What styles?
Originals. I use BIAB mainly to help with my composing and arrangement ideas, e.g. browsing styles against my own chord sequences (even styles that may initially seem inappropriate) and letting BIAB trigger ideas and, now and then, what I call 'painter's accidents' ! I also use BIAB to give me initial keyboard, brass and string parts, which I then amend as necessary. I'm a guitarist primarily.

Fun or commercial (or somewhere in between!)
Fun, although I'm very serious about getting things just right and 'credible' against commercial songs and recordings. That aim in itself is a perpetual journey which is what I get most fulfilment from.

What human instruments do you add to your Biab/RB arrangements?
I do all guitar and vocal parts. I also program drum parts in EZDrummer, usually from scratch so that counts as well doesn't it! Actually I often write songs together with the percussionist in our band and he helps polish things up, spotting parts where the drummer would need three or four arms to carry out what I'd programmed!

Do you port your tunes from BIAB into another DAW (eg. Sonar etc) to finish them?
Yes, into Sonar 8. It's far easier there to cut, paste, replace, and edit things into shape. Also essential if you want to make serious high quality audio recordings with all the (many, many) professional tools Sonar has.

Do you play live with Biab?
No. Our band does however use midi backing tracks but these are 'pro' ones that we buy and tweak to our needs.

What are you currently working on?
Unfortunately the last few months have seen a lot of music downtime due some health problems I've been having, my father passing away and other stuff. I'm banking on the Spring to mark a turnaround.

John


Songs web site
YouTube Channel
BIAB 2019
Cakewalk by BandLab
Studio One 4