Hi Chris,

I've never thought about it before but I guess my compositions tend to be "in the style of", at least in their early stages. I load a BIAB style, and begin composing.

Often I will load a demo song for a particular style and use the chord progression for that demo as a starting point for developing my own progression. Once my song is essentially composed, I hunt through the Realtracks to see if there might be one that sounds better than what I already have. Then I usually play around with adding shots, pushes and holds to customize my arrangements. Using these features would move me out of the "in the style of" mode and into the "tailor the arrangement" mode.

When I have the song sounding like I want it, I load the BIAB file into Realband and use additional Realtracks to create fills and solos. I cut and paste a great deal to get the solos and fills exactly as I want them. Once I have all this in place, I save the Realband tracks as individual wav files and load them into Reaper for mixing and mastering. (An important thing to appreciate about Realtracks is that they are musical phrases and thus it is not possible to create individual note sequences and have the RTs play these notes. This is possible with MIDI. That being said, however, it is possible to cut and paste and create RT phrases and even individual notes if you are patient enough.)

Hope this gives you some ideas! I couldn't be without BIAB. I often find the most productive way to compose a song is to type in a chord progression (or load one from a demo, as mentioned above), start the backing playing, and simply sit at the computer saying phrases that pop into my head and that fit with the backing. When I stumble on something I like, that becomes the starting point of my song.

Keep in mind that PG Music offer a money-back guarantee if you do not like the product. They stand by this. It might be worth contacting them and asking about it.

It's always good to meet a fellow Aussie! There are a few of us in these forums

All the best,
Noel

MY SONGS...
Audiophile BIAB 2025