Hi all,

Brand new here. Considering purchasing Band In A Box soon. I was hoping to get some direction from the pros in here!

I'm a singer/songwriter who typically writes and performs with only my voice and an acoustic guitar. I have a collection of songs that could really benefit from additional layers of music. Currently I use a Zoom H4n field recorder to record my guitar and vocal tracks separately and then I bring those into Reaper for EQ, mixing and output. But I am really not good enough at playing other instruments such as drums, bass, etc. to record those tracks. So I'm looking for a good way to add these other layers to my music.

So here are my questions...

1) for a typical workflow, could I bring an existing recording into BIAB or would it be best to lay down a drum track (or other click track) with BIAB and then use that as a backing track to record a new vocal track?

2) can I bring a vocal track into BIAB or is that more of a RealBand (or DAW) function?

3) will I be happy with the acoustic guitar strumming in BIAB or is my live recorded acoustic track going to be better?

4) I worry that using the RealTracks in BIAB will make my song sound like other BIAB songs. Is that something to be concerned about? Or, once I mix it all up will it sound like my song and not like every other BIAB song?

5) related to above, how do the solos work? I am assuming they will be the same solo every time they are used so that would be a problem in an original song. Right?

6) would you consider BIAB to be mainly a practice tool to use for creating backing tracks (for performing or writing) or is its output nice (and unique) enough to be used as accompaniment for a demo?

7) what would the typical workflow be for someone who has composed a song on an acoustic guitar? something like this maybe?
- write song
- enter chord progressions into BIAB
- add various instrument layers in BIAB
- export backing track from BIAB
- record vocals using backing track in headphones
- mix backing track and vocals in a DAW

8) Based on what I've seen so far it looks like I need to spring for the UltraPlusPak or be unhappy with missing RealTracks! Is that correct?

9) is BIAB the right software for what I want to do?


Thanks so much for any assistance you can provide me. I really appreciate it!

John