BandMaster is a phenomenal tool for improvising musicians of all genres. In essence it emulates a backing band consisting of bass, drums and piano on the computer. Using BandMaster couldnt be any easier. Opening an existing song or picking a template for a new one is all that is needed to get started. Settings for count in, speed and number of chorusses are readily available in the main window and a familiar set of buttons for play, stop and pause handles the rest.
Creating original content in BandMaster is also very easy and requires very little typing. Most editing is done by click, copy, paste and dragging. Mass edit tools like replace or transpose tools are available as well as a set of macros that can be applied to blocks of measures. BandMaster comes with 6 groups of song templates and additional content containing around 1100 songs is available for download free of charge. Creating a basic blues from a template for example takes all but 3 mouse-clicks.
For playback BandMaster offers many standard features and some very unique capabilities. Instruments are broken down into individual tracks that can be muted or soloed. A full set of General MIDI instruments is available to each track as are volume and octave adjustments. In addition instruments can be silenced during specific chorusses. Our blues could thus start with a chorus of bass only maybe, and then kick in some drums and piano later.
A unique feature in BandMaster are timeline sections. A timeline is the graphic representation of the allotted chorusses for a song and sections are simply contiguous areas in that timeline. There are the Time Scale section with 8 settings from half-time to double-time, the Transposition section and lastly the Trade Fours section. Sections can be applied independently over any group of chorusses. In our example we could now play the first chorus of bass at half-time, proceed with regular time once the other instruments come in and finally add a Trade Fours section just before the last chorus. Sounds like fun!
With all these possibilities looping comes to mind for practicing transitions or specific parts of a song. There are two kinds of loops available in BandMaster - form loops and chorus loops. Form loops are groups of measures in a song - like a bridge maybe. Chorus loops are groups of chorusses. In our blues we might want to loop the first and second chorusses for practice because the half-time bass section contains the melody and then there is the transition to regular time.
There is much more to BandMaster than is possible to list in this short paragraph. If you are interested, visit the website, watch the tutorials and maybe download the manual. Feel free to contact us at the email address given here with any questions or suggestions.
Features
- supports all common chords
- American and European chord notation
- chord analysis
- global transposition for horn players
- chorus and form looping
- time scale, transposition, trade fours sections
- metronome mode
- annotations tool
- replace tool
- text entry tool
- time signature tool
- transposition tool
- large counter window
- song exchange with iOS versions of BandMaster
- ScaleMaster Live Sync
- MIDI file export
- ready for Retina®
- academic discounts available
Please make sure to contact us directly at the email address listed below with any issues or suggestions as we are not privy to comments in most countries. For more screenshots and several videos of the application in action, please visit the website indicated below.
