I wanted to put up a post about how I got started using Band In A Box in order to help someone who is just getting started using the program to be be able to see the potential uses of BIAB for a musician and explain my procedure when composing a song.
I began using BIAB about 10 years ago after seeing some things online about the program and thought it might work for me. I had just accepted a staff position as a worship leader at a medium size church (250-300 people) and had been put in charge of all music. The problem I immediately encountered was that there were no available musicians to help me. This is where BIAB saved the day. I was able to quickly construct many professional sounding songs that I would be able to use in the services and play my guitar or keyboards along with and provide an excellent set of music for our church to sing along with. Unfortunately I still haven’t been able to team up with other capable musicians yet but BIAB has helped me keep great music going at church for the last 10 years. I have been able to put together songs for many of our talented singers to use for special music in our services also.
My procedure when using BIAB as I compose is as follows:
1. Get a song in mind and start auditioning styles that sound close to the sound you are looking for.
2. Substitute certain instruments within that style for others that may “fit” the song a little better . For example, you may find a RealDrums set that sounds closer to what the song needs instead of the original one in the style.
3. Make your settings for the song key, how many bars, tempo etc. and type in your chords for the song and setting the appropriate A/B part markers for verse and choruses.
4. Start playing the the song listening for changes that need to be made. It’s a good idea to start saving your work at this point often in case of a problem of some sort that would cause you to lose your work. You may try soloing drums and bass first getting your sound right and then “freezing” these tracks and then moving on to work on other instruments and follow the same procedure. This part of working with BIAB is the most time consuming but in my opinion, is what can set your song apart from from others who don’t focus on these details. The time spent here is well worth the effort.
4. Exporting - at this point you can save the song and export as is to SoundCloud or whatever site you prefer to send music to or you can do as I like to do by exporting each individual track to your preferred recording program to apply effects that you like to use on the tracks or record additional instrumentation or vocals to.
5. Video - at this point I like to export from my daw the final stereo file of my song to my favorite video editing program to get the song ready for using with our church media presentation program. I will arrange the videos in the proper order and run the audio out of the computer to our house system and the video out to the house projection system. This works like clockwork week after week.
All of this is a very basic explanation of how I use the program and I know that there are many users who use BIAB in far more sophisticated ways than I do. But I would estimate that I have arranged 500-600 songs using BIAB, the vast majority of which I have used in a public setting. Thanks PG Music for being my go to source for musical help and inspiration! My hope is that this post might help someone open their eyes to potential uses of the program that they might not have thought of. I could see the same type setup used for clubs, weddings etc. I invite any of the veteran users of BIAB to contribute any additional thoughts to this thread to help a beginner. We all can remember certain struggles we had in the beginning with BIAB and any helpful information could really brighten someone’s day. Happy composing!!! Thanks, Torrey




Last edited by Torrey Bliss; 01/21/18 12:59 PM.
https://torreybliss.bandcamp.com/