Rhythm Track - Reaper - BIAB - RealTracks + Live

[Greg Cutshaw]

I just created this rhythm track for our church vocal group. It contains a mix of real instruments, EZDrummer, BIAB and RealTracks for a nice full and varied sound. There 10 tracks total.

You can't have too many tools or apps! I entered all the song's chords in RealTracks, selected a style and created a song BIAB midi track for the organ, rhythm and piano parts. For the fiddle I just entered the first few chords of the song, created a RealTracks multi-riff fiddle part and selected the best fit from the 7 offered. Whether these tracks were midi or wav to begin with they were converted or saved to wav files then imported into Reaper.

Hear it!

Progresses with:

Lead guitar intro, RealTracks fiddle intro

Switches to EZDrummer, rhythm guitar, bass

Adds BIAB rhythm guitar, BIAB piano, BIAB organ

Follows with the organ and BIAB rhythm guitar dropping out

Adds all back in at the end

End with guitar outro

[Jim Fogle]

Gary,

That's real nice. That is a snappy backing track for "Just A Closer Walk With Thee". Was the Red Foley or Patsy Cline version your inspiration?

I really like how the organ and piano comes in on the chorus. The guitar intro and outro are pretty nice too.

One thing you might want to consider is to eliminate the 16 note high hat hits. The high hat hits are straight time while the rest of the instruments sound like swing time.

Put a guide track vocal on it and you could post it as a completed song on the Band-in-a-Box User Showcase.

[Greg Cutshaw]

Yeah, the high hats are a bit weird as are some of the multiple bass drum hits. But it was easy to create and will be easy to modify. I played the real rhythm guitar open and added the high BIAB guitar later in place of a second capo'ed up or Nashville tuned rhythm guitar.

Upon close listening the BIAB individual tracks have a cheesy midi sound to them but in the mix they are pretty awesome. I could have left them as midi, ported them to Reaper then used them to trigger a high quality sound generator.

The chords and Tempo are straight off the Randy Travis version. Instead of an F to F#dim change, his version goes from F to D7. Thanks for the tips!

I'll try eliminating the high hat hits and bringing up the level of the wood block/rim shots in the verses as well.