After moving from BIAB to RB, I discovered a WORLD of difference in creating songs and the layers of sound that make them "sing". I suppose there are many ways to do any task, but I'd like to share what has been working for me.

This CD I have been working on is country. I have had to listen to a LOT of country, a genre that has not been my favorite over the years. I needed to learn the correct palette of sound for these songs I have been writing. (A lot of country music television....) I am using "The One That Got Away" as my example.

Song written..... on to programming. I laid down my chord progression on paper (the theory background never goes away) and then put it into the chord chart in RB. I then experimented with styles, finally deciding on which drum beat is right, which bass line fits (More on bass later) and generated. That gave me the canvas.

From there I needed to "paint" that canvas. I added some strummed 12 string, some picked acoustic.. all "country" Real Tracks. I got it to where the rhythm was acceptable, but needed some punch, something ear catching and emotion evoking.

Using the "rhythm" pedal steel parts, I generated 3 different tracks. Once they were all generated, I played it back with only drums and pedal steel tracks. That gave me a chance to listen to, and make notes on, where there were loud patches that needed to have gain cuts, where the expression or chord voicing of the generated track did not work with the other tracks.... things like that. Blending the guitar parts back in, I found something still lacking. So in the second half of the intro, I decided to add some fiddle. Now this song is a slow tear-jerker ballad kind of song, and that fiddle really added some emotion to the piece. It took a LOT of experimentation with gain changing and using fade in and fade out as if there was a volume pedal doing swells. It took me SIX regenerations until the fiddle part blended just right, and a little bit of pasting to move sections around.

That was all done, but I still needed a solo. Okay, on to bar whatever, select the bars, and start playing with the Brent Mason samples. Again, several regenerations on several tracks, I came away with enough to segment together a good solo, to the point where had Brent been playing it in my studio I would not have changed a note.

The "more on bass later" is not that big a deal. One of my songs has a lot of "over" chords, like A/D, G/D... the style was not staying faithful to that, but with some quick copy and paste, it took all of 3 minutes to fix that. When you have something really specific in mind, you may have to work with it a bit.

Then the live tracks... vocals, some drum fills to bring back the song after a pause late in the song tapped in on a drum machine, and some organ under the chorus. Played those in, and sat down to mix it. Again with pen and notebook, taking notes where this has to boot and this has to cut.... but I don't like using the mixer sliders, so with those notes I use gain changes to do those volume adjustments rather than turn on automation and having the software remember my mixer changes. That also includes a lot of fading in and out in different places.

Then a dump to the hard drive, one at 320k for my use, and another at 128k for uploading, and it's done.

It sounds like a lot more than it is, because when you factor out not having to play every instrument in, and play it again and again to remove clams, not programming a drum machine.... it really is a streamlined process and well worth the time it takes to learn the software. I can't imagine a song going from conception to MP3 in 8 hours or less without Real Band. It would take me 8 hours of just PLAY time.

Then factor in the level of support offered by the company, and the brotherhood in these forums....

Folks, it doesn't get any better than this.