RealBand^® 2024 for Windows^®

Welcome to RealBand, your all-in-one audio workstation and accompaniment program!

RealBand is a program that combines the most popular features from PG Music’s PowerTracks Pro Audio DAW and the award-winning Band-in-a-Box into an all-in-one sequencing program with automatic accompaniment.

RealBand offers powerful features for musicians, students, and songwriters. With intelligent automatic arrangements, RealTracks live instrument tracks, RealDrums live drum tracks, the amazing Audio Chord Wizard, seamlessly integrated digital audio/MIDI recording, built-in DirectX effects, and notation, RealBand turns a typical PC into a music production powerhouse. This documentation will provide you with information on how to get the most out of the great features that RealBand has to offer.

RealBand is a fully-featured and powerful music arranging, sequencing, and digital recording program. RealBand is the perfect tool for musicians, students, and songwriters alike!

Note: Band-in-a-Box^® 2024 for Windows includes version 2024 of RealBand, your All-in-One Audio Workstation and Accompaniment program!

RealBand^® 2024 is Here!

There are over 30 new features to RealBand 2024, including 256 available tracks, 32 VSTi/DXi synth instances, modern color scheme for some windows, Playable RealDrums support, new arrow buttons to change the current time, chord symbols to display in the Track window, 48 tracks to display in the Mixer, the ability to hide any extra masters or auxes in the Mixer, improved handling of VU levels in the Track window, better VU levels display when recording to mono tracks, song preview in the StylePicker, the ability to initiate track generation from the StylePicker, and much more!

Summary of New Features

New Features in RealBand 2024

There are over 30 new features to RealBand 2024, including 256 available tracks, 32 VSTi/DXi synth instances, modern color scheme for some windows, Playable RealDrums support, new arrow buttons to change the current time, chord symbols to display in the Track Window, 48 tracks to display in the Mixer, the ability to hide any extra masters or auxes in the Mixer, improved handling of VU levels in the Track Window, better VU levels display when recording to mono tracks, song preview in the StylePicker, the ability to initiate track generation from the StylePicker, and much more!

Summary of New Features:

The number of tracks has increased to 256, which is more than 5 times the previous maximum of 48 tracks.

There are now 32 available VSTi/DXi synth instances instead of 16.

The new up/down arrows next to the time indicator on the tool bar will increase/decrease the current time by 1 tick.

The following windows now have a more modern color scheme that matches the modern toolbar icon sets.

• Tracks Window
• Mixer Window
• Audio Edit Window

The icons for non-floating windows that were redundant and took up space at the bottom of the area are now hidden from view.

Some windows like Meter Map, Tempo Map, Sysex, etc. have a moderately darker look.

Playable RealDrums are now supported.

The two new commands in the right-click menu of the Tracks Window allow you to:

• Increase or decrease the volume of the selected area of a track by using gain nodes, but without having to manually enter them in the gain node area of the track.
• Fade-in or Fade-out a section using gain nodes, without having to manually enter them in the gain node area of the track.

The Time Line at the top of the Tracks Window will show chord symbols for regular chords (non-MicroChords).

Holding the Alt key while pressing the Play Region button in the Tracks Window will play the selected area of the current track regardless of whether the track was muted or not.

There is a new "Copy/Move highlighted area of current track to another track" command in the right-click menu of the Tracks Window. It makes it easier for "comping" which is to create a track that is a composite of different takes/tracks. It's a quick way to move/copy to a destination track without having to first cut/copy and then paste.

The Mixer can now display up to 48 tracks at a time instead of 24, if the computer monitor resolution supports it.

The "Hide extra auxes/masters" checkbox in the Mixer Window, when checked, will automatically hide any extra masters or auxes beyond the highest used master and highest used aux.

The Grid lines submenu in the right click menu of the Tracks Window and Audio Edit Window will now display a checkmark on the menu item of the current setting.

The Quarter Triplets setting is added to the Grid Lines submenu in the right-click menu of the Tracks Window and the Audio Edit Window.

The right-click menu that pops up when you click on the nodes area in the Tracks Window has a new command to erase all the gain nodes in the highlighted area.

VU levels displayed in the overview section of the Tracks Window now better handle the situation of recording multiple tracks of audio simultaneously. RealBand will now display the correct VU levels for higher tracks within a group of tracks being recorded at the same time, rather than always displaying the same VU levels for higher tracks as the first track in the group of tracks being recorded.

When recording to mono tracks, the VU levels shown in the overview section of the Tracks Window during recording will be the specific VU levels for the input channel of the track being recorded. Also, if L+R is selected as the Input Channel for Mono Tracks in audio settings, and you are recording a group of tracks at the same time (e.g., multiple inputs ports selected in ASIO Drivers dialog), then each track in the group of tracks being recorded will have the correct VU levels shown for its specific input channel (either left or right channel) in the overview section of the Tracks Window.

The floating VU Meters window will display the input and output for all ports that were selected in the Audio Drivers dialog and not just for Input 1 and Output 1.

Tip of the Day is now a floating window that can stay on screen rather than a modal dialog.

When dragging a section of audio or MIDI within the Tracks Window or a section of audio within the Audio Edit Window, you'll see either the audio waveform or MIDI overview during dragging rather than just a rectangle during dragging.

In the StylePicker, you can now preview the chords of the song that were entered in RealBand.

You can now initiate generation of tracks from the StylePicker by pressing a render button, and then when you exit the StylePicker RealBand will generate the tracks in RealBand.

Fixes since 2023 Release:

Added: A checkbox in File-Preferences that will enable the saving of all VSTi/DXi synth instances to .SEQ files even if they are in default slots.

Fixed: Undo for generation of individual RealTracks or RealDrums wasn't working correctly.

Fixed: Small chance of an access violation occurring during Undo if the existing song had non-default DXi/VSTi synths.

Fixed: When visiting the StylePicker, the list box would not be set to the current RB style.

New: The right-click menu in Tracks Window will now hide the MIDI-specific commands when the track is an audio track, and hide the audio-specific commands if the track is a MIDI track.

Fixed: Auto-detection of guitar tracks in the Notation Window is now less likely to mistake a non-guitar track for a MIDI guitar track.

Fixed: When running in 4k, Tracks the Window would not maximize fully.

Added: MIDI submenu to the right-click menu when the track is a MIDI track.

Fixed: Issue with Playable RealTracks not being heard, due to an issue loading sforzando on some computers

Fixed: Generate Audio Harmonies was getting an error -6 for some of the harmony presets like Jimmy Smith, Super Sax, and Glen Miller.

Fixed: Shots and Holds in an .SGU were not interpreted correctly. For example C...d (hold all instruments except drums) would incorrectly import as Cd, resulting in an Error code 8 when attempting to generate the track.

Fixed: Tracks Window - Right click menu - Select Hi-Q MIDI Synth Patch now includes SynthMaster presets.

Fixed: If generation of RealDrums results in a RealChart track also being generated, the RealChart track was set to channel 11.

Fixed: Clicking on the piano of the main screen could result in silence if the current track was an audio track, and the only MIDI track was a RealChart track.

Fixed: If the Edit - Tracks - Merge Tracks was used and the Merge Audio to Mono checkbox was checked, and then a regular render of the whole song was done in the future, it would result in a mono render.

Fixed: the "Force Enabled" checkbox setting in the MicroChords dialog might not be remembered by the program.

Fixed: if you visit the MicroChords dialog and press Cancel it will now undo the MicroChord changes you made and you could choose to Edit - Redo afterward if necessary.

Fixed: The Help button was not working in Adjust Volume/Trim of all Tracks dialog.

Fixed: Could not enter MicroChords when typing with the Ch checkbox enabled in the notation window.

Fixed: Highlighted area in black in chords window only showed the first chord in a highlighted bar.

Fixed: Undo was not working correctly after generating track.

Fixed: Set MIDI volume of Playable RT SFZ Sound menu item in the PRT menu wasn't doing anything.

Fixed: F10 hotkey for MicroChords dialog in Chords Window. (Could not use F6 because that's the Now hotkey in RB) (Could not use M because it's the part marker hot key).

Fixed: The Help button in newer dialogs is now linked to the new help topics.

Fixed: Stems generation might not have worked properly.

Fixed: Unchecking the Enable Realtime Effects checkbox in audio settings would crash the program.

Fixed: If the Event List Window was opened and you right-clicked on the right side of the Tracks Window (track overview or nodes section) then it was possible the Tracks Window location could jump to a location offscreen.

Fixed: The Include Nodes checkbox did not work for Drag and Drop in the Tracks Window

Fixed: If selecting File | New but then cancelling because work was changed since last save, then the Measure Offset of the song was set to the default measure offset without the user being aware of it.

Fixed: Regular text markers were drawn in the same color as part markers

Fixed: Deleting section text events in the Section Text dialog in the Notation Window (the dialog launched by pressing the 'T' button) could cause an integer overflow or access violation

Fixed: File | Import was causing Track 1 to be set to a mono audio track, even if a different track type existed on Track 1.

… and more!