The Plugin now displays Mono/Stereo indicators next to each audio track after generating.

Now you can replace the original Master track with any audio file of your choice. This can be done by selecting a file from the “+” menu or by simply dragging a wav file over the master track.

The Plugin now supports replacing style tracks just like Band-in-a-Box^®. You can customize your style or open a saved song with a customized style in it. For example, if you load a SGU/MGU song saved in Band-in-a-Box^®, you'll now see the customized settings that you used in the song, such as custom track settings.

This great new feature allows you to generate an accompaniment harmony for any audio track in the Plugin. It is for any type of track but works best for vocal tracks. If you have a vocal track that you'd like harmonized, drag-n-drop the WAV of it to the Plugin's audio track, and choose the harmony function. You then select 1-4 voice harmony. This uses sophisticated Band-in-a-Box^® harmonies for the choice of notes, which includes passing tones (diatonic, chromatic, dominant approach). So on a C chord, if the melody was E,F,G notes, the harmony might be C,D,E.

The Plugin now supports drag-n-drop of song files (SGU, MGU, etc.) right onto the Plugin. This makes loading songs quick and easy.

The Plugin now supports up to 25 tracks (8 style tracks, 1 audio track, 9 special tracks, and 7 multi-riff tracks)! So, you could make a song with 17 RealTracks/RealDrums, much higher than the limit of 7 in Band-in-a-Box^®.

Now you can load any pre-recorded audio file to the audio track by using the “+” menu or simply dragging the audio file over the Audio track (track 9). This is useful for functions like adding a harmony to the audio track, or just for hearing the full arrangement of your song with the audio track.

The Plugin now launches the Band-in-a-Box^® Song Settings dialog so that global settings can be changed. These are the same list of song settings that appear in the Song Settings dialog in Band-in-a-Box^® (desktop).

The Plugin now launches the Band-in-a-Box^® Bar Settings dialog and allows you to set bar specific settings. These include things like changes of time signature, tempo, volume changes (mute, un-mute), etc. for instruments.

+ button has been added next to each track as a context menu to select, generate, and set track settings. For example, if you have loaded a style and would like to replace the guitar track, press the + button on the guitar track and choose a different RealTracks for it. Or disable/enable the track.

The Plugin now supports visual transpose in the chord sheet (this feature is in the key menu). So, for your Bb instrument, for a concert C chord, you will see a D chord. And if you enter a D chord, you will hear a concert C played. This applies to any previous song, so you can view your song library in whatever visual transpose you want. Songs are always saved in concert key, so they are fully compatible.

The Plugin has always had 3 pages (Style, Special, and MultiRiff) but now these 3 pages are visible and available all the time so that you can easily select and place tracks on whichever page you'd like. The track window scrolls smoothly like a typical window, one row at a time, so you can see whatever section you're interested in.

Now you can easily sync tempo with your DAW by simply clicking the small blue button next to the Plugin tempo. If it's flashing. it means that your Plugin tempo is out-of-sync with the DAW tempo. For example, if the DAW tempo is 85 and the Plugin tempo is 90, you'll see that the tempo has a flashing blue light, and you can press the button to set the Plugin tempo to 85. (Note: if you instead want to set the DAW tempo 90, you do that in the DAW, as a Plugin is not “allowed” to change the DAW tempo.)

The Plugin now supports alternate chord chart displays such as Roman Numeral (I, II, IIIm), Nashville Notation (1m, 2maj7), Solfege (Do, Re,), and Fixed "DO."

A spinning wheel has been added to the bottom left corner of the Plugin to visually indicate if the Plugin is doing something or a dialog box is open waiting for a response from the user.

The Plugin now supports all kinds of chord sheet shortcuts just like in Band-in-a-Box^®. Some of these are j=maj7, f=7b9, h=m7b5, s=7sus, d=dim, l=7alt, n=7#9. For example, typing cj enters CMaj7, and dh enters Dm7b5.

Now the Plugin will display a message if a user tries to select a style that is not available. Band-in-a-Box^® has three levels - Pro, Mega, Ultra - and the Ultra has the highest number of styles. You can upgrade to add more styles if they are not available, or substitute with a style that you do have.

You can now use TAB/ENTER to move forward or SHIFT-TAB/SHIFT-ENTER to move back a bar in the chord sheet.

A user can now open all types of bb song files (sgu, mgu, sg1, etc.).

Right-clicking on the track icon will mute that track from playback. Right-clicking again will unmute the track.

The blue icon in Master track will now sync all individual tracks with DAW when double-clicked. Syncing is only needed if you want to play your DAW tracks and have the Plugin playing along as well. If you don't sync, you can of course just drag the files to your DAW, and let the playback happen inside your DAW.

This is an option in the Plugin Preferences dialog can now be turned on so that opening a song file in the Plugin will automatically generate it as soon as you open the file.

The chord sheet now shows repeat symbols if the number of choruses is greater than 1.

Song tags can now be added by using the Song Settings dialog, or simply typing in shortcuts (TAGSTART, TAGJUMP, TAGEND) right into the chord sheet. Note that tags only apply to songs with more than one chorus, since a one chorus song doesn't need a tag.

The status message at the bottom of the Plugin now scrolls for easier viewing of all the text.

The Plugin now has support for languages other than English. The language can be changed in the Preferences dialog. The languages to be supported are the same list of languages that Band-in-a-Box^® desktop version supports.

The chord sheet now supports shortcuts (INSERT, REMOVE) to insert or remove a bar in the chord sheet. (Note: This only shifts the chords, and does not actually add or remove bars to the chord sheet.)

Now you can open or save the Plugin state as any file type (preferably xml), which can then be loaded by any instance of the Plugin.

The Plugin now supports selecting more than one track at a time. Multi-selected tracks can be played, dragged, generated, or removed at the same time.

Double-clicking on any track icon will turn that icon light blue which means that it can now be played back in sync with the DAW whenever the DAW is playing. (Sync playback option has been removed from Preferences dialog.)

The Plugin will now highlight the bar corresponding to the position in the DAW. This can help a user quickly understand where in their song they are by simply looking at which bar is highlighted in the Plugin. (The setting can be turned off in the Preferences dialog.)

RealChart icons in the Plugin are now orange MIDI icons.

A menu item has been added to the track context menus to use the selected RealTrack as a MultiRiff.

The Plugin now supports undo (Ctrl-Z) and redo (Ctrl-Y or Ctrl-Shift-Z) operations in the chord sheet.

The StylePicker window size and position is now saved between sessions.

Clicking on the RealTracks Picker or RealDrums Picker, or pressing the new [Artist Bio] button opens the Artist Browser. This dialog lists all artists and the instruments they play, shows the biography of the artist, and has an ability to list all the RealTracks that the selected artist plays.

Three filters have been added for Instrument (e.g. acoustic guitar), Instrument Family (e.g. any guitar), and Custom Instrument Range.

Now most RealDrums have RealCharts (transcriptions) with Drum notation, which can be viewed by filtering “RealDrums with RealCharts” in the RealDrums Picker. The previous version of Band-in-a-Box^® (2019) had only 20 RealDrums transcriptions, but the new version has 300 (out of the 600 total RealDrums).

Yes, the installer is updated so that only the Plugin types that you select will be present after installation, and can be reinstalled later from the same Plugin. Note that there are extract copies of various Band-in-a-Box^® Plugin types (including older formats like 32-bit) in the C:\bb\bbplugin\files folder.

This is added, and we call it "thickening". It can be used on any RealTracks but is especially useful for "Vocals". If you have a RealTracks which is already 4 voices, you can set it to "thicken" (overdub) it up to 10 times, which would result in 40 voices singing slightly differently, like a big choir! An example where this is very useful is our new "Soulful Gospel" Vocal RealTracks. You can thicken a track by pressing the MEDLEY button in the RealTracks Picker.

There are demo songs in the C:\bb\Documentation\Tutorials\Tutorial - BB2020 folder. For styles, filter the StylePicker list by typing "thickened" in the text filter. In the RealTracks Picker, you can easily identify the RealTracks with this feature by Multi[Thickened=#] in the name.