"Most people have surrendered their brains to technology. Almost every sentence uttered is a regurgitated opinion from someone else, supported by no facts."

The philosophic well is deep here. Much of this resonates with me in that songwriting and musicianship is a gem you now must dig for as technology, Band-in-a-Box included, has allowed nearly everyone to claim credentials in these two spaces. The ability to navigate software menus and showcase expertise in a mouse click to generate 'music' translates mostly into a polished proverbial turd that surprisingly wins approval from a fair amount of people. It is a tough pill to swallow that most who do just this do not want to hear the sobering news so I will put things in context that is both illuminating and hopeful: my son is a drummer and a fine one. While he doesn't use this particular software, he "writes" songs cutting and pasting beats along with synth pads and I dare say, for a moment in my head, they sound good. I endorse this behavior because it permits him to flesh out musical ideas he could not otherwise do because he only plays one instrument. He is young yet not naive - he views that 'compositional' activity and the software itself as tools.

BIAB is just that in my eyes. A tool. And a very effective one in the hands of a musician. (Consider its original intent: a ready backup band for jazz musicians to woodshed over.) At the risk of rustling feathers, it fails painfully if that tool becomes the crutch disguised as art for at the end of the day PG Music feeds the content and no cutting and pasting will elevate the craft hopefully most of us are engaged in.

If the above is noise to your ears, I guess at the end of the day I miss Gershwin too.