I've been listening to the new demos and am very impressed. I'm sure I'll upgrade, as usual, next week. But for the life of me, I can't see how one would use the wonderful soloists on live gigs, when all the players I work with solo themselves. I'm on guitar and work with 3 different horn players and 2 keyboard guys, who all solo very well. We're using BIAB as the rhythm section. I've never used a BIAB solo on a gig. Do others use this feature on live gigs? I can see the advantage in a recording situation and for demos, maybe. For me it's a learning tool and pleasurable listening.
There are many features in BiaB to satisfy the many different ways that different people want to use the program.
I just ignore those features that I don't want to use. Its good to have them, though,just in case, never know what the future may dictate.
--Mac
I play keys.
A couple of times I have rolled a track with a short solo and I comp, especially if it's fast and I'm trying to keep my fingers moving.
Works great,
Later
Ray no John
I play bass. I use the feature on every song. It is strange though for a bass player to play solo.
Um there are a lot of jokes about that, in many versions....
This guy goes on vacation to a tropical island. As soon as he gets off the plane, he hears drums. He thinks "Wow, this is cool." He goes to the beach, he hears the drums, he eats lunch, he hears drums, he goes to a luau, he hears drums. He TRIES to go to sleep, he hears drums. This goes on for several nights, and gets to the point where the guy can''t
sleep at night because of the drums. Finally, he goes down to the front desk. When he gets there, he asks the manager, "Hey! What''s with these drums. Don''t they ever stop? I can''t get any sleep."
The manager says, "No! Drums must NEVER stop. Very bad if drums stop."
"Why?"
"When drums stop...bass solo begins."
I also play solo and have never used the soloist feature, because like you I play my own solos. However as anyone who does solo gigs will attest to having the same instrument solo on every tune for a gig lasting over one hour can become be a bit cumbersome and even repetitious. So in the past (before RT Horns, Harmonicas, Fiddles etc) I would shy away from gigs lasting over an hour, hour and a half. But since the addition of RT's I have no problems with booking and playing gigs as long as 3-4 hours. I may even do some tunes without a guitar solo at all, but most of my play-list include me soloing along with a few of the RT. I.e., me on guitar from bar 32-52, trumpet from 52-71 etc. The RT's not only take some pressure of off the one person performance but they also add spice to the gig.
Not sure if this answered your question but I hope it helped.
Later,
I haven't used BiaB live, as I have sequenced up my own backing tracks using Reaper and soft-racks of virtual instruments (Reason and VSTs).
However, the principle is the same as what Danny C. is discussing. I do MOST of the solos myself, either via guitar, or sometimes I do a credible trombone or trumpet impersonation with my voice. Sometimes I'll see members of the audience do a double-take when they realize that "horn" is me. lol
Anyway, I DO have a little bit of solo piano work sequenced up during certain songs, just to trade off and break things up a little.
I'm an accomplished enough soloist to "carry" the evening, even for 4hr gigs, but that added spice of a piano helps keep things fresh.