Oneota

I've got a MIDI FX script I use in MainStage that steps through a list of chords with a single note press (basically working around my limitations as a keyboard player). It works well, but I've found that it doesn't always start at the beginning of its list of chords because I didn't step all the way through the last time, or what have you. Is there a way to initialize variables when a patch containing MIDI FX scripts become the "active" patch? The script has a variable which basically acts as a pointer in the array, and I just want that variable to reset to 0 when the patch becomes active.

I ended up just making around 36 duplicate channel strips, assigning 3 each to a single note in the layer editor, and transposing them the appropriate number of steps down so that the chord would sound when I just played one note. That way, instead of having to work out the fingering for each chord, I just have to play the melodic line, and the chords will happen automatically. It's a huge waste of resources, since there's all those copies of the same sample being loaded into RAM and only being used for one patch out of about 130 in the show, but I know my own keyboarding skills well enough to know that I'm not going to get those chords sounding right in the amount of time I've got available. The show's pianist is a far better keyboard player than I, and her part has similar chords in it, and she couldn't get it at our first rehearsal, either. If MainStage would let me have more than one alias to a given channel strip in a patch (or let me alias one channel strip in the same patch), it would be a much more resource-efficient setup, but alas, that seems to be a no-no.

So, when you say I would sample the notes, does that mean it would actually be triggering sound samples, or would it be firing off MIDI data to my channel strips? I'm looking for the latter. Basically, I just want each tap on the keyboard to trigger the next chord's worth of MIDI data. Sampling the notes might be an option, if I can figure out how to do that in Mainstage (I don't have the full Logic suite, I just bought MainStage alone from the App Store), but ideally I'd like to stick with raw MIDI data so that I could change the channel strip composition down the road if need be, and still have the sequence work. Can you give me any more guidance for how to use Ultrabeat in the manner you suggested? I'm not familiar with it.

I'm in a pit orchestra using Mainstage to generate my string sounds, and there's two or three spots where the printed music is frankly too difficult for me to play well. I'd like to be able to input the chords into a step sequencer of some sort that would output to my channel strips and rig things up so I can just tap through them in those places. Is there anything out there that does that? I'm a relative newbie to Mainstage - I'm figuring this program out as I go, so forgive me if this is an obvious question (and any follow-ups to your equally obvious answers).

I'm using Mainstage's Orchestral string sounds in a pit orchestra, and I need to be able to quickly change the modulation of the patches to simulate the different ways one plays a string instrument. For the string patches, a modulation value of 0-10 produces a legato sound, 11-36 a staccato sound, 38-63 a tremolo, 64-91 a half-step trill, 92-117 a whole-step trill, and 118-127 is pizzicato. I'm using two separate keyboards for the show, because the various articulations overlap so much in every possible combination. As such, my hands won't be free to adjust mod wheels to the correct location (and hitting just the right spot is tricky, anyway), so I need to be able to just smack something and have it set the modulation to the correct value. Fortunately, one of the keyboards I'm using is a Roland Fantom X, which has a Dynamic Pad bank on the right-hand side of the synth. These 16 pads are usually used to simulate drum kits, but really, all they're doing is sending out MIDI notes on channel 10. Can I enlist these buttons to set the modulation values for my two keyboards? In an ideal world, I'd also like them to be able to do a patch change to a solo violin/cello or to a more full string ensemble sound, but I can work around that with the setlist. Is what I'm trying to do even possible? Is there a better way to accomplish this?