Dick,
To expand on Mac's last post, you can create as many tracks as the software will allow. Since Real Band allows for 48 tracks, you could, conceivably, have 48 audio tracks, although that last one is going to be a pain.

To do this is fairly easy. Most synths today will only support 16 MIDI channels, so you can only play 16 channels at a time! That does not mean that you can not record more than 16 tracks, though.

Let's say that you want to record something like a swing band, where you might have five or six trumpets, five or six trombones, six or eight saxes, a few more woodwinds, piano, guitar, bass, drummer, etc. Now, let's say you get your piano, bass, guitar and drummer from Real Tracks. You import those four tracks as audio into Real Band. You can now record six trumpets, six trombones, and four saxes. That's sixteen instruments, the maximum of most synths that can be played at one time. If the synth allows, you can record each of them to a different patch, so you may have six different trombone sounds, and six different trumpet sounds, and four different sax sounds. Each one of those gets recorded to a separate audio track, giving you a total of 20 audio tracks.

Now, you can erase the MIDI tracks, having recorded them all to audio, and now record up to 16 more MIDI tracks, four more saxes, three clarinets, and whatever else you need (vibes, other percussion, etc.) Then, each of those can be recorded as audio, up to the maximum your software supports.

Gary

Last edited by Gary Curran; 02/15/10 05:09 PM.
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!