"As a longtime BIAB user and upgrader, I find the way PG bundles together styles from different genres as an incentive to upgrade doesn't work for me. I have so many styles now, in everything but contemporary pop, that more styles actually makes things worse because there are so many to wade through (and oompah and celtic styles seem to evade your filters... I can't get away from them cluttering up my searches!)"

OK, so let me preface this by saying that I have been fairly outspoken in these forums over the years regarding my frustrations and issues with various aspects of BiaB over the years, and I'm by no means what one would call a "BiaB apologist."

That said, I respectfully disagree with you about the Celtic, Klezmer, Americana, etc. First of all, you have to keep in mind that there are many, many, users who, like myself, mainly use the program as a learning and practice tool. These folks are not likely to be active on the forums or post to the showcase, because they're focus lies elsewhere.

I cannot tell you how thrilled I am personally with the diversity of styles that BiaB has helped me learn (both guitar and bass, but mostly bass). Now am I ever going to join a band that plays anyone of the myriad Latin/South American influenced styles in a band setting or at an open mic jam session? Almost certainly not.

HOWEVER, learning the grooves and unique fingerings, patterns, and not placement from all those styles has made me a much more rounded player, and I frequently surprise myself at how I subconsciously pull in various elements of those styles during "plain vanilla" jam sessions to kick it up a notch and keep things interesting (the drummers notice too!)



There are some excellent realtracks and drums that are very useable for pop and they are what I'm usually searching for (I rarely use all the instruments from a style). It would be great if these could be grouped together by PG, maybe under some foolproof search filter term, to help us find them easily (and close alternatives). That could be another step in making BIAB more useful and accessible to contemporary pop songwriters.


I agree with Jim and DeaconBlues that BIAB is a toolbox but, if PG wants to attract a new generation of users, it needs to pull all the elements together and make them easily accessible. There's no point in having 1000 loops if you have to wade through them alphabetically. I want BIAB to make pop songwriting a quicker process; at the moment it makes it longer for me, wading through so many options and generally not finding what I want (though there may well be lots of useable tracks for pop there in that haystack of 5,000 styles... somewhere!)

There are what I have referred to earlier in this thread as 'sub-genres' within contemporary pop - and Austin Hull deconstructs these very well - but they are primarily pop songs with a FLAVOUR (sorry, English spelling!) of another genre e.g. pop with a Trap flavour, rather than full-on hardcore Trap. So I suggest your first contemporary pop styles set should concentrate on Chart Pop, in different pop flavours, rather than try to appeal to purist EDM, Trap and House aficionados all at once.
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Again, I must respectfully disagree with you here. It is upon the user to delve into BiaB and learn all its secrets, and its up to the songwriter/producer, to construct a track. I think that slicing and categorizing all the tracks and styles into genres and subgenres is very limiting. It is precisely the expanded pallete of styles and influences that you laud in our earlier posts that make BiaB the tool of infinite potential which you cannot get from Scaler 2, Captain Plugins, et al.

I've seen a lot of posts over the years requesting this or that style, and often find myself quite surprised that the underlying instrumentation is already represented in spades in the current BiaB catalogue of tracks.
In that vein, I checked out a bunch of the tracks you listed, and was surprised because I initially thought they would be Trap/EDM style chart toppers, but the instrumentals were actually already within BiaB's capabilities (that is, not MIDI Synth VST heavy music).

That the BiaB styles don't sound "production ready" is IMO is a feature, not a bug. They are leaving it to the user to decide what effects would sound best with what tracks. I've noticed that in later years, PGM has started to apply phaser, chorus, and creative delay effects to their tracks (perhaps as a gentle way of demonstrating to the users of how much effects can enhance a track). Try sticking a multiband compressor and your drum, bass, and or master track and see how it comes to life with a bit of tweaking. BiaB could add all sorts of glossy effects to the individual tracks which would make them sound a lot "better" but the frequencies might clash when various tracks are mixed and matched.

In short, I believe that to wrote a great song with BiaB, one should to get familiar with production and arrangement techniques, and perhaps they would find everything they need is already there. (Full disclosure, I do not claim to be a great songwriter, arranger, or producer or anything of the sort, but I've spent a lot of time in recent years watching videos on music production such that I have a basic understanding of the vast possibilities a little bit of knowledge of plugins, a DAW, effects, and proper mixing and arranging can make).

Just my two cents...

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