Band in a Box - Sounds great, is it?

Yes and no (ain't it always? ;)) I'm not much of an expert, but I use it often and have poked around most of it at some point or another. Things that I think are missing may well just be difficult to find, but that's almost as bad IMHO.

If you want to punch in a few chord names with no-offbeat changes, have a whole band play backing in a variety of styles, can live with the MIDI sound or are prepared to set it all up to play something else, then yep, it's great. Other than that, its usefulness starts to decline a little. I basically use it for playing the simpler of my progressions while I write vocal melodies, fills, solos etc on the guitar over the top, studing the MIDIs of prebuilt styles to work out common drum patterns, basslines etc., and not a lot else.

The styles are a little limited - there's a couple of each of a half-decent range, but if you want say rock an the couple of rock styles don't fit your song, that's your lot. There's a million options to vary each style, and none of them make much difference. (Unless you're into Jazz - 90% of all the styles in there are jazz, which I detest :roll: Then again, I inherited my copy from a friend, maybe he was a closet jazz fan and bought one of the style packs they sell...) There's an Eagles style in there which can be tweaked better than the others to produce all sorts of middle-of-the-road rock, start there if you're going to play with that side of it and are happy with rock.

Editing of rhythm is either impossible or very well hidden - if I do use something, I tend to just output the whole thing as MIDI, bring it into reaper, wire up a few VST instruments and go nuts in the MIDI input screen. The whole 'only being able to change chord on the 1st or 3rd beat' in BIAB gets old very quickly, especially as so many of the songs I like have at least one chord change 'early'.

The melodist and soloist (which create progressions and solos respectively) are not bad for finding a few chords/licks of interest and using them as a starting point, but nothing it creates sounds like it was created by anything other than a random number generator without some serious help.

The chord analyser thingy is good if you feed it simple chords and simple rhythm. Basically, whatever I can do myself by ear it'll manage fine, but if it's beyond me or would make me struggle for days, it'll be no help whatsoever. Things like bass runs, vocals, riffs etc. giving you 4 chords per bar when really it's just the same chord with another instrument doing something else on top. As to be expected really, but the point being that they don't market it as such.

That's all off the top of my head as I sit at work, not having used BIAB in a couple of weeks and with plenty of opinion mixed in - make of it what you will. All in all, I find it handy to have around, but I wouldn't have paid for it :mrgreen: Anyhoooo, there's a demo on the website, Band in a Box - why not give it a whirl and see if it does it for you?

Hi,
Your detailed review much appreciated.
BIAB sounded just too fully featured - even at that price - I suspected that once one dug a bit below the surface it might be found wanting. However, for someone my level (beginner-ish) it may be a useful learning tool.
Ill have a look at the demo as you suggest.
Cheers & thanx
Ola
PS: I love your avatar - that cat boogies!