Hello Peter,

Thanks for your reply. I am very glad to hear that you are considering my suggestion. I think that the more you look into how BIAB could transform the backing tracks for toplining market, you will get excited at the new lease of life this could provide for BIAB and the eager new market it could reach!

In answer to your question, lots of Songtown members use backing tracks for toplining, particularly in pop. Songtown runs its Writing to Tracks toplining course every year and it's their most popular course. The majority of chart pop songs are now written in this way. I suggest you reach out to Marty and Clay at Songtown who could answer your questions from their own experience. Let me know if you would like me to make an introduction. Marty recently had a number 1 in Korea which was toplined to a backing track. This strategy is widely used in Europe, the USA and around the world.

There are many sites like Jetracks.com which sell backing tracks. I suggest you listen to the tracks on their site to get an understanding of what these backing tracks offer. They have all the contemporary arrangement and flourishes to make a track feel contemporary and PRODUCTION-READY to submit to artists and publishers, once vocals are added to make it into a song.

The problem with them is that you are stuck with their fixed chord progression, key, tempo etc. In order to make the tracks broadly accessible, these chords are often limited in number and the progressions are often (in my opinion) dull. One of the songs I wrote during the Songtown Writing to Tracks course had only two chords in the whole song!

The people who write and record these backing tracks are referred to in the industry as 'track guys'. I suggest you get track guys to make tracks for you which could be made into a BIAB sgu song (using bar settings to mute instrumentation in different sections of the song). There could be a new BIAB style associated with this sgu song. Of course, the great advantage BIAB backing tracks would have over ALL the competition would be the ability to change the chords, add other realtracks and rearrange the song within BIAB and when transferred to a DAW.

My view is that these backing track sgu songs and styles, made by good track guys, could be the next big leap for BIAB, as significant as Realtracks! I think BIAB has great styles in the genres is has already developed extensively - rock, country, jazz etc. The Realtracks are excellent and the combination in a style is often very effective. The ability to change chords, add shots, holds etc. and alternative solo ideas makes it unlike anything else. The programs I mentioned in previous posts are catching up with you - and they are more industry-friendly - but nothing yet is as integrated as BIAB. Its potential does not yet seem to be recognised by the contemporary songwriting world. But they would fall in love with sgu backing tracks (of equal quality to the existing players) which would offer the unique added benefit of allowing you to change chords, transpose, change the tempo etc.

I would be happy to answer any questions or give feedback during the development process.