Band in a Box vs. iReal Pro

[gfsark]

I have iReal Pro but haven’t bonded to it. I find the sound too tinny, I guess and would rather practice to my own backing track, which is just simple chords run through a looper. Another turn-off is running the iReal program on the small iPad screen, with small speakers.

From what I can tell, Band in a Box (BiB) is a whole order of magnitude more sophisticated, uses genuine musicians to record lots of the backing tracks, has a large and active user group, etc. etc... and runs on windows, big monitors which I have in my practice space. And the sound is far superior. https://www.pgmusic.com/

Thinking of getting this for my holiday present (can’t spring for another guitar, this year, though I’m tempted). BiB is quite a bit more money, but it appears to offer a lot more features/functionality. What’s your experience?

PS I read through all the archived posts on BiB, but there weren’t that many, and most were quite ancient.

[amyFB]

I found Band-in-a-box to be serious software that required a committment to patient reading, practicing, re-reading, trying again, one baby step after another.

There is so much functionality built into that software that you might, like me, end up with way more than you will ever use. It wasn't cheap when I bought it, 5 or 6 years ago, I think I paid over $500 for it.

I'm betting there will be lots of interesting input here from others who have found good ways to handle what you're trying to do.

good luck!

[buzzardwhiskey]

I've become "allergic" to the marketing method for Band in a Box. Every little thing is an add-on and the basic price is cruel joke. My suggestion is to treat it as such and don't bother with the package unless you're willing to go all in with the higher (North of $500) price.

[121]

amyFB.. I agree.

IMHO I found BIAB complicated and spent more time with BIAB than playing the guitar. Every December for 4 or 5 year I was buying the upgrades and learning the new features too.
About 3 years ago I stopped using BIAB, it was too time consuming and costly and I'd rather spend that time playing guitar.

[Tuomo_]

I have used BB about 25 years. It is versatile program for create backing tracks. You can quickly write chords and choose the style. Then you can transfer it to your DAW. Then can add your own material on it. Useful!

[amyFB]

Originally Posted by gfsark

I have iReal Pro but haven’t bonded to it. I find the sound too tinny, I guess and would rather practice to my own backing track, which is just simple chords run through a looper. Another turn-off is running the iReal program on the small iPad screen, with small speakers.

From what I can tell, Band in a Box (BiB) is a whole order of magnitude more sophisticated, uses genuine musicians to record lots of the backing tracks, has a large and active user group, etc. etc... and runs on windows, big monitors which I have in my practice space. And the sound is far superior. https://www.pgmusic.com/

Thinking of getting this for my holiday present (can’t spring for another guitar, this year, though I’m tempted). BiB is quite a bit more money, but it appears to offer a lot more features/functionality. What’s your experience?

PS I read through all the archived posts on BiB, but there weren’t that many, and most were quite ancient.

check out YouTube - here's one video for newbies to BIAB - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBh0edAJ1-Y

might give you a sense for how well it will meet your needs.

[JohnDWilliams]

If you are willing to invest the time and money BiaB is a great product. So is iReal but it is not quite as sophisticated. iReal has a large user community too.

I gig with BiaB extensively and made an album with it. The album is mostly for getting gigs but it is selling surprisingly well. I’m pretty sure a “jazz” album done with tracks sets some folks off.

https://johnwilliams.hearnow.com/jazzguitar

[FrankHudson]

My experience with BIAB was a few years ago. I wanted to learn/experience/practice playing over jazz standards/changes, and got a fairly basic package and downloaded some Real Book type tracks of some standards.

It worked excellently for that. At that time it was mostly MIDI based, and the sounds you got depended on the MIDI sound banks you had available, but with good ones (didn't need to be great ones, I used either a consumer soundcard or a Casio keyboard). I could practice a set of changes at any tempo, load in some pre-entered Real Book changes, or fairly easily type in my own changes. I found it simple to modify the changes to either simplify them or to try chord substitutions. I recall there was even a menu choice to "jazz it up" a simple set of changes automatically.

As a way to study playing over changes, I can't think of anything else like it, even today. If you looked at the screen you could see the changes, like a scrolling chord chart, and then as your ear developed, you could skip watching the screen. Tempo changes were simple of course, as were key changes, and so I found it superior to the "Music Minus One" kind of backing tracks of the day.

Eventually I developed what were the height of my "jazz chops," which were not of a high level of skill, but which pleased me. They've since deteriorated due lack of practice and some infirmities, but none of that was BIAB's fault.

I never got deep into the capabilities of the program. I was using it to woodshed a hour or so after I had it installed. I did buy a newer version a year so ago and haven't installed it as I'm deep in a long-term, time-consuming music project. A guy I once knew recorded a bluesy singer-songwriter album largely using a newer version of BIAB as "the band" and those more current RealTracks features. Sounded pretty convincing to me, but I have no idea how difficult that was to do.

If you want a non-software way to integrate the BIAB technology into practice and/or your own loops, the Trio pedal lets you play in a set of changes on guitar (you need to play those changes simply and clearly for accurate results) and it will sense the changes you played and create a bass line to those changes in several styles and play drums (also in various styles) to the tempo (with the tempo being adjustable with a knob). The Trio+ version also lets you record loops of your own playing (fancy as you'd like, like any other looper) to use with the bass and drums, and it also has the ability to set up more sections of a composition. Both the Trio and Trio+ are currently on sale, and both use BIAB technology to do their automatically generated backing.

[gfsark]

Well I’ll definitely check out the Trio and Trio+. Sounds like this might be a good approach for me.

[Monsum]

If you are using an iPad there is an app called SessionBand which comes in different styles: country, rock, blues, jazz etc. They all sound very good because these are audio loops (not midi) recorded in various key and each chords comes in many variations.

I have both iReal Pro and SessionBand and the latter sounds like a real band playing with you, drums, bass, and depending on a style, electric/acoustic guitar, piano, Rhodes etc.
Very cool and they often have sales, plus you can buy them in bundles which saves you some money too.

[Marty C]

I have been using Band In a Box for years. I first purchased it when I was a worship leader. We had limited musicians so I would build the songs we needed and use this to fill the sound in when we played live. We would mute the instruments where we had real people to play the parts. Most songs I could build in an a hour or so - once I learned the basics of the program. I am sure I could do more with the song if I were using it to make an recording, but it served my purpose well. It also taught me a lot about music I did not know.

It is time consuming. I travel a lot so I often built songs on long flights. You can do a lot on a 10 hour flight. It has been enjoyable to take my favorite pastime with me without dragging along a guitar. Just pop some earbuds in and build some songs.

It came on a portable hard drive so I could operate it from my work PC without downloading anything. Saved me from dragging two PC’s along.

There is great forum full of many helpful people, just like this one. Most of what I learned that group taught me.

I really like the program, but haven’t used it much lately. There is always a decent sale going on in December to upgrade or purchase new. If you do this, make sure you get the most Realtracks you can get. These are actual recordings of great musicians which are used to build songs. If Realtracks are not used, it resorts to Midi - which sounds horrible to me.

If you have the time to put in, it will serve you well and it will be worth the investment. There are lots of you tube videos to learn from and the basic song building is not that hard - if you understand music. Simple things like understanding time and measures go a long way to help build a song. After you set the time, key and build the measures for each song, you just add the chords and changes and you have the basics down. All you need from there is to pick the Genre and Realtracks you like and it will do the rest. If you do something simple like 4/4 time, it’s a piece of cake.

Best of luck finding the right program for your needs and make sure you have a good PC (fast enough with a good processor and memory) or it doesn’t have enough processing power to properly operate.

[TheJackal]

I used one of the earliest versions (came on 3.5 inch floppy drives). I upgraded a couple of times. I just jumped back in a couple of weeks ago and am trying to get reacquainted with it. It is far more complicated than I remember and seems to be more refined and robust.

If you are thinking about jumping on board, when I asked if I should buy an upgrade or full version, he told me that it didn't matter, that either version included the full deal and the upgrade didn't require the previous installation. Armed with that information, I bought an upgrade version and found that it installed fully without having an older version. It was a bunch cheaper at the December sale price.

There's a fairly steep learning curve. If you're looking for backing tracks for practicing, the Digitech Trio + is pretty handy and uses BIAB technology. I plan to use each for wood shedding and improving my playing.

[gfsark]

Interesting comments, thanks to all. I just bought a Trio, because at $49 (Sweetwater) it seemed like a really low cost alternative to iReal, at least for practice purposes, which is my chief aim. Trio+ is $349, and I’m not sure what the extra $300 gets you, other than a looper. Anyway, if I decide to get Trio+ or one of the other products, its not like I’ve put so much money into Trio that I’ll mind setting Trio aside.

Trio has the advantage of being a piece of hardware, not a piece of software. It has buttons and knobs! This promises to make it bit easier to get started with. BIAB is really attractive, but I am a little wary of complex software. Not that I can’t learn it, but I have so many other computer/device problems that require attention. And the full version of BIAB is $500...

Session Band looks pretty neat too, so I’ll plan on giving that a try.

PS What I really want is a band. While I love soloing, I’m ready to work with real people, not just iReal people and intelligent devices.

[necrome]

I personally am very into music apps on iOS and SessionBand apps are indeed good, they do take a little bit of time to set up if you need a specific song structure or chord progression though! There are a lot of useful preset structured stuff if you just want to jam along to a backing track The recordings on those apps are actually a lot higher quality than what you can get on a Digitech Trio. Nowadays I tend to use X Drummer (iOS) more because I normally just need a beat to get going and that app has an amazing workflow with its AI analysis

[ljguitar]

Hi gf-etc

If you don't mind spending lots of money ($90-475 depending on which package you choose) on purchase and then upgrades, and don't mind a fairly complex process of charting and getting results, Band-In-A-Box might be the solution. You still have to plug the computer into a decent sound system (akin to plugging an iPad into a set of speakers).

When iReal Pro came out (called iRealBook back then) it was an answer for me. There is a companion $20 Mac app (called iReal Pro) which lets you crank out charts really quickly. The whole thing cost me less than $40 and they update it for free, I can have it on 5 mobile devices at once, and it just works great!

Quick, simple, fast and a $6 cable will hook it to about any stereo system (that will take care of the tinny sound).