Many thanks to the category lead, Gr8ful for adding this product to the database.

Of course it is going to be impossible to describe what this great program does for me in a lean and mean review. However, I can report the best features of the program:

* It produces great sounding backgrounds for composition, improvisational practice or performance.
* Backgrounds are easy to prepare and have great options for the rhythm section sounds
* The backgrounds can be saved to .wav and burned to CDs
* It can analyze midi files and return melody and chords
* It can analyze .wav files and return melody and chords

This can be done for any song that the player has chords for in any key at virtually any tempo with a wide range of available backgrounds (styles).

The more recent improvements have been to greatly enhance the realstyles provided. These are selectable backgrounds using sound samples of live musicians, These samples have been digitized so they can be applied to the tempos and keys that the user configures for a song.

There are more real styles and they are of higher quality. One really nice feature of the present product is how great the ride cymbal sounds on backgrounds made using jazz swing realstyles. The realstyles, of course, take lots of memory and that is why thnis year's upgrade came on a portable hard drive instead of a dvd. I paid $199 for this year's upgrade of Band In A Box 2010 Everything Pack with RealBand. You only need to buy the base product once.

The following items were included:
-         Band In A Box
-         Real Band (a sequencing and digital recording program)
-         All Realtracks (82 sets)
-         All Readrums (29 sets)
-         Video Lessons Pak
-         160GB usb hard drive
-         Bonus 20 pak and Songs and Lessons Pack(mostly additional songs, intros and practice patterns)

The upgrades are worth it. They are priced at about a third of the non-upgrade price if you buy before December 31. This year's upgrade included some additional realtracks styles several shortcuts for playing backgrounds back and modified the program so that it would load the memory-intensive realstyles in about half the time of the previous version.

I can recommend this program highly. It continues to be an indispensable part of my musical career.

I have a new, live CD available. Samples are on my profile page.


Please check out these related reviews:

Trend Micro Security Suite
Zone Labs Internet Security Suite
Seagate FreeAgent Xtreme 1.5 external HD for PC
2 Wire 2791HBG Wireless Router
Canon Pixma IP4300 Photo Printer
US Cellular Cell phone Service
Blackberry 8703 smartphone
Simpletech 250GB USB2 External Hard Drive
Canon Pixma IP4300 Photo Printer
Acer 20" Flat Screen Monitor

Recommended: Yes