Wow--great stuff! I read and enjoyed all the posts and it's definitely helping me to understand this tool better.

Rachael, I took your advice and listened to some of the actual WAV files for the RT/RDs. That was helpful.

Jazzmammal--excellent overview of what RT/RD will and won't do. You confirmed what I had suspected, but with a lot of additional detail that I needed to know.

John--thanks for taking the time to spell out those chord progressions. I'm going to give those a shot, although I think I still need to learn more about what some of those "codes" do so I can use them more creatively.

Russell--good tips about the soloist. Might not need it for my current stuff, as *I'm* the soloist. :-) But I plan to record other songs in different styles for which I probably will need solos on instruments I can't play. Then it will come in handy.

I think I get the overall picture. So after a long and frustrating weekend of working on all this stuff, I'm at a bit of an impasses, especially regarding the drums. I have a drum plug-in called Superior Drums which works in my DAW. Amazing sounds, totally realistic, with lots of dynamics, individual outs for each drum, mic placements, numerous other features. Comes with a library of 4 and 8-bar MIDI patterns that are well-performed. I can combine those in my DAW and do all the edits I need to surgical precision using standard MIDI/sequencer techniques.

The down side is, I have to piece together all the drum parts myself. It's so much easier to stay hands-off and just let "Terry Clarke" in BIAB make up amazing drum tracks, but then I can't have specific arrangements. And just figuring out the coding and logic that BIAB uses, so I can have the maximum control possible and have, for example, just the right placement of fills and cymbal crashes, seems arduous.

So I guess the question for today is, is it worth it to spend all the time learning the BIAB RT/RD logic given that I will still be somewhat limited? Or should I just go with my other drum plugin/DAW combo?