Lots of folks get this confused. I'll use BIAB as a basis for the explanation, but it pretty much applies to RealBand as well.

BIAB supports MIDI-based instruments (which require either a soft synth or a hardware synth to hear them play). BIAB also has what are called RealTracks and RealDrums. RealTracks are audio (not MIDI) recordings of individual instruments. Likewise, RealDrums are audio recordings of a drum set or percussion instruments.

Each of those instruments can play notes and rhythmic patterns, which for now we'll call riffs.

A BIAB style is simply a collection of up to five instruments that play a number of different riffs and generally sound pretty good together. Each instrument plays on its own track.

BIAB has MIDI-only styles, RealDrum Styles (which have MIDI instruments, but use RealDrums instead of MIDI drums), hybrid styles which include a mix of MIDI instruments and RealTracks, and RealStyles (in which all the instruments playing are RealTracks).

The cool thing is that you are not limited to just the style. Use the style as a basis for your song, but once you have selected it, you can substitute whatever you want to on any of the style-based tracks. You can select a piano from a completely different MIDI style to substitute for the current style's guitar track; you can change from MIDI drums to RealDrums and vice versa; you can select any specific RealTrack to substitute for a track containing either a different RealTrack or instead of an underlying MIDI track.

And then when you have it the way you want it, you can save that configuration, or "band" if you will, as a new style file to select later without having to do all the substitutions.

That being said, there is nothing to keep you from substituting a RealTrack that just doesn't work with the underlying style. RealTracks are pre-recorded, so they will not change according to the style. If your style is a swing style, and you select a RealTrack that is straight, then that RealTrack is not going to start playing swing. Likewise, if you substitute a track from a straight MIDI style, it's not going to start playing swing either. So you have to have a sense of the underlying instruments and other styles before you start substituting.

But the styles you get from PGMusic are all designed to work well together (at least on some level).

But be aware, a RealTrack by itself is not a style. Yes, it has a "style" of playing, but it is not in the context of a BIAB style, which again, is a group of instruments playing different riffs to achieve a band effect across your chord progression. Unfortunately, lots of folks on the forum use the term RealTrack and Style interchangeably, but that is not correct.

I hope that helped a little.

John

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