Technical information

Chapter 12: Tutors and Wizards
203
Auto Chord Substitutions
You can quickly auto-generate substitutions for an entire song, or portion of a song using the auto-substitution
dialog, which is accessed with the menu command Window | Auto Generate Chord Substitutions.
For example, we can generate substitutions for the !Freddie.MGU song. Here is the original chord progression.
By using the auto-substitution dialog, we can generate substitutions for the whole song, and we get this result:
You can see that Band-in-a-Box chose the substitutions for about 70% of the chords in the song (that's what we told
it to do in the dialog). It began by replacing the F6 chord with an Fmaj7 Gm7 Abdim Am7 progression. Some of
the substitutions chosen are even more advanced than that (replacing two bars of Bbmaj7 with Bb6 Ebmaj7 Dm7
Gm7 | Bbmaj7 Cm7 Dbdim Dm7 for example).
If you'd like Band-in-a-Box to only generate for a certain range of bars, you should first highlight that range of bars
in the chordsheet, and then launch the dialog. The Range will then be set to “Part of Song” and the “Bar” and “#
bars” settings will also be set. You can override these settings with manual settings.
Chord Builder
You can right-click on any chord to instantly hear how it sounds, or use the Chord Builder feature to audition
different chords until you find the one that sounds best to you. In other words, you can enter chords “by ear” -
without having to know the actual chord names or any music theory.
Launch the Builder by pressing the Builder button, or right clicking on the chordsheet and pressing the
Builder button, or by choosing the User | Chord Builder menu option to open the Chord Builder dialog.
You can click on the root of the chord in the “Root” group, and the Extension (Maj7 etc.), and also an alternate
“slash-note” root. For example, to make the chord F9/A, you would click on the “F” root, the “9” extension, and the
Slash Root of /A. As you click on them, you'll hear the bass note played on the Bass part, and the extension played
on the Piano track.
Press the [Enter Chord] button to enter the chord at the bar and beat specified. To insert the chord automatically
when you click on the note/extension names, select the “Enter chord when clicked” option. This will advance the
Bar/Beat position. Change the Bar/Beat settings to move to a different bar.
The Chord Builder can be left open as you work entering chords into Band-in-a-Box. Remember that you can also
enter chords from a MIDI keyboard by pressing Ctrl+Enter after you've played a chord.