Deacon

You will find that there are many different ways that people achieve this same end, & you need to work out the best way for you, depending on your computer & musical skills.

Others have already given you there methods, all of which work for them.

I create all my backing tracks myself, using the following method.

Source the chords, either by ear or using chord books, internet, etc. (my fav internet site for this is Betty Lou's guitar site).

Plug these chords in to BIAB in the layout you want (eg, intro, verse chorus etc).

Pick an accompaniment style - this can take a long time, esp at first.

When you are happy with the backing, save it as a mid file, then close BIAB & open file in Powertrax.

As mentioned by others, you need to allocate the lyrics to a melody track. You can either play the melody, or what i quite often do is just fill the entire melody track with the same note, 4 (or 3 depending on time) beats to the bar. This is just to hold the lyrics, and gets deleted later anyway.

Type the lyrics into the melody track as closely as possible to the correct beat.

Split the melody track into seperate melody & lyrics.

Save and play with either Powertrax or BIAB. Both of these can display lyrics & chords while playing. Alternatively export to Wav or MP3 file, but no lyrics unless you want to get into a type of file called CDG.

I usually find that it takes me around 1 - 2 hours to create a backing track I am happy with, another hour or so to add the lyrics (using the fake melody method).

Another thing you need to be aware of is that some laptops create noise through the audio output to some devices, so I would suggest that before laying down your hard earned, you try any laptop out with the equipment you are going to be using.

Hope this helps.

Simon