There has always been confusion between the term "Styles" and "RealTracks", as I've found lots of folks here call RT's "styles" (as in, "I selected a different style on the bass track"). So the quick primer is:

BIAB has tracks, which (for the most part) represent the riffs that follow the chord progression played by a single instrument. Tracks can be either MIDI, SuperMIDI, or "Real" (RealTracks and RealDrums). How the track is generated is determined by its type.

Originally, there were X tracks defined, with the names:

GENERATED BY STYLES
* Bass
* Drums
* Piano
* Guitar
* Strings

FOR USE BY THE USER TO RECORD MELODIES OR SOLOS OR IMPORT FROM A MIDI FILE
* Melody
* Soloist

Styles, however, are a packaging of "auto-generated/auto-generating" tracks that follow the chord progression across multiple instruments and give you a full band playing the song.

Originally BIAB styles used only the Bass, Drums, Piano, Guitar, and Strings MIDI tracks and riffs to generate arrangements. The names were generally what instruments were used on those tracks, but other than Drums, the actual instrument could be any instrument (nothing keeps you from putting a trumpet on the guitar track). Today, you can have any instrument on any track and it is named accordingly, but there are still places where the legacy names can trip you up (such as for holds, shots, and rests), but I won't go there in this post.

Original MIDI styles used a weighted pattern editor to generate unique riff phrases that follow the chord progression. So depending upon the weight assigned to a phrase, it would play often or not. Also, it allowed for specific conditions that determine what is played (for example, play this riff right before a part marker). We as users have full use of the Style Editor to create our own patterns and MIDI styles.

SuperMIDI tracks are generated similarly to the original MIDI styles; however, it uses a different engine and we as users do not have access to that underlying technology to create our own.

With RealTracks (and RealDrums), they are all pre-recorded phrases from one to eight bars long. The RealTracks engine does not generate the riffs, but intelligently selects which phrases to include based on a number of factors such as: how long before the next chord change; is there a phrase recorded for a specific chord or will another phrase have to be transposed; etc.) and slices and dices to put it together. It's amazing how smooth this often works, but occasionally you'll hear something that sounds a little choppy. Also, BIAB lets you create your own "realtracks", which are called UserTracks.

Styles then just package a mix of MIDI and Real into a style file that can then be used to generate a number of tracks into a song with multiple instruments all playing the correct chord progression. While MIDI patterns are included in the actual style file, for RealTracks it is strictly "by reference". The Style file knows to use the RealTrack, but it passes that need on to the RT engine for processing.

With the addition of utility tracks utility tracks, it gets a little more convoluted, but hopefully the basics above made some sense.

John

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