PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box VST and Pro Tools/AAX DAW Plugin (Windows) Anyone here kind enough to catch me up on the BiaB plugin and the Reaper script(s)?

Hey there friends,

Due to a series of major shifts in my personal life over the last few years, while I kept purchasing each year's updates, I have barely had time to engage with BiaB and explore the new features and evolution of this program since 2021 or so. As such, I am woefully behind on things. Additionally, most of the little free time I had to devote to music as a hobbyist (other than jamming out on my guitar and bass) I used to explore more modern music styles such as EDM, trap, etc., as well as the creative uses of MIDI and effects.

Despite the above, I have lurked the forums from time to time (I miss you guys!) and have seen all the posts by Musocity about the plugin and Reaper. The latest one had some extremely inflammatory words bandied about, and that makes me a bit sad because this was one of my favorite online communities.
I'd like to take a moment here to point out that there are some astonishing things that can be accomplished in Reaper (and other DAWs)—fundamental even, with respect to modern music production. And I'm not even talking about only EDM. Modern music has automation all over the place. It has sends and returns for parallel processing, sidechaining for dozens of purposes...you can send MIDI notes to trigger effects like Stutter Edit 2 on an instrument bus, create groups, folders, create automation lanes to modify any number of filter effect parameters, etc., sample, slice, and dice and rearrange & layer samples in seconds—none of which can be done in BiaB nor RB.

People here have noted over the years (and quite correctly) that modern songs as one would see in the charts are usually just a couple of chords and MIDI, and thus BiaB, which excels at complex progressions and organic instrumentation, is not really relevant for modern music.

I strongly disagree. I disagree for a number of reasons which are too long-winded for me to get into at the moment, but sound design is a huge thing right now, in the sense that segments of real instruments playing are taken, sampled, rearranged, or have applied to them all sorts of bitcrushers, formant filters, reverb and delays with freeze settings, and turned into quite astonishing creations—even with a two-chord song! (Maybe I'll make another dedicated post on the main forum later about all this and provide examples because I am getting sidetracked). The fact is that all these things pretty much require automation and other production techniques that simply cannot be done within BiaB programs.

I think the synergy between BiaB and modern production tools and techniques can spawn music the likes of which the world has not yet seen. (Check out Shpongle for just some of what the synergy between real instruments and modern production can achieve). And yes, I am familiar with Kontakt instruments and UJAM, and all other programs that, (from what I gather but please correct me if I'm wrong). use snippets of real recordings and play them off MIDI chord tracks, and they can't reach BiaB's ankles in the way I envision the synergy I am talking about. Again, I don't really have time to get into it at the moment, but contemporary creative effects use things like ADSRs, LFOs, and envelope followers, which were traditionally associated with MIDI and synths, to modulate parameters as assigned by you.
Note that even if you don't want to record the automation yourself, these plugins will "evolve" their own parameters across the timeline of each bar, or use an envelope follower to modify a resonator such that the more vigorous strums on a guitar kick in or intensify the effect. Or maybe you can use a sidechain from a kick stem to trigger a filter sweep on a B3 organ RT via a send from the former to a compressor FX on the track of the latter. How about if you want to selectively group some of your tracks to apply the above techniques to simultaneously after having another compressor earlier in the chain?
Picture this: take Track A, a moderately strummed guitar RT, and then apply multiband delay with a pitch function synced to your DAW, to target the mids and create 8th note triplets alternating between a 5th above and a 5th below. Then, create Track B, a B3 organ, with subtle distortion or saturation applied (focused on the mids and highs for richness and texture). Route them both to Bus A, apply a glue compressor to blend their dynamics, and then send them to an auxiliary track for sidechain compression triggered by a kick drum. The resulting sound would be a rich, shimmering blend of guitar and organ, dynamically pulsing with the rhythm of the kick, creating a lush and evolving texture.

Now, I've seen the screenshots of the Reaper projects with the GUI and all that which was posted by Musocity, and I can see the myriad of benefits of using the plugin and how it can open up the doorway to a whole new workflow and arrangement possibilities. The issue is that there are many of them, and I have no idea where to start because many of them build on prior ones.

Also, from what I can tell, there are multiple scripts that accomplish different things(?)

So, Musocity, if you would be so kind as to provide me with a bulleted list of what these scripts/apps are, and how to get started with them so I can see what these are all about, I would be most appreciative! Also, assume I know nothing about the BiaB plugin since 2021. Finally, I have Reaper 6 (I am quite comfortable with it, and have not yet decided if I need v7). Would that be a problem?

Thanks in advance!

P.S. As a corollary, the synergies I mentioned above can, of course, be accomplished by dragging your tracks from BiaB into your DAW even without the BiaB plugin. However, even without having explored the plugin yet, I can already think of numerous benefits from having the option to construct a track "additively" as you go, and being able to open an SGU in the plugin should offer tremendous workflow enhancements for these purposes.