User Guide

Chapter 8: Automatic Music Features
141
If you already have a guitar track that has guitar channels (for
example if it was played on a guitar controller as a single string
guitar part), then you might want to tell Band-in-a-Box not to change the guitar positions of the notes that it finds.
Otherwise set “OK to change existing guitar channels” to true.
6. Press OK to generate the Solo.
You'll then see a dialog box that tells
you the solo has added a solo to the
track, adding about how many notes
to the existing number of notes. The
playback will begin automatically,
and you'll see the guitar voicings on
the Guitar neck.
As you listen to the solo, you'll notice the following:
- Some of the notes are left as melody, and some are assigned to chords.
- A wide variety of guitar chords are used, including some advanced chords. All of them are popular chords
played by real guitarists – there are no theoretical chords.
- The chords are strummed, to simulate a real guitar player.
- The Track Type for the Melody has been set to Guitar – so the notation shows [Tab], and the MIDI file will be
saved with the Guitar Channels (11-16) preserved which preserves the fret positions.
- All of these items can be customized in the Guitarist Editor.
Technical Note: Since some of the guitarists can be assigned to strum the chords in a delayed fashion, if you repeatedly re-
generate the solo, the melody will become more and more delayed. The solution(s) for this occurrence would be to choose Edit |
Undo Solo prior to regenerating the solo, or picking a Guitarist that doesn't delay the strum. The Strum Delay Status is indicated
on the “Info” panel of the Select Guitarist screen.
Once you have generated a guitar chord solo…
The chord solo is now part of the notation track. You can edit it like any other part, by deleting/inserting notes, etc.
You can use the special guitar features discussed in the Guitar Window section to change the guitar voicings or
replace a note with a chord and vice versa.
When you have a note or chord highlighted press the [Ch-] or [Ch+] Insert Guitar Chord button on the
guitar window (or 7 or 8 on the NUMPAD keypad). Each time you press the [Ch-] or [Ch+], you'll see that
the guitar chord changes to a different voicing, cycling through the available 5-10 voicings possible for
each chord
In a similar manner, you can convert a chord to a guitar note, and use the Insert Guitar Note button for this.
Pressing the [N+] (or 3 or 4 on the NUMPAD keypad) repeatedly cycles through playing the same note on
all 6 strings.
The solo will be saved with the song (.MGU) and exported to a MIDI file with the string positions intact because we
use channels 11 to 16 for the Guitar part. You can remove the solo at any time, even after the solo has been saved or
reloaded, by choosing Melody | Remove Harmony part menu item.
Guitarists can be customized using the Guitarist Maker.