Precisely my points, Bud. Writing's the fun part. Slogging it out through all the editing and re-editing (mixing and mastering, as you call it -- same difference), listening to the same tune over and over and over and over again is enough to make me want to beat my head against a wall at times. But it is a necessary part of the creative process.

What you wrote reminded me of something that I experienced. I took a couple of semesters of composition lessons from a local music professor, and I took them from him because he was one of the best, but he wasn't hung up on a particular style of music. So I knew he could be open minded about anything I managed to come up with. Well, as a semester project, I had to come up with a couple of complete pieces of music -- songs, but without words, if you will -- and I used BiaB for a couple of rhythm tracks and the drum track for these tunes. The rhythm tracks were keyboards and I'm a guitarist, and I'm sure not a drummer. So why not have BiaB put them together.

So after presenting the music to him, I described what I'd done -- with the exception of those few tracks, all of the music had been written or performed by me, and I told him about this. I'll never forget, when I told him I had BiaB pick up those few parts, he had a look on his face as if I'd just farted. Obviously, he had expected me to write and/or perform every single bit of music in those two pieces. Fortunately, because he was my professor, he wasn't on the jury, and I wasn't gonna tell the jury about BiaB unless I was specifically asked. Lesson learned. I got "A"s for the compositions. Of course.

But here's the irony. He was very familiar with BiaB --- I'm sure he used it, even. Plus he was one of the band directors at the school. So I got to wondering, when he started working up music with his band, did he write out a complete arrangement for the keyboardist and tell the drummer exactly which drums to hit and how many times? Somehow I doubt it. And what's the difference between any composer of big band music and somebody who writes a tune and uses BiaB to fill in the details? Did Glenn Miller tell his piano player exactly which notes to hit and his drummer exactly which drums and cymbals to hit? Somehow I don't think so. Also, I've played in a lot of bands in my life, some in which we worked on our original music. It would have never occurred to me to tell the bass player or the drummer exactly how to play their parts.

If these pieces would have been formal pieces of classical music, then sure, I could understand that sort of mindset, but not with what I wrote, which was very much in a popular genre.

So, I guess what I'm getting at is, getting an odd reaction from people who should even know better should not be such a big surprise.

Best,
Michael

My Music:
https://soundcloud.com/michaelmcbroom/albums