Thanks for the kind comments! Pat- I don't know about convincing, but I do at least try to give the vocal some country love. Years ago I was told- it needs more twang in the vocal. So I did that and to me it sounded fake. It's the vocal right? Nothing about the vocal can ring untrue. So over time I found my own style, which I suppose is a blend of my country influences such as AJ, George Straight, and many others from years ago. I think it comes down to truly loving country music that aids a New Yorker in getting an acceptable vocal when they have almost no business doing so! LOL!

Once again, biab and real tracks are working well for me. This is all real tracks and as lazy as that may seem given I can play a lot of my instruments, it's exactly what I was hoping I could get out of biab. I work a lot of gigs and I have a day job, so my time is limited. To have the trusty musicians who did the real tracks at my disposal is priceless to me. Using RT's alone is not easy either, though. Getting a specific arrangement such as this out of them is a tall order. It involves a lot of editing, planning, and some pure luck too. The signature licks for this between the steel pedal and fiddle were there, but in different places in the song. One thing that you need for a country song is signature licks too, for the intro and outro, as well as anywhere in between. That's no easy trick with RT's. They have to be in there somewhere and you have to recognize ones that will work and make parts out of them. One way I seem to accomplish this is when creating my chart in biab, I first remove all repeats. I just use one long continuos chord chart. What that does is coax just about every lick out of each instrument along the way- essencially what every regenerate would give you if you were to do so. That gives a ton of choices to work with, which can be edited to different spots, or combined to make very nice sounding parts that seem as though THEY are following notes on a page. What I'll be doing in the future is including holds, shots, and other cuts within the chart, even if I don't need them- probably done at the end of the chart. What that does is give you different note lengths for RT's, such as whole notes, half notes, etc.That all comes in handy when editing together an arragement. Rather than regenerate to get my parts, I choose to do the arragement work with editing, moving things to where I need them. Bass is a big one for this. No amount of regenerating will make a perfect bass part. That needs to be edited together to be right. I suppose all that is the biggest tips I can give anyone working with RT's. At least that's my process as of now, only a few months in with the software.


Some quick notes- all RT's charted up in biab, continued in real band, and when all the instruments were in place, dumped out to reaper for editing and mixing, and mastered- topped and tailed in Sound Forge. A number of different instrument tracks didn't make the cut in the end, such as mandolin, dobro, and some other guitars. I love all the instrumets so much that it's hard to take any of them out, but it needs to be done to make a proper arrangement.

I've been listening to this for a few days and even though I hear a couple of mix things I could tweak, I'm gonna leave it be. Most times, overworking a track to perfection makes it really boring. I try to avoid that! LOL!.

Thanks again for taking the time to listen and comment. I can already feel another song bubbling and I'm sure biab and real tracks will help bring it to life. I've said it before and I'll continue saying it- thank you PG Music for this amazing software!

Dan

My YT Channel- http://www.youtube.com/user/dfizzbom