a great thing when you find bugs in the program, or need the kind of help only PG can supply, because they can respond quickly.

But there is something about being independent of the program that should make this more of a peer to peer community.

This group should compliment, not replace that forum.

BTW, I do expect them to monitor this group. It would be in their best interests to do so.

As Bob says
it's up to us all to make this a great group!

Indeed. The first group I ever joined was a wind synth players group. I started out lurking, then participating. I received so much information from so many experts on the subject of wind synthesis, that I think I learn in one year what it would take ten to learn on my own. Plus I made some great friends.

I am hoping this becomes as rich and colorful as the wind synth group.





FREE Midi Files ... Band-in-a-Box improvement software ... links to MIDI file search pages ... download and print sheet music directly from the web ... a few jokes to brighten your day ... and some way cool stuff of interest to musicians!!!

Folks

If you feel inclined please introduce yourself to the group, telling
us a little about your background, musical interests, how long you
have used BIAB, other software etc. Use the following subject:

New Member Introduction

If we all use the same subject, it will enable any newbies to "View
by Thread" all the introductions.

---alisdair

Hi Bob

Thanks for your great note on .ls3 files. I'm going to put all this
information together in a Styles.faq for inclusion in the Styles
folder.

BTW, great note on what this group could become. As we grow we could
become a great source of knowledge etc. Documenting "stuff" that PG
Music have not had the time or the inclination to do. As Bob says
it's up to us all to make this a great group!

---alisdair

--- In Band-in-a-Box@egroups.com, "Bob 'Notes' Norton" <norton@n...>
wrote:

Hi Scott

In a few words BIAB is the program you need to get! You can type in
any of the chord progressions and melody lines you need to practice.
I'll set up an exercises folder in our files section, should any
members put together some good exercises they can upload them to that
area.

BTW have all members checked out the file section of the group?

Kind Regards

---alisdair

--- In Band-in-a-Box@egroups.com, "Clemmons, Scott" <scottc@f...>
wrote:

Hi,

I'm a jazz pianist looking for play-along jazz exercises, such as

ii-V-I V7 cycles, etc. , ala Jamey Aebersold, but in a MIDI format.

Does Band-in-a-Box give me this capability out of the box, or how

much time would it take to create such exercises with BINAB?

Can I print out music with BINAB?

Does anyone know of any MIDI files already on Internet with such

exercises?

Thanks,

Scott
:-|
No matter what happens,someone will find a way to take it too

seriously.

http://www.danadler.com

See the Music Software Resources page (just my personal
recommendations).

-Dan

Even better: enter the changes, let the soloist compose a solo for
you in the style you want, and play along.

-Dan

At 06:59 AM 1/23/01 -0600, "Clemmons, Scott" wrote:

I'm a jazz pianist looking for play-along jazz exercises, such as ii-V-I V7 cycles, etc. , ala Jamey Aebersold, but in a MIDI format.
Does Band-in-a-Box give me this capability out of the box, or how much time would it take to create such exercises with BINAB?

Creating an exercise like this would take about a minute in Band-in-a-Box. Simply type the chord changes in, pick a tempo and style and click play.

Can I print out music with BINAB?

Yes. The music is very readable but not as good as you would get from a dedicated music publishing program like Finale or Encore.

The main advantage of the Abersold disks over BiaB are the arrangements. They are slick and very song specific.

While the very good arrangements in Band-in-a-Box are more generic, IMHO, the BiaB advantages more than make up for the non song specific arrangements. Here are just a few: You can change the key with a click of the mouse (without changing tempo) ... You can change the tempo from largo to presto with a click of the mouse (without changing the pitch) ... You can change the style of the song ... You can pick a problem section for you and repeat it a couple of dozen times without any glitching ... You can mute any of the parts (in your case the piano) with a mouse click ... You can change the notation style so it reads Roman Numerals (ii - V7 - I) instead of the chord symbols ... etc.

Since you don't have Band-in-a-Box, why not listen to some of the arrangements? I have a page full of MIDI files that have been made with Band-in-a-Box and my 3rd party, aftermarket styles. Each MIDI file was exported from Band-in-a-Box and not one note was changed after exporting. In other words, "what you hear is what you get." To listen, go to http://www.nortonmusic.com/styledemo.html



FREE Midi Files ... Band-in-a-Box improvement software ... links to MIDI file search pages ... download and print sheet music directly from the web ... a few jokes to brighten your day ... and some way cool stuff of interest to musicians!!!

Setting up ii-V-I exercises to practice over will take less than a few minutes with BIAB. It's very quick and easy.

You could also download a whole bunch of practice exercises which have been set up by somebody else. I'm sure there's lots on the web, but one example is http://members.nbci.com/wesleydick/Songlist.html
where there is a zip file full of BIAB practice exercises (submitted by some guy called Bob Roetker, apparently).

Regards
Steve






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Hi,

I'm a jazz pianist looking for play-along jazz exercises, such as ii-V-I V7 cycles, etc. , ala Jamey Aebersold, but in a MIDI format.
Does Band-in-a-Box give me this capability out of the box, or how much time would it take to create such exercises with BINAB?
Can I print out music with BINAB?

Does anyone know of any MIDI files already on Internet with such exercises?

Thanks,

Scott
:-|
No matter what happens,someone will find a way to take it too seriously.

Hi, BIABoppers,
I'm a grad student at CSU-Long Beach writing my thesis on the unique teaching
methodology of the great jazz performer and educator, Bobby Shew. I haven't
been using BIAB too much lately. In the past, my main use was manually
entering lead sheets so that I could transpose for vocalists who sing with my
combo. I am considering a scanner to eliminate hand entry. I'd appreciate any
input on the type of scanner to buy and what experience anybody has had with
scanners. I have BIAB 98 and have been considering upgrading to 2001, but the
price seems pretty steep. Are there practical advantages to upgrading that
you could share with me?

Lon Argabright
Long Beach, CA

you can either go to the website on eGroups
(www.egroups.com/group/band-in-a-box) or send an email to
<band-in-a-box-subscribe@egroups.com>

later,

james

Mr. Ciampa,

I just wanted to tell you that I've been to both your sites at MP3 and IUMA
and enjoy your music VERY much. In fact, I mentioned you in a post I made
to the IUMA bulletin board called "Hidden Talents". (I'm so sorry that I
misspelled your first name in the post).

I didn't realize you were a BIAB user. I too, have been a BIAB user for
many years and most of my tracks at http://leemuller.iuma.com were done with
BIAB.

Anyway, just wanted to say Aloha.

Lee Muller

Hello, BIAB friends!!

What a great idea having this e-group!! I've been using BIAB since the VERY
early days when the entire program was on one floppy disk!! I've upgraded
faithfully through the years and this new version (10) is fantastic! I'm
also a Power Tracks user and the new version 7 is great.

I want to invite all of you to listen to my mp3 website where all of the
music (27 tunes) was composed and recorded using BIAB and Power Tracks Pro
Audio. The site is at: www.mp3.com/bartbc (All songs are free to listen to
or download! I'd love your comments!)

Also, one of my commercial CD's titled, "Soft Sounds, Sweet Dreams" is
available through amazon.com and has free samples of each track. This CD
was also done with BIAB and Power Tracks and is a collection of jazz
standards. Just do a search with the title or my name and play the samples
for an idea of how BIAB can be used commercially.

I'm already learning lots of things I never knew from this e-group!! And Bob
Norton is a great resource!! (Hi, Bob!!)

Thanks again!!

Bart Brady Ciampa
www.mp3.com/bartbc

After sending the last post, I decided to invite a few of my friends to the
group and I realized I don't know the proper way to do this.

I checked the FAQs and couldn't find it there.

Can someone either tell me what the proper way to do this is or point me to
the proper web page for this information?

Thanks,

Bob "Notes" Norton
owner, Norton Music
norton@nortonmusic.com
http://www.nortonmusic.com

FREE Midi Files ... Band-in-a-Box improvement software ... links to MIDI
file search pages ... download and print sheet music directly from the web
... a few jokes to brighten your day ... and some way cool stuff of
interest to musicians!!!