Apogee Gio

I'm a guitar player in an acoustic trio (bass, mandolin & me). I received my Gio a couple of days ago. Watched the Mainstage video from Mac pro videos. Good vid. Made me wish I was a keyboard player. The buttons of different colors on the Gio are real pretty and seem to do a reasonable Job of turning off and on the pedal board. Same with changing patches even though changing sets are another story since there is no foot switch available for that. Guess you can't have everything. Question is this. How would one turn on and off Playback, record, turn on cycle between markers, turn off cycle between marker, go to the next marker, go to the previous marker, control fade out and while this track is playing switch to the looper plug and use the looper plug-in with all its controls with the five buttons on the Gio? Hm, I don't think this thing is going to work. Maybe that is why they only give you three controls in Playback pre-mapped when you turn it on for the first time. It would also be nice if the interface for playback would stay on screen when you switch to layout mode so you could easily map a couple of things. I figure that it has to be me that I am missing something since apogee is such a great company. So if anybody can answer the question above I'd sure appreciate it.

Thanks

Oscar

I think you answered your own question. It aint gonna happen with just the Gio.

 

You're going to have to look at an additional hardware interface to really do what you want to do.

i guess your right. I just thought that the Apogee Gio was "Designed to work with the new Logic Studio 9 and MainStage 2, GiO allows guitar players to control recording functions, preset changes and plug-ins like Amp Designer and Pedalboard, along with new Playback and Loopback features in MainStage" (quote from apogee site). It seems to me that theBehringer FCB1010 would be a better fit with 10 buttons and 10 banks W/ two pedals and a hell of a lot cheaper. This puppy is going back. I'm kind of pissed that I waited for this thing for a couple of months.

Thanks

Oscar

All buttons of the GIO are recognized by the guitar templates MainStage 2 ships with, but you can remap _every_ button on the GIO to do what you want to do. The function are not bound to guitar effects. The RGB LEDs behind the buttons simply mirror the color of the workspace object the button is mapped to, so you can even change them.

Actually, before you pull the trigger on the return, think about it for a moment. I don't own either board but as I understand it, the GIO has a rather good quality audio i/o that you may well need/appreciate. How will you get your guitar audio in and out of MainStage otherwise? Because I'm thinking the Behringer doesn't do audio. So you're still stuck with some kind of audio interface unless you want to use the Mac ins and outs (they will work, but are probably going to be inferior in quality to the GIO).

 

Why not use both? MainStage can certainly be set up for multiple controllers. I'm just not certain you can find everything in one package (this is a design opportunity for some company waiting to happen...)

mmm42 thanks for the reply. I have thought about remapping the Gio which would give me 12 buttons to control Mainstage with. I just figured that since apogee worked with apple on this it would be set up in a logical way to make use of the software in a live setting. This is not exactly plug and play. Doug, As far the in and out. I could use my Duet although the Gio certainly sounds fine. When you go to the apogee control panel there are two sliders. One for guitar input and one for Mainstage output. At least with the Duet you can grab the big knob if you happen to screw up (not that I ever do ) and get feedback.

Thanks

Oscar

At least with the Duet you can grab the big knob if you happen to screw up (not that I ever do ) and get feedback.

 

I never make mistakes either

 

I think the Duet and GiO have the same converters, but don't quote me on this. The Duet knob does sound easier to grab in a hurry to adjust volume. I'm thinking an expression pedal would do the same thing.

i would be interested in your sucess of remapping gio for mainstage hopefully you will post the process btw i think gio sounds great and like you had hoped it would do more in mainstage.. maybe more folks will post there gio experience here. i,ll be looking

I am quite happy with my new GiO. (Re)mapping the GiO buttons to Mainstage functions is as easy as with any other MIDI controller. I do not feel there is any issue there. Each of the 12 buttons can be assigned to control anything in Mainstage, including all Playback/Loopback functions, previous/next patch and prev/next set.

this is great news to hear thanks for posting.

Well , very interesting cause I'm thinking of mainstage and thought that I would much prefer to work having 5 presets in front of me :

Ex : 1=clean // 2= crunch // 3= lead... see ? so you can jumb from clean to lead without having to scroll up and down...

Is this the way you assingned it ?

Can you do this way ?

thanks

Yes, I can see that that would be a useful way to assign the buttons, but I have not tried it that way yet, and I do not know if it is possible, since the GiO sends control change, not program change messages.

So my option would be a real midi foot controler...

Thanks !

I just got my GIO and have tried unsuccessfully to re-map my GIO controls. Do I need to first unlearn the old mappings? The 'old' mappings keep overriding my most recently learned mapping.

 

I appreciate any assistance!

There is no need to unlearn mappings, new ones replace any old ones.

 

Perhaps you should check whether you already have mappings in the set or concert level that override the mappings in the patches that you are trying to change.

 

Have you also tried creating a new Mainstage concert from an empty template? You can put in 12 buttons in Layout mode, arrange them on the screen as they are on the GiO, and assign them to the 12 buttons on the GiO using the learn function.

 

Then add your patches/channel strips in Edit mode, and map some parameters to the 12 buttons by selecting them from the column-mode list in the Screen Control Inspector, or by using the Map Parameter button to the right of that list. Then you should be set to go.

 

You should be able to modify the existing templates to your liking in much the same way, but make sure that you first understand which parameters/buttons in the concert template are linked at the concert level, set level and patch level. Review the Mainstage manual if you are not sure about this.