What to buy to begin?

[Alain-Yves Pigeon]

Hi, I'm a newcomer on this program BIAB and all I saw was demos and tutorials on YouTube and it was quite impressive. I heard that you could get RealTracks (with real musicians) and I even heard a very good pedal steel track somewhere. My question is: what do you have to buy to get these real tracks because on the PG Music site, there seems to be a whole lot of choice to buy and it was not obvious what to get to have these real tracks. Of course, what interested me was the pedal steel tracks, so if someone could indicate me what to buy, I'd greatly appreciate.

One more question: once you get a song with a pedal steel track, can you print it? I've seen in one of the demos that you could get, let's say the bass or the guitar track, have the score in musical notation and the tablature and even have the way they are played on the neck, is it the same with the pedal steel?

I know I could write directly to PG Music about this but I prefer to hear what people with interests similar to mine on this forum have to say about the subject and some of you seem to have quite a long experience with this program.

Thanks to all

Alain-Yves PIGEON

[Rick Campbell]

Yes, the real tracks are real musicians playing and the program uses their licks in the time base of the song to put it all together. It's a very very complicated process involving a lot of programming and computer code........... now wait....... you don't have to do all that, BIAB does it for you. All you have to do is put in the chords (kind of like a Nashville number chart) and then tell it what style of music the song is, tempo, key, and what instruments to play and it does the rest. It's a simple process. It's not perfect, and I prefer live musicians, and all that, but for the investment and what you can do with it, it an extreme bargain, in my opinion.

You'll notice people that sell backing tracks sometimes throw negative remarks at BIAB. The last few years have taken BIAB to a level in quality of music that is hard to beat. Nothing against backing tracks, and there's some excellent stuff out there for sale, but if you want to be able to change the arrangement, change the key, tempo, use different instruments, etc.... it's a no brainer choice compared to a prerecorded backing track. Maybe you want to try it with an acoustic bass rather than electric bass, or maybe with shuffle beat instead of a 2/4 timing. Click the mouse and it's done. At least that's the way it works for me and a lot of my music friends. Some people don't like to do this kind of thing, so prerecorded backing tracks are a good option for them.

I'd suggest that you call PG Music and tell them what kind of music you want to play, etc... and they'll tell you exactly what to buy. They have music packages not explained on their web page. i.e, the country package includes the appropriate styles and real tracks for country music. They're a good company and will make every effort to get you going. I have no connection with PG Music other than being a happy customer for a long time, and I'm simply sharing my experiences with people that are looking at possibilities.

BTW: That's our forum buddy and great steel player Steve Hinson playing the steel tracks on BIAB. It doesn't get much more real than that.

Good luck with it and have fun.