Band-In-A-Box Information

I use Band-In-A-Box (BIAB) RealTracks by PG Music to generate backing (instrumental) tracks for many of the songs in this collection. BIAB RealTracks are digital audio recordings of human studio musicians playing real music snippets. PG Music somehow cobbles those snippets together into combos in thousands of styles from which the user can choose. How they do this is a mystery to me. They also have MIDI combos but I tend to prefer the RealTracks.

For each BIAB backed song I follow these steps:

  • I type in the chord structure for the song in BIAB and audition dozens of combos (styles) before choosing the one that best supports the feel I have in mind for the song. 
  • I render the BIAB tracks into separate digital audio tracks, one for each instrument. This includes auditioning BIAB soloists. I have BIAB create several soloist tracks, up to 14 in some cases. How BIAB creates soloist tracks is another mystery.
  • I create a Logic Pro project for the song and import the rendered audio tracks into the project.
  • I audition the soloist tracks in Logic Pro, select the parts that I like best, copy those parts and paste them into a new track to create one cohesive soloist track.
  • I record my vocals.
  • I mix and master all the tracks, adding effects, equalization and compression where advantageous, to create, ultimately, one stereo digital audio mix for each song. I then run the stereo mix through some mastering processes.
  • I upload the stereo mix to this website and other streaming sites.

If you’re curious about BIAB please visit pgmusic.com. Check out the video tutorials page, especially the beginner section, even more especially the YouTube video entitled Entering Chords (2022) to see how the app operates, looks and feels. BIAB is an amazing app that has been in constant development for over 25 years. I used it in some of my earliest home studio projects starting in 1995, in some instances only using it for a drums track, and I continue to use it to this day, often for all the backing tracks. While I’m capable of playing multiple instruments, I only play one, electric bass, with any real competency, so BIAB is an extremely valuable tool for me, as hiring other musicians and paying for studio time is prohibitively expensive and enormously time consuming, not to mention complicated. I create all these BIAB backed songs in my home studio, at my own pace, in my own time.

Thanks for your interest,

Paul Fifield