PG Music Band in a Box - 2010.5 (Macintosh) User's Guide download pdf (Page 239)

Chapter 12: User Programmable Functions

239

Intelligent Guitar Styles

Would you like to hear some realistic, accurate MIDI guitar from Band-in-a-Box styles, with strumming, picking,

and accurate fret fingering? You'll get it with Version 11! “Guitar Styles” are styles that show strummed and

picked guitar parts accurately on the guitar fretboard, and they sound great. These styles also play accurate guitar

voicings, in your choice of Pop, Jazz, Country, or Folk Guitar chording. There's even a “walking guitar comping”

style that plays guitar that emulates the famous “Basie Big Band” Jazz style. The “Guitar Styles” play like any

regular style, and when you view them on the virtual guitar fretboard you can see exactly which strings and frets are

used so it is a great learning tool as well.

Information about Guitar Styles for Playback.

Guitar Styles are identified by the exclamation point (!) in the style name. This is not a requirement, but is usually

present in the style name. Guitar styles require Version 11 of Band-in-a-Box. With an earlier version the guitar

track will play wrong notes. For the typical user who is just using the styles for playback and isn't making their own

styles there's not much that you need to know about the styles, since they play normally like other Band-in-a-Box

styles.

You can see which tracks have intelligent guitar parts by looking at the title window of the Guitar fretboard, when

the track is highlighted. If it is a guitar style track, it will say [Guitar voicings] after the name of the track. The

usual track that has the intelligent guitar styles is of course the Guitar part. Some of the styles have more than one

guitar, so the Piano and/or Strings part might also have an intelligent guitar part. In these cases, you can also view

the guitar on those tracks.

The styles can be set to use different types of voicings for guitar. For example, there are Jazz, Pop and Folk (open

position) voicings. Also, some of the styles allow the guitar to play advanced chords and inversions. Some of the

styles play chord patterns, so the chord in the song might be F7, but the guitar plays a “walking-chord” pattern of

F7, Cm7/G, Abdim, F7/A on each beat. There can be “finger-picking” styles that have a lowest note alternate

between root and 5

Guitar parts use channels 11 to 16 for the notes, corresponding to strings 1 to 6 of the guitar. When the notes are

output to MIDI, they are re-channeled to the Guitar channel, so that it only uses 1 channel. When you make a MIDI

file, the notes will all be written on the single guitar channel. Some other sequencers (e.g., PowerTracks Pro for

Windows ) will recognize guitar parts on all 6 channels, so if you want to write the MIDI file from an intelligent

guitar style, you can set Band-in-a-Box to do this from the Preferences “Write Guitar part on 6 channels” option.

As previously mentioned, you don't need to be aware of the details of how this is done; you just play the styles as

usual.

Let's Examine the Intelligent Guitar Styles

Load in the song! Freddie.MGU from the “Songs” folder. This is a demo song for the style! Freddie.STY. The

exclamation point (!) in the name of a style is a convention to indicate that the style is an “intelligent guitar style.”

This means that the patterns on the guitar part will play with correct guitar voicings on the fretboard.

Play the !Freddie.MGU song.

Open the Guitar window and click

on the [G] button to view the Guitar

track on the guitar fretboard.

As the song plays, you'll see and hear the guitar played on the fretboard using correct Jazz voicings. For some

chords, you'll notice that the guitar plays different voicings on each beat in a walking pattern. For example, on an

F7 chord lasting 4 beats, the guitar might play “F7, Gm7, Abdim, and F7/A,” with each chord lasting one beat, just

as a professional Jazz guitarist might do.

The !Freddie.MGU style uses 3 note chord voicings in order to

emphasize the lower range and to enhance the percussive rhythm

effect.

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PG Music Band in a Box - 2010.5 (Macintosh) User's Guide Page 239

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