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Thanks for the help all. I did try to read what looked "most pertinent" in the 257 page manual. Frankly the quik start could be a LOT better. I guess maybe I bought the wrong product according to some... I thought I could create my own tracks as well as use canned tracks if I chose to. Maybe I can with the workarounds mentioned. thanks again



If you really have no experience at all with Biab then yeah, that manual is a bear.
You didn't buy the wrong product, there's nothing else in the software music world that does this. Also, these suggestions are not workarounds, they're features. The term workaround implies there's something wrong but here's how to work around it. That's not the case with what you're asking about. Peter Gannon is the man, do exactly what he said including using Real Band. To me RB is better than Biab for what I do. Much more flexible, many more options and then there's this from you:

"I thought I could create my own tracks as well as use canned tracks if I chose to."

Absolutely, that is what RB was created to do except it has 48 tracks to work with for your own tracks instead of Biab's two. As has already been said Biab will do what you want but RB is much more and since you're starting out with both anyway, learn them both at the same time. Try Biab for maybe a half hour or so, see what you come up with then switch to RB and do the same thing. Just remember RB is it's own separate program and the configuration and setup is different from Biab. Big point, RB can access and generate every Real Track or Real Drum part that Biab can. RB will open a Biab song file so you don't have to recreate the chord grid. It will automatically put the Biab tracks in blue at the top of the track screen for reference but you have 40 more blank tracks to use below them. If you're not importing a Biab song, there's a checkbox to release those 8 Biab tracks at the top for use as regular recording tracks. Even that is a bit tricky to explain right now, just accept that that is a very flexible option depending on what you're trying to do. You can keep those first 8 tracks as strictly Biab tracks and use them just like you would Biab or not, your choice. You can also simply right click any other empty track and generate a Biab part for that one track only.
As to your original question, you can write your own bass parts in RB no problem and combine it with many different Biab tracks, maybe other midi tracks you imported from another midi file or your own recorded parts but you could also write several different bass parts each on it's own track in order to test them. You mentioned drums, how would you like to create say 3 or 4 different drum tracks each using a different Biab style and mix parts of them together in order to create one killer drum track? Can't touch that in Biab but I do that all the time with RB. It is very flexible but certainly confusing at first.
Watch the video's, they're the easiest to understand, play around with it and come back here with more questions.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.