Thanks, Jim, for posting this article. I'm surprised that no one else has commented on it yet. I found it to be very informative and yet sufficiently concise.
Regarding your request for users thoughts on how BiaB and BiaB styles can assist with song arrangement, I can definitely say that discovering the Bar Settings and Part Marker features in BiaB has been a huge game changer for me. For the first seven months after I purchased BiaB in December 2018, I didn't know anything about this feature. So, every time I used BiaB to create an arrangement for one of my songs, I would always let it generate continuous tracks for each instrument that lasted throughout the entire song. But when I watched Joanne Cooper's webinar on July 10th, I found out about the Bar Settings and Part Marker features and, for the first time, realized how easy it would be for me to improve my song arrangements dramatically with them. Coincidentally, I had just finished writing two new songs and was eager to try out these features ASAP---especially because I had just created a generic or standard BiaB arrangement for one of those songs and knew it could be better. Sure enough, after a bit of trial and error along with some experimentation with various instruments to get the right sound for this song, I was able to create a much better arrangement than I had previously, and I am still amazed at how good it turned out. In fact, every time I listen to it, I can't help but think that it sounds better than the last time I listened to it.
Immediately after I finished my first custom arrangement with the above song, I went to work on my second new song that I had just written. Though I had already typed all the lyrics into the computer, I still hadn't created a lead sheet of the melody and chords (the melody was still in my head) using MuseScore. So, I started working on that first so that I could subsequently figure out the chords. From the time I began entering notes into MuseScore until I had a complete custom arrangement took approximately two and a half days total. As with my first custom arrangement, this one also turned out extremely well and far exceeded my expectations. I hope to find the time soon to share both of these songs in the User Showcase forum along with a sufficiently detailed explanation of how I created them because I did have some challenges to overcome along the way, which I'll describe in my upcoming posts.
So, I want to give a big "Thank You!" to Joanne Cooper for hosting her webinar last month and for showing all the attendees how to use these features. Here's the link to the video of her webinar in case anyone else is interested in watching it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLDM0gDC-uY&feature=youtu.be