Your song sounds very cinematic David. I can easily hear this in a Batman sequel.


For me, my favorite use of Band-in-a-Box in some form of an amazing achievement is to utilize BIAB as an 8 track multitrack recorder. BIAB stacks up extremely well with stand alone units from Tascam, Zoom and others. Applying the principles that artists use when recording with stand alone multitrack players to BIAB yields some quite remarkable results and actually makes BIAB more versatile than the stand alone units in many instances.

(Take Note Noel96, I saw your post after I'd written this. ) First, BIAB is not limited to 8 tracks nor to 8 individual instruments. You can have as many tracks and instruments as you want and all without degradation of the audio quality. Each of the 8 tracks can have 10 instances of instrument change outs. Because BIAB is 'reading ahead', it creates very smooth transitions automatically. You can also choose to render any or all of the 8 tracks to WAV and import that mix back into your song and move it to a track as a performance track then change styles, add new tracks (with multiple instruments on the track if desired, mix and render that, import a performance track again and keep repeating this process until you are satisfied. All of the editing, chord construction, vst plugins are completed digitally and no audio is produced until the song is rendered.

Unlike a stand alone unit where audio has to be exported to a DAW to apply high quality pro VST's, you have direct access to any registered VST or DXI as well as the stock BIAB plugins. It's a huge benefit to have this time saving feature immediately available as you are constructing a song.

For beginners and artists who are transitioning from an analog or digital stand alone unit to a computer based software, BIAB can be a comfortable and familiar feeling program. Many artists, using multitrack principles they are already familiar with can quickly produce quite advanced productions without having to learn DAW's or exporting back and forth between BIAB and a DAW.

Here is a song that I completed the instrument track using BIAB as a multitrack recorder as I detailed above.

My Sad Story

Production notes: My recollection this ended up being about 17 tracks. Several of the instruments are duplicated on several tracks and I muted and unmuted the instruments between the two tracks in various places throughout the song.

As a songwriting tool, even if you are using this technique as a scratchpad or demo and plan to export individual files for a more professional DAW production in the future, you can speed up your workflow as well as create a complex demo all 'in the box' and not have to export and import tracks between a DAW and BIAB interrupting your train of thought.











Last edited by Charlie Fogle; 07/03/18 03:55 AM.
BIAB Ultra Pak+ 2024:RB 2024, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.