Hello Charlie,

I very much appreciate you taking the time to respond to my request, explore my idea and post your detailed response. I didn't get to see your original post before it was deleted.

Like Johnjohnjohn and stratos, I would love to hear the songs you replicated and discover how you did it because I have no idea how to do that. It would be great if PG made a tutorial video to demonstrate this process, for other songwriting members (and the entire songwriting workflow you propose, which takes advantage of all those BIAB features).

As you suggest, I always use my own current song to audition styles and it gives me a lot more than 4 bars. There is, however, a paucity of modern pop styles and, even with my own song chords selected during auditioning (which is a great feature), I often don't find a suitable style and have to go to other programs within my DAW that offer more contemporary starting points. I may return to BIAB for guitars or bass & drums but I would prefer to do the whole thing inside BIAB, as you tantalisingly propose!

I take your point about separating the songwriting process from making a production-ready track. But that is not how most pop songs are written these days. The whole backing track is generally finished without any melody, vocal or lyric input. This makes the 'vibe' of the track central to the marketability of the song. Singer/songwriters can do what they want if they are writing for themselves to perform but, if you are not a performer, the production-ready, contemporary vibe of your demo is the most marketable element. Sounding 'dated' is bad. The songwriters who get the song cuts with major artists always stress the importance of 'that vibey feel' of the demo. Title and lyric story are more significant in Country but the vibe of the demo is central there too. That credible contemporary production feel is elusive and, like other areas of the music business, most convincingly achieved by experts. I will never play any instrument as well as the guys who play on the BIAB Realtracks but I can use them in my songwriting. The same would be the case for production-ready sgu files in BIAB, made by specialist track guys, that would give me so much more flexibility than standard backing tracks. And it could be a huge market for PG if they chose to cater for it.

I'm not saying that toplining is a better way of writing pop songs, just that it's the reality of how most (that make the charts) are written these days. I have written to tracks and, personally, I don't like it because of the straitjacket of the chord progressions. I have every Beatles chord change in my DNA; chords are the most important thing for me, which is why I've had BIAB since the early days.

So thanks again and please let us know how you did it.