Using Mainstage for a theatre production?

[reverb992]

I'm working on a production of a musical. The director has opted to use pre-recorded tracks instead of a live band (sigh). The show has 24 songs, about 1-2 minutes each. This is a producer's audition as opposed to a full production, so they won't be using lav mics, just plain old Shure SM58's on stands. The performer's mics will be running through a separate sound system.

There are no effects or sound effects being used. I just need to trigger the .wav file for each song at the appropriate cue.

Would Mainstage be good for this, or is it way more than I need in this case? Alternately, I considered loading each .wav file into a separate track in Logic, then just soloing and playing each track. Worst case scenario, I can always make an itunes playlist and do it that way. Would I be making unnecessary work for myself by trying to do this in Mainstage?

Thanks!

[jsbaker]

MainStage would work great for this, and its really affordable at $30! You could create a patch for each song, with each patch acting as a container for a plug-in called PlayBack, which would in turn contain a song's soundfile. When you select the patch it would play instantly. You could apply any eq, compression to the output if needed. You would also have a volume control (or controls for eq, compression, etc if needed).

You would have to spend some time reading the manual, and set up a custom layout for what you want, but it wouldn't take long.

[Rev. Juda$ Sleaze]

If you don't need to add any pocessing to the music, then an iTunes playlist is probably the way to go.

[Doug Z]

iTunes playlist is probably the most bullet-proof, and anyone can run it, not requiring you to be there all the time.

In Logic you have a lot more flexibility, especially during rehearsals in that you could navigate easily to a start portion in the middle of a track, even setting a marker for such.

MainStage would work, but that would be my third choice.

[reverb992]

Thanks all. I have been using Logic for rehearsals thus far, using exactly Doug Z's suggestion (markers are awesome), and it has been working great. I'm pretty sure I won't need to add any live processing or anything. Once I finish adding some EQ and a little compression in Logic, that will be all.

I already have Mainstage as part of Logic Studio, and I've always been curious but have never really had a legitimate reason to mess around with it (until now).

I think I'm gonna try to use Mainstage for this, but I'll definitely be keeping the Logic setup I have, and will probably make an iTunes playlist as a handbasket backup!

Thanks Again

[TREATMENT]

reverb 992

It should be mentioned that for theatre production, "Q-Lab" is the weapon of choice.
It's cheap, it can be rented, and for your purposes, it will save you a TON of Mainstage/Logic programming hours.

iTunes: are you friggin' JOKING!?

TREATMENT

[reverb992]

Thanks again for the replies. The show went well. I ended up playing around with Mainstage, got it set up, and ended up using it for the live shows. It was very cool, but I agree with some of you that Logic would have been just as easy with alot less setup. Still, I'm glad I took the opportunity to get a little more familiar with Mainstage. I can see now just what a great program it is for live performing, and I'm working on incorporating it into my band's live shows.

@TREATMENT. A few weeks after this show, a friend asked me to fill in for him running sound for a theatre festival he was doing. They were running Q-Lab. It was my first experience with it, and I must say I was impressed. I kept thinking to myself, "THIS is what I should have used!" Just from using it, I could tell that the setup would have been a breeze. I'll definitely be getting that for the next theatre project I do.