douthet

I currently use a MacBook Pro, Maudio keyboard and a Radial USB pro DI (I cant recommend those enough) super small rugged, and has never failed on me. Plug and play as well

I have done this in a live setting where I have my main midi controller, and my drummer has a controller her occasionally plays. My drummers controller is sending midi data over channel 2 and connected to the midi in of my midi controller from the midi out of his controller. This is then passing through my midi controller (which is on midi channel 1). I then select which midi channels I want to be able to play that software instrument. (All midi channels in your case) bit you can also add second keyboard mapped separately to midi channel 2 to your layout, and then that second midi controller can control it’s own separate synths, which is what I have running at the moment. So I can play some synth pads, and he plays synth leads over top of what I am playing in one instance of mainstage, all mixed in the channel strips. Pretty cool stuff

1 and 2) you will need to open three channel strips. (A fourth for your drum machine in question 3. Then make those three channel strips individual instruments of the bass guitar, EP, and brass. Once that is done you will see that they layers of instruments are stacked on your keyboard on your layout in mainstage. Underneath the layout section you will go into layer editor. Then you can drag the keyboard splits over the corresponding key range for each instrument/ channel strip. 3) I don’t have experience with superior drummer, but I have done something similar in a live setting where I have had a drum loop play. Open another channel strip and open superior drummer plugin? (I assume) I use ultrabeat in mainstage and then program your drum sequence and sounds. Then hit the playback button at the top right. This will then play your drum sequence. The mixer in the channel strip section can mix your bass guitar instrument, EP, brass and drum sequence to your liking. Let me know if that helps.

I think I may have found a workaround that I am currently testing. The problem I was facing was that mainstage didn’t recognize the beat one. So what I did was instead of syncing the tempo (might also work if you synced the tempo) I just set a fixed tempo in the concert or patch. I then just had a midi cc message send from the device that I wanted to bring Midi into mainstage trigger the playback button on mainstage. When you hit the playback button on mainstage it pushes the internal clock to beat one in mainstage internally (in theory). So mainstage recognizes that when you hit playback that is the start (beat one) of your tempo. So my setup is that my drummer has another instance of mainstage running on a separate laptop that runs click and other instruments/ tracks, but I wanted my laptop - that has my synths, to sync to that clock/ computer. So when my drummer hits space bar on that laptop, it starts the click and then also sends a midi cc message through a midi cable to my computer that tells my mainstage to also start playback (the play button) This in turn, starts them relatively at the same time and on beat one. Then when the song is done he hits space bar again and that sends a midi cc message to my computer to stop playback. It isn’t completely full proof, but it has seen better results than the alternatives I’ve tried. I’d be interested if someone tested this out, or used this theory to make it better.