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I like to use what I consider the strengths of each program. Band-in-a-Box has eight tracks. It's a great place to begin as you can quickly put the basic song structure together and try out many different styles to get an idea of what instruments (Realtracks and/or midi grooves) best work with the song. I don't worry too much about importing specific instruments at this stage. It's more about getting the structure and sampling styles to find how many styles I can find that give me the feel I want for the song. Everything I hear that I like I make a note. If there is a perfect track, I freeze it NOW so I don't lose that perfect take. Then I save the song either in the SGU (no melody track) or MGU (with melody track) format. Then I close or minimize BiaB and open RealBand.

I open the BiaB SGU or MGU song then immediately save what I have in the RealBand SEQ file format. RealBand starts out using whichever style and instruments last saved in the BiaB file. Frozen tracks will be rendered as they were when you froze them but all the unfrozen tracks start with a fresh regeneration. Tempo map, key signature and the chord chart also were imported. RealBand has 48 tracks with the first eight reserved for use by the eight BiaB midi instruments. You can cancel the track reservations if you want to. The additional tracks allows you try many instruments, combine the best parts of various instrument tracks, cut, paste and move audio around. RealBand does NOT regenerate a track unless you tell it to. RealBand CAN regenerate just highlighted portions of a track. The multi-riff feature regenerates a highlighted track section nine times then let's you listen to each riff in context to choose one or more of the riffs. These are very powerful tools to use in making the best audio tracks possible. As I'm developing tracks, I also maybe changing styles or the chord sheet to guide the regenerations to provide the audio I think the song needs. More power to the producer!

Each time I'm changing chords or styles I'm saving the files with new names. That way I can return to the project later on and have an idea of what was done.

Once I have the tracks like I want them, I export each track as an audio (wav) file and do a final save of the RealBand SEQ file. Now everything is audio and I can use RealBand, or another DAW, to open a new project to mix and add effects as desired.

The BiaB, RealBand, audio and DAW files are all archived in a folder unique to each song.

Jim Fogle - 2025 BiaB (Build 1128) RB (Build 5) - Ultra+ PAK
DAWs: Cakewalk Sonar - Standalone: Zoom MRS-8
Laptop: i3 Win 10, 8GB ram 500GB HDD
Desktop: i7 Win 11, 12GB ram 256GB SSD, 4 TB HDD
Music at: https://fogle622.wix.com/fogle622-audio-home