Band In A Box 2012.5 Pro (Windows)Special Price: £73.30

Band In A Box is the best selling intelligent accompaniment software that makes it quick and easy to create your own songs and backing tracks. It gives you the power to create your own music in any style even without knowing how to write music. Just type in the chords, choose your style and Band-in-a-Box does the rest. You can then add melodies, trade fours with professional players, and print out notation and lead sheets. The sound and feel of Band In A Box has improved dramatically now thanks to live drum samples plus hundreds of great sounding Real Instruments.

It couldn't be easier create a basic backing track. For example, just type:
Cm7 F7 Bbmaj7 Ebmaj Am7b5 D7 Gm Gm
and you have the first 8 bars of a standard progression (similar to Autumn Leaves). It took us under a minute to key this in when we tried it for the first time. Here's how it sounded using the default style:

Next we wanted to hear how the same example would sound with Real Instruments and Real Tracks. We installed these using the Real Tracks installer (within the Real Tracks folder on the DVD-ROM) following the installation instructions. The real instrument samples are big files so this took a few minutes to complete. Next we browsed the jazz styles to find one using all real instruments, and simply selected that style and applied it to our song. We then hit the Soloist button and chose to trade fours using the Wynton Kelly style. We were knocked out with how much better it sounded - just like a real band!

So in testing the product we found that it was possible to install Band in a Box and get practising improvising over a song in under 10 minutes. Of course there are loads of other features to explore including the ability to create scores and lead sheets and then there's bonus software such as Real Band, which is a fully featured music arranging, sequencing, and digital recording program. But even at the most basic level, Band In A Box contains more than enough practise material and music making tools to keep any musician busy for many months!

What's in the Box
DVD-ROM for Windows
Installation Instructions
Comprehensive User's Guide, 320 pages
- note additional DVD-ROM may also be included featuring product guides and bonus software

System Requirements
Windows 2000 / NT / XP / Vista / 7 (32 or 64-bit)
Minimum 512 MB RAM
Hard Disk space: Minimum 400 MB for the main Band-in-a-Box and RealBand programs. More space is required for RealTracks, depending on which package you buy...
RealTracks & RealDrums: 100-400 MB per set
Pro RealCombos: 4 GB
MegaPAK RealCombos: 11 GB
DVD drive for shipped versions of the MegaPAK or Pro version.
Sound card or MIDI module

Watch the Band In A Box demonstration video