Jazz players must get Band in a Box software

If you have a Facebook account please click on the tiny facebook icon at the foot of this post, then "Like" it. I'd be very grateful.

When you think the Duke Ellington had to write down all his parts for every instrument separately. Must have taken hours, and days. To-day, I can think of a song we haven't played, go to a Yahoo Group and download it free, words, dots and all put it into BIAB software, save and send it to the band and we can all be working on it in our homes, within an hour from the start. Wow!

Not that they do, of course.

We can even hear several jazz versions of it being played, all for free, all within seconds on Spotify.

Look, even the pros work on their jazz. For a start, you need to get chord progressions down into a software programme which will play them back to you in any key, any tempo. You can plug in and play with Band in a Box software. The chords are the easiest part of the programme to put down. Takes seconds to save, say, 11 V 1's in all keys. Then you can add in V1's and move between the keys up or down in m3rds, 5ths, whole tones etc.

Perfect for chords, improvising, practising riffs in all keys, perfect. You can work on your tritone subs in all keys.

You can also get thousands of songs downloaded and built into the progrmme from a special Band-in-a-Box Yahoo Group. In the jazz list under A you'll find no fewer than 200 songs! They've been running this Yahoo BIAB group for years with 13,000 members in it.

In our Jazz smugglers band or workshop if we want a new song, I just download it from the BIAB Group, and tidy up the chords. The dots are usually ok, but the chords have sometimes been laid down by prats. All the band members have got BIAB so the song is ready for working on..

This is the program most amateurs use, because it does nearly everything they want and it is substantially cheaper than other programs. It is not to easy to suss out to start with but chords are simple to do. Dots are harder.

Band in a Box website  About £100 for a first time buyer. See reviews on Amazon.

Yahoo Band in a Box Group with '000's of jazz standards for downloading free.

If you are on Facebook, would you do me a favour and click the badge please? We have a page there for the Workshop and it needs support. Thanks. If you want to share this specific page with any Friends then click the little Facebook link at the bottom of this post, rather than the sidebar.

Thanks,

John Winkler

We will produce tips for jazz piano, and jazz guitar. We will cover jazz chords, jazz guitar chords, and we will deal with jazz scales. We will cover jazz songs. This site is all about jazz improvisation particularly for jazz saxophone.