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Norton Music's User Style Disks are completely different from the ones that came with Band-in-a-Box.

Since 1991, Norton Music's User Style Disks #2, #3, #4, #5 ... THE ORIGINAL Band-in-a-Box TURBOSUPERCHARGERS - have been enjoyed by more computer musicians than any other third party accessory for Band-in-a-Box!!! They have been recommended by fine publications like Keyboard Magazine, Electronic Musician Magazine, The Micro Computer Journal, Jazz Times Magazine, by musicians on the internet and by word of mouth from musicians in over 75 different countries. They have been used on commercial CD's, songwriting demos, radio spots, TV spots, jingles, and on night club and concert stages all over the world. Songs made with  these styles are also included in the CD companion to the McGraw-Hill textbook, Multimedia Literacy by Dr. Fred T. Hoffstetter and have been recommended by this publication.

PG Music's Band-in-a-Box program is an excellent auto-accompaniment program. Many musicians use it as a practicing tool, a sequencing tool, and some even use it as a working tool (playing gigs while using the Band-in-a-Box program as their rhythm section). The original "built- in" styles were quite confining and musically limiting, so PG Music responded to popular demand by upgrading the Band-in-a-Box program to allow musicians to program and edit their own User Styles.

The up side of this is that the number of rhythms available in your Band-in-a-Box is virtually limitless. The down side of this is the process of writing your own User Style is very time consuming. Writing anything but the simplest of User Styles also requires extensive music theory and arrangement skills. Like synthesizer programming and sampler looping, most musicians simply do not have the time to program good Band-in-a-Box User Styles. If you are like the majority of musicians, you too would rather spend your time making great music than programming.

That is where third party programming comes in. The third party programmer usually approaches the product in his or her own individual way, and comes up with ideas that the mother company never even thought of. Often, the third party software is even better than the software the factory provides. NORTON MUSIC is proud to be the number one, third party programmer for Band-in-a-Box.

My name is Bob "Notes" Norton. I personally wrote all the styles on Norton Music's User Style Disks. Since the day that I introduced the first disk (on Band-in-a-Box version 4.0), I have received numerous letters, faxes, and phone calls from people from all over the world who purchased their disk, telling me how much they enjoyed these refreshing new styles, and asking me to write styles for newer versions of Band-in-a-Box.

Before I go any further, I would like to thank all of you for your kind words, enthusiasm, encouragement, and your support.

Variety Is The Spice Of Life

To recap a few details mentioned in the Information about Norton Music section of this website, I am a professional musician, (saxes, flute, wind synth, electric bass, drums, guitar and keyboards) and a professional arranger. I also have some delightfully different musical ideas than the folks at PG Music do. I approached these styles from a working musician's viewpoint (not a computer programmer's).

Some of the major differences between my styles and PG Music's are:

I wrote styles not already covered by PG Music

Instead of writing parts exclusively for drums, bass, piano, guitar, strings, and brass, I also utilized steel drums, synth patches, harps, clavinets, saxes, etc.

I wrote most of the styles for two or three drummers and/or percussionists for a fuller, more contemporary sound

I wrote rhythmic breaks (kicks) for the roll measures in some of the styles-to add greater realism to the rhythms

I wrote some of the substyles with simple comp parts - so they won't get in the way of an improvising soloist

I also wrote some of the substyles complex enough to compliment a sparse melody line

I wrote some of the styles with polyrhythmic parts in them (where polyrhythms were either authentic or needed) to add interest

I wrote styles already covered by PG Music, only if I thought that either their style needed improvement, or that I could approach it in a fresh, new, and definitely better way

I did not try to rewrite any of the styles that I thought PG Music did a great job on - you can't fix what isn't broken

I used my experience as a multi-instrumentalist to write the kind of parts for each instrument, that a player of that particular instrument would actually play

DEMOS of Norton Music's User Styles for Band-in-a-Box

Audio demos of most of my styles are listed on Norton Music's Master Directory and Demo Page. Each Audio file represents an honest demo one of my styles... Not one note was changed after it was exported from Band-in-a-Box. In other words, what you hear is what you get.

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