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Mr. UPS stopped at my house today with a new hard drive with some cool new software on it. My initial reaction was. "How cool is that" The small hard drive was a lot cooler looking than I had anticipated. This is just an awesome package that literally fits in the palm of your hand. Wow!!!

I hurried through supper and fired up my PC so I could get the software running. I had BIAB installed and running within 10 minutes. I decided to tackle my first project. There was a song that I wanted to add to this week's worship set. With no band available this week, I had resorted to looking for Background Tracks. The only one I found was $25.00 - and I didn't want to spend that much. I did have the chords from the last time the our band had played it, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to test out how BIAB worked.

I am blown away, within 10 minutes I had set up the song and had the chords for the chorus entered. Easy? You betcha! Then I pressed play - I couldn't believe it! I had thought that the demos that they had on this site were things that you could possibly attain - if you put in many hours of work and were an expert at the software. I couldn't believe the quality of the backing track that I had just created with BIAB in just 10 minutes. I quickly entered the rest of the song. I added a guitar soloist, split the song into sections and switched sub-styles in the verse and chorus. I figured out how to switch the soloist on and off so I could have the guitar throw in a tasty lick here and there. Pressed play again and was just floored. With BIAB - I was able to go from chords to "finished" product in less than two hours - with absolutely no prior knowledge of the program. If you would have told me this was possible last night - I would have laughed in your face. Tomorrow, I'm going to move it to RealBand and add the vocals. As it is a cover, I am not sure if I can legally post it, but if anyone is interested, I might post it anyway.

To anyone who might be reading this and sitting on the fence, let me tell you that this is an incredible piece of software. I understand that there is much much more to BIAB - but what it allows you to do right out of the box without training is nothing short of incredible.

Thank you PG Music for creating this software. I am positive that it will make it possible for me to do much more that I had ever thought was possible before.

PS - I know this whole post sounds over the top. But really, my feelings are even stronger than my words can convey. This software rocks!!! (and swings and bops and.....)

Your post isn't over the top; it's a typical reaction, particularly well expressed.

Congratulations!

Glad it's working out for you the way you had hoped!

Don't be surprised if people start asking you where you get your backing tracks from. Have fun and visit this forum often. I learn something new every time I log in!

Chris:

This software is definitely worth the money for a worship leader. As an example last week my Pastor wanted me to do a medley of You Are So Beutiful and My Jesus I Love Thee. Try finding a track that one. I was able to do it in BIAB and burn it to disk. I got many compliments afterward about how pretty that song was.

Terry

I will translate this and post in Spanish forum.

Congratulations! enjoy it.

Welcome to the Familia

Trax

Sounds like me just a few years ago.

The fun has just begun!

Later,

Thanks for reading and commenting on my post. I had choir practice today and brought in the backing tracks for this Sunday's service. It was a mixture of professionally recorded backing tracks that we had used before and this track that I had created last night. I usually drop all of the trax into Audacity so that they can be mixed together to create a decent flow. After playing the mix, I dared anyone to determine which of the songs was created by a computer - no one could come up with the right one.

The only "down" side that I have is that the children's leader has a "few idea's" that she wants to me to create for her... I welcome the challenge.

I am glad you first encounter with BIAB was over the top. I have been impressed with the software for many years. Just remember if or when you hit a tough spot in your journey with the software, this forum is the most patient, understanding, and sharing of information that you could ever hope to participate in.Enjoy, DennisD

I agree. BB isn't perfect but what it does, is impressive. Personally writing backing tracks in a flash is nothing new to me, as a long time user of Yamaha arranger keyboards.

But the Realtracks blow me away. I never use the title maker, the automatic song-maker, etc etc....I like to write my own music and use BB to just write down the song after I have devised chords, melody, and song structure. In other words, there's a zillion of features in BB that I never use. The chord 'recognizer' (don't know how it's called) from audio files, doesn't work too well, or at least, it works only with very simple chord progressions, which my ear recognizes rather accurately anyways.

I have used BB for years but stopped a couple of years ago because the program would continually crash, especially when I would load Realtracks. I did try everything, even installing different soundcards. Nothing worked and I grew very, very frustrated and gave up and went back to my Tyros 2 keyboard (which is a great instrument too).

Then I changed soundcard again (an old Terrated PCI) tried BB again with that, and now it works very well.
No more crashes and problem, the Realtracks load up very well, so now I am very happy. Nothing else sounds like these Realtracks and Realdrums.

I don't know if now it works well because the bugs were fixed or because BB just works well with that Terratec soundcard, but needless to say, I am not going to change the soundcard again, not in years...

Yes, I still use a ten-year-old Terratec card in a test PC, and it works great! That card was a gem, and ahead of its time (remember, almost everyone had a SoundBlaster at the time).

yeah the Terratec is pretty good, and also only costs peanuts on ebay. The only thing I don't like about it is that I cannot use the ASIO drivers and the windows drivers at the same time.... i.e. I cannot use BIAB and fire up Windows media player, as there's no sound from the latter when I use ASIO.

But at least I am not tearing my hair out anymore....better a few limitations than a lot more stress

Like I said, it depends upon each soundcard, or more specifically, the drivers for it.

I've had both results, depending upon the sound device in use.

One thing that may resolve the issue, in Control Panel, Sounds, try selecting the Terratec there so that Windows knows to direct its sounds to the card. This is different from selecting the soundcard in a host program such as BB. Might work.

Some cards cannot do Sample Rate Conversrion on the fly, as well. Windows sounds are at 48KHz and a program such as BiaB is locked to 16/44.1. This is a problem with certain sond cards I've had. Others don't seem to mind at all.


--Mac