Very nice post, Joe.

With over thirty years in the BIAB family I think I have read a few things to share.

Peter Gannon developed BIAB to be able to play along with jazz fakebooks. This explains some design decisions, such as the use of “chorus” in the jazz sense rather than intro, verse, chorus, bridge etc. That’s not right or wrong; it’s just the way it developed.

It is my understanding Peter is still doing the coding for BIAB. At one point maybe ten years ago I recall he said he used a Mac running Windows with one of those emulators.

Peter clearly knows music theory VERY well. He has sometimes made decisions different from what I might have done but he always has the evidence to back up his reasoning. Besides, if you get ten professional musicians in a room discussing music theory, you’ll often get six different answers - it’s a tough subject. And Peter is receptive to changing. For example, I had an issue about cut-time handling of sambas. He asked for proof which I gave and then programmed a way to handle cut time. This also helped the bluegrass players - same issue.

Peter also can talk tech. For example he just requested that anyone who made BIAB run on an SD card let him know the particulars.

I believe Peter plays bass, guitar and maybe piano, based on comments he has made. So we are talking about a musically hands-on programmer, to answer your question.

There are other programmers who work on the ancillary software like RealBand and the plugin. Adar and Jeff Yankhaur come to mind. Others like Tobin are heavily involved in the RealTracks part of the program. Andrew seems to do it all and is most visible in the forum and support areas. It’s a relatively small staff as we understand it.

Peter has a vision and carries it out. While it may not always be completely what some of want, he also comes up with things we never anticipated, like RealTracks, that are game changers.

Finally, despite some phenomenal breakthroughs in music software like unbaking a cake, I’m not aware of anything remotely able to compete with BIAB.

Does that help?

BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.