Hello There.

Recently purchased BIAB 2014 [300$ one]and getting a feel for it.
Have used a real track and created an original song, selecting a "solo" and adding vocals.

What I am trying to figure out, with the help of the user's guide and playing around, is:

1. after recording the vocals how come I cannot find the track it is on?

2. what type of file do I have to save it as in order to copy it into a DAW Real Band, for example, or MixCraft,

3. how do I actually copy the completed song into a DAW? and

4. will I be able to mix everything down? [The tracks are or will be separate correct?]

Douglas

Douglas, welcome to the forum.

BIAB has only one audio track, called Audio, and that's where your one recording of a vocal would be. If you want to record more than one audio track, you can do that in the free program, RealBand that comes with your package. Or, you can do the rest of the recording in your DAW.

Yes, you can do what is called "Drag 'n Drop" to take your individual tracks into your DAW of choice. There are several ways to save BIAB tracks or files, so I would defer to someone else here who has Mixcraft.

Thank you.

In Realband, first thing to try is simply opening the BiaB file in RB. Leaves a lot of options open that way.

Exactly how I work. Lots of unused tracks to grab and use for whatever you need.

Right there with you Douglas. I just got my BIAB/RB package the other day too. Learning curve is steep but fun. Just when I think I will beat my head with a hammer, I read a post like this one and gain another notch. Kind of like learning guitar. Going slow and not getting too excited. Although there is much to be excited about! I have learned to try stuff, read, try again, read, keep plugging. For some it might be like fly fishing and they have the skill to sneak right up on the suckers and present the fly right by a floating leaf. For me it is still like fishing with a Dupont lure (1/2 stick dynamite)! Heh.

So then for instance, it would be okay to make a biab guitar track in the chosen style or even a band, save that as a biab song, then go open RB and load the song. Then add other stuff like vocals or other instruments. Something like that?

You could do that, by doing what is called Rendering the song to audio and opening that audio file in RealBand. Or, do what I think is easier and gives you more control: RealBand will open the BIAB song and you will have everything there that you had in RealBand. Then you have control over all individual tracks.

Yes. Band in a Box songs open in real band and you can add vocals, new instruments, regenerate the BIAB instruments or even small sections of them to fix a section that may not sound exactly as you want or is not hitting the correct notes. You can also generate several tracks of the same instrument, cut and paste your favorite parts from each of the tracks to create a unique track from the sum of the parts. Or, you can cut and paste sections from several different instruments to create a medley.

As with all things musical, the boundaries are imagination, talent and budget.

Charlie

Yes. Pick a style in BiaB (BB) that is as close as possible to the way you hear the song in your head.

Simply save it in BB and close the program. Open Real Band (RB) and open the BB file.

Hint: when I start to work on a song and find that things are coming together, I will create a unique folder for THAT song project and store it in another folder on my desktop I call Song Tank 2014. I have one for every year. All songs, projects and simple ideas go in there.

OK.... so you open the file in RB. RB will now render all the existing tracks of the instruments into their real band counterparts. Up to this point I have not recorded any vocals even though I may have been working on them. They stay in my head until nearer the end.

Once the tracks render into audio waves, you can now select the entire track on one of the waves and click on an unused track below the filled ones. You can use RB at this point to create a unique new instrument. For example if the style is LA HARD ROCK, it will have bass, drums and guitars in it. Say you want to add a dobro, a steel, a fiddle or a B3 organ.... this is where you can add those. As many as you wish. You can also record the vocals into the open tracks.

My next step is to export ALL the tracks from RB one by one into that folder I mentioned earlier and import them into Sonar where I do all my live recording tracks and also the mixing and mastering process. Since RB is a DAW, you can take the time to learn the DAW and use it to do the recording of live tracks and the mixing/mastering without needing to buy a different DAW.

Hi, Douglas !

I use Mixcraft 6 !
The way I have done is rendering the biab sgu file to wav
with the option to save each track separately.
After this I take each track into Mixcraft by using
the option open sound file (in Mixcraft) . After you have
copied each track to Mixcraft, you can do whatever you
like with them ! Hope this helped ?

Cheers
Dani

Hello Guitarhacker,

I was just about asking the same question as Douglas - which program to use for recordings (Biab or RB). I've composed a song using Biab; now I will give a try -following your instructions above- and add some real instrument recordings in RB. Let's see what I get out of it.

Regards,
sep...

It's the logical next step; you can still use most BiaB features but now you want to start adding audio tracks .. to me RB is what makes the package so powerful. You can work in a DAW while retaining regenerating and other features.

I hope you enjoy it. RB may need a little more attention to settings than BiaB, because of the extra options, but well worth setting up and using.

There is a separate Realband forum section on this site if ya get stuck along the way.

click on my signature..... then on MY MUSIC and listen to what can be done using the method I described. Every song on my site was done in this manner... (well most of them because there are some exceptions.)

Great points Herb.

DAVID!!! Welcome my friend....

I suppose if you were on a Mac you'd have mentioned it by now but.....the Mac version does not come with Realband. I simply render my BiaB tracks to a folder and then drag and drop them into Logic Pro X (my DAW). Quick and seamless for me.

Welcome to the forum!

I like to use what I consider the strengths of each program. Band-in-a-Box has eight tracks. It's a great place to begin as you can quickly put the basic song structure together and try out many different styles to get an idea of what instruments (Realtracks and/or midi grooves) best work with the song. I don't worry too much about importing specific instruments at this stage. It's more about getting the structure and sampling styles to find how many styles I can find that give me the feel I want for the song. Everything I hear that I like I make a note. If there is a perfect track, I freeze it NOW so I don't lose that perfect take. Then I save the song either in the SGU (no melody track) or MGU (with melody track) format. Then I close or minimize BiaB and open RealBand.

I open the BiaB SGU or MGU song then immediately save what I have in the RealBand SEQ file format. RealBand starts out using whichever style and instruments last saved in the BiaB file. Frozen tracks will be rendered as they were when you froze them but all the unfrozen tracks start with a fresh regeneration. Tempo map, key signature and the chord chart also were imported. RealBand has 48 tracks with the first eight reserved for use by the eight BiaB midi instruments. You can cancel the track reservations if you want to. The additional tracks allows you try many instruments, combine the best parts of various instrument tracks, cut, paste and move audio around. RealBand does NOT regenerate a track unless you tell it to. RealBand CAN regenerate just highlighted portions of a track. The multi-riff feature regenerates a highlighted track section nine times then let's you listen to each riff in context to choose one or more of the riffs. These are very powerful tools to use in making the best audio tracks possible. As I'm developing tracks, I also maybe changing styles or the chord sheet to guide the regenerations to provide the audio I think the song needs. More power to the producer!

Each time I'm changing chords or styles I'm saving the files with new names. That way I can return to the project later on and have an idea of what was done.

Once I have the tracks like I want them, I export each track as an audio (wav) file and do a final save of the RealBand SEQ file. Now everything is audio and I can use RealBand, or another DAW, to open a new project to mix and add effects as desired.

The BiaB, RealBand, audio and DAW files are all archived in a folder unique to each song.

some video resources



about songs

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tips & tricks