Great post, thank you for sharing!

I have been using BIAB in a similar fashion for many years - as you say, a "giant looper". What I like most is that I can create backing track for songs starting with 2 or 4 bars, then slowly expand. I generally only use the drums and bass tracks, occasionally organ, and then record guitar comping and soloing tracks.

The main benefit I get out of BIAB for this that I can follow the chords along - which for a beginner jazz guitarist is a great help, I find so many of the 'standard' backing tracks (like Aebersold) difficult to follow - but that's just me, I know many of my fellow musicians have no big problems with them.

There is probably 70% of BIAB which I have never touched, regretfully sometimes, so I keep upgrading in the hope that one day I'll sit down and use the help file to systematically learn "all" of it.

I also had a number of looper pedals over the year which I all sold. Having BIAB on the laptop connected to my Quilter amp, guitar as well, allows me almost unlimited variety of backing tracks, speeds, instruments....

For me, it's about fun, joy and learning - just playing simple melodies against a 4 bar backing track sometimes gives me immense pleasure....