I use BIAB in two basic ways, as a songwriting tool, and as what I refer to as "Demo In A Box" - I'll touch on these in reverse order.

So for years & years, when I would write new songs I would get 5 or 6 of them that I felt strongly about and go into one of the studios here in Nashville, hire a bunch of session musicians, and cut demo tracks. (For the sake of clarity, when I refer to a "demo", it's a full-band recording of a song to show an artist, producer, A&R person, etc. how the song could sound if they chose to record it themselves - a guitar/vocal, keyboard/vocal is what we always referred to in Nashville as a "work tape", dating back to the days when we would write them and immediately put them down on cassette so we wouldn't forget the melody or chord progressions).

That was back in the days when money was good and publishers could afford to do that, and would. I was in the studio every two months or so in the 90s. Then the bottom fell out and now the ROI on recording a full band demo just isn't there anymore. BIAB allows me to present a full-band demo of my songs at minimal cost. This is imperative for me, as I'm not a good enough guitar player to record guitar/vocals that are quality enough to use for pitching purposes. This was my reason for buying BIAB in the first place, and me being a born skeptic, I figured if I was able to get at least one usable demo out of it, it would've paid for itself. It has far exceeded my modest expectations, to say the least.

A very welcome and unexpected bonus was the positive effect it has had on my writing. In scrolling through realtrack demos, I've found myself inspired enough by a track to want to write something with that "feel", and have done so on quite a few occasions. In addition, it has helped me greatly in my co-writing settings. Again, I'm an adequate guitar player at best - I was finding that I would sit down to co-write, tell my cowriter that I had an idea for a really rocking song, and then play my idea for them......and it sounded like John Denver playing swing. "Hey, here's a Jason Aldean kind of idea" <I play & sing>, my cowriters hear ... you guessed it, John Denver playing swing.

But now, I can say "here's my idea....and here's the way I hear it being written", push the play button on a BIAB track, and boom. Now they get it.

I'm a huge fan of this program and have come to rely on it heavily. (Note to PG Music....please get the '19 Mac version out soon, my PayPal is dying to be in touch with you :-) )

http://www.rogerbrownsongs.com
http://www.nashvillesongwriters.com/roger-brown