Hi! I have used BiaB for many years (Win version) and I love it. It is my companion for the singing classes I teach. Now I got a MacBook pro, and plan to use it instead of my old Dell.
I will wait for the 2011 version, but want to be sure of my new workflow. I know there is no audio recording track in BiaB for Mac, and there is no Real Band for mac. So I have to use some other sequencer. I started playing around with Garage Band, but I believe there must be other options more suitable for music education use.
In fact I generate a song accompaniment, or a vocal exercise, or a nice 16-bar sequence for vocal impro, then I want to record the student's voice. This must be done quickly, in the classroom, during the lesson.
Any suggestions?
Thanks !
Diana Goulart, from Brazil
www.dianagoulart.com (sorry, my site is in Portuguese...)

Biab + GB is the solution. If you drag&drop from the combo button, the arrangement would be in GB in seconds.
The PC side uses Realband for this, but GB wins when it comes to ease of use.

Thanks for your help, Svenne! I'm getting more and more confident regarding BiaB for Mac. I'm glad that GB works fine with Biab.

Svenne offers good advice. It should be noted that using that method will give you
all of the instruments on one track in GB.

If you eventually wish to edit, mute tracks, pan etc. you will want to go to the
Audio box under the keyboard and select individual real tracks and individual midi tracks.

However, this process does take a bit longer.

Good Luck

In fact, the most frequent changes I make to the songs are key, style and tempo. These are the most relevant aspects for a singer. Of course I often mute/unmute the melody, too. But these changes can be done in BiaB, before I take it to GB.

Thanks for you help!!!

As a teacher myself I have done what you are doing using BIAB on a Mac.
I would suggest that once you to go Garageband you get a much more
flexible environment where if you wish to take the project to the next level
you have all the tools available.

You can choose in the DAW-Options menu to create a seperate track for the differente instruments. Just check the little box, "drag as seperate track" and you will have every single instrument on it's own track in GB. That is pretty easy and done in one step.

I have gone from Windows to Mac. I can`t seem to find the "Practice Window" where I transpose for my Bb Tenor Sax. Does it have one? Thanks.

No, no practice window, no vocal wizzard and lot's of other things are missing. I'm looking forward to the new version and hope all these things will be there.

Hi! I am now very comfortable with the BiaB-GB combo. It works even better than my Win BiaB-RealBand combo, perhaps due to the settings I had (PC Dell, Core2duo versus MacBookPro, Corei7). No more "panic" and a much faster rendering to audio.
I have purchased the ultrapack and look forwards to upgrading to everything pack as soon as I can afford it.
Thanks for your kind help and support - it was a fundamental help to my decision.

I tried dragging from the Combo button in BIAB to Garageband's track window but nothing happened. The cursor turned into a "plus sign" while I was dragging from BIAB, so it looks like BIAB is doing what it's supposed to, but nothing happened in GB. What am I doing wrong?

Have you tried dragging and dropping individual instruments from BIAB to GB?

I have used GB a couple of times, though I mainly use Pro Tools and Reaper... I think the process is basically the same. Click on say Guitar in BIAB and drag it over a designated track in GB and then drop. It should default to the start of the song. You can then move it over to whatever point you fancy.

Try individual tracks first and see what happens. If it works it at least demonstrates that something is ok. It's sometimes a case of eliminating things to get a clearer picture.

Hope this of some use to you.