I suggest starting by going to Finale’s Launch Window and choosing Templates > Jazz Templates > Jazz Band (Handwritten – Landscape). While I customize my personal templates, some high-quality big band templates are included with Finale. Once the imported MIDI file opens as a new Finale file, I copy the contents of that file and paste it into one of my Finale big band templates. To open a MIDI file in Finale, simply go to the File menu, select Open, navigate to the file you’d like to import, and click OK. There might be a few places where you’re tempted to edit the visual results, but I don’t bother as I don’t typically display rhythm section swing grooves throughout my charts (more on that in a minute). In my experience, MIDI files created in BiaB open pretty cleanly into Finale. When I’m happy with what has been generated, I export the results as a MIDI file.
With a little editing, this will make it easy to ensure that the second chorus is different from the first, and that the entire result sounds fresh. Ultimately, I’ll save multiple passes in different styles. There are hundreds of styles to choose from. Then I experiment with different swing styles until I find something that feels appropriate to the current project. I start in BiaB by entering the chords for the form. My hope that this can help you to efficiently generate some realistic-sounding swing grooves for your Finale creations. I find it to be a huge time saver in creating backing tracks, and it allows me to focus more of my energy on horn arranging.īelow I share a quick overview of my process of using BiaB with Finale, as well as a few tips that I’ve picked up on the way.
#BAND IN A BOX FREE TRIAL SOFTWARE#
BiaB is, of course, software created by our friends at PGMusic. Because my piano comping skills are under-developed, and because I quickly grow tired of manually entering bass lines, I’ll often rely on Band-in-a-Box (BiaB) to generate rhythm section performances for use in my Finale charts. In this work, it’s really helpful to send MP3 files of demos – including work-in-progress – to my clients. In addition to playing tenor sax with two local groups, I write big band charts for many different clients including several high schools and colleges. Outside of “work” hours, my focus is on big band jazz. By day, I am a test engineer on the Finale development team.
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