I'm a pro musician but not a pro recording engineer. I just putz around with my home studio and do some decent stuff but certainly not at your level.

Real Band is unique. On one hand it pales in comparison to Cubase, Sonar and other DAWs when it comes to editing, automation, drawing volume envelopes, that kind of stuff. But for basic recording, using multiple VST's both synths and effects, multiple output ports etc it's equivalent. Where it will really grab you is the Biab functions. You have to learn to think outside of the normal DAW box. Say you have your basic bass, drums, guitar, keyboard tracks and maybe some scratch vocals. You're not happy with the guitar part. Pick an empty track, right click and generate a different guitar part. Go to the next track down, pick a different style and do yet another different part, do it again for the third track down. Now play back the song and play with the track mute buttons and cycle back and forth between those different guitar parts and you can easily decide if any one of those might work or maybe parts of each one can work in different parts of the song.

Another thing, say your in studio bass player did the basic song ok but the groove part under a solo is not so hot. You find a Real Track bass part that fits that pretty well. We both know that even if the tone isn't exactly the same you have the equipment you need to fix that in the mix so you just may plug in that RT to cover for the live player then bring him back in. With RB you can do so much creating of parts using all the styles it's mind boggling.

RB has 48 tracks so you can do that kind of experimentation using all of them. Of course you already know if you tried one part and don't like it delete it so you keep your track view area as clean as possible. You can create different parts using different styles and instruments on the same track over and over by just deleting one and generating another. I do this all the time with the drums. I may generate four different drum or percussion tracks and then mix, match, cut and paste them all over the song. Another thing don't be hung up on just using the Real Tracks. If you have high quality synths available some of the Biab midi parts are killer. The cool thing about midi parts is they generate in just a couple of seconds, no waiting. Much easier to experiment with those. Most of the Biab midi drum parts were done with a live drummer on a midi kit. I will run a Biab midi drum part through Jamstix using my favorite Yamaha Studio Drums kit and it sounds great. That Yamaha kit sounds almost identical to a lot of the Real Drums tracks. I will use midi drums for certain song specific punches or fills and mix them with a RD part. Sounds pretty darn good for a demo if not for a final commercial production.

Bob

Last edited by jazzmammal; 01/12/12 09:03 AM.
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