Tag Archives: microsoft

Articles

Band in a Box 2014 for Windows

Leave a comment

PG Music has been hard at work, and released Band in a Box 2014 for Windows yesterday. Notable features include:

  • 28 New Jazz Realtracks including tracks by Ron Carter, Kenny Barron, Lewis Nash, Gary Smulyan, Pat Martino and Phil Woods
  • 32 Country Realtracks (as you can see, I don’t care about those)
  • 41 Pop/Rock RealTracks including New Orleans Boogle styles, Horn Sections, and 70s grooves
  • 54 new MIDI SuperTracks (quite honestly, just started using these a lot and they are pretty cool)

One thing PG Music did was “overhaul” the interface. It’s really hard to tell exactly what they mean by this, as there are no screen shots I can find. Sort of looks Microsoft Office like I would say in it’s use of ribbon like things. They eem to have put a tab thing in the upper right where you can easily switch to the mixer and some other views (like Piano to see what notes are being played). A lot of this new UI stuff seems to come at the cost of seeing the actual chords on the screen. I hope there is a way to toggle back some of those Microsoft Office like ribbons. And then there is the “handwritten font” thing. I’m not a fan of that faux handwritten stuff anymore. It’s too 1990s for me.

So, should this be on your late Chanukah/Christmas list? Absolutely. Anyone who plays music should have this program. Are you working on solo changes? Working out a new chord progression for a song? Just want to explore what Giant Steps would sound like as a Country Bluegrass song? Then get this program. It’s a tool that you will use countless times.

Articles

EWI Wars Over?

Leave a comment

One good way of judging how good or bad something is doing is by looking at the press it is receiving. For example, the Microsoft Zune. When it was launched, it garnered a lot of press. Office Depot even had it in their weekly ads and even had in store displays. Now……..nope. Their weekly ad has a SansDisk Fuze player, and iPod accessories.

This week, I received a catalog from American Musical Supply. It usually, towards the back with the keyboards, has the Akai EWI 4000s and the Yamaha WX5 on a page. This issue…..the WX5 wasn’t listed. *Gasp*

Could this be a sign that the EWI wars are over? That Yamaha might can the WX line? I’m not too sure, but when sellers are not advertising it, but rather a competing product……one might get a little worried. Though I think we will see Microsoft kill the Zune line well before Yamaha kills the WX.

Articles

Microsoft Enters The….Music Accompaniment Making Department

Leave a comment

I’m not quite sure what to think of this. Though it does/can use Band in A Box, the demo video rather disturbs me. Visions of Sanjayas popping up all over the place is something even the late Charlton Heston would have a tough time conquering.

This software, from Microsoft, has great little sliders for Happiness and Jazz. No EMO slider? No rock? What?

Here is another article about this Microsoft “research”.

Articles

Running Band in A Box Under Parallels

Leave a comment

Ok, so we all know that the latest Macs all run Intel processors. You might have heard of an Apple Beta program called Boot Camp where you can get your Mac to boot up as a *shutter* Windows XP computer. You might also have heard of a program Parallels that lets you mitigate Windows to just a Window. Well, if you take the two programs, and add in Band in a Box 2007 for PC, you get a very functional program that runs pretty flawlessly.

Yes, Virginia, it works fine….

Ok, so, first off, you need to download Boot Camp, and get Microsoft Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2. Not Vista. Vista, as of right now, works fine in Boot Camp (IE: Dedicating the whole machine to it), but has a lot of issues with Parallels. Boot Camp is picky, and you need to have Service Pack 2.

Now, having Continue reading Running Band in A Box Under Parallels →