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Setup advice for cover band


Pauly 6 String

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Hi all. I have a few rehearsals under my belt using MainStage and see I need to have a better plan for my live setup.

 

I was hoping for advice on the following.

 

I will be making a Set for each song and a Patch for each sound or change in needed instruments for each song part. Some songs may have just one Patch and some may have four or five. Right now I am switching back to a multi instrument patch for songs that use those basic instruments without any unique sounds. Ex. Trumpets, piano, strings etc. This isn't really working well as there always seems to be a small tweak that is needed and ends up being saved when not desired. Plus the muting/unmuting of each instrument gets tiresome.

 

For each new song I learn I'll make the appropriate set/patch. then I can just add it into a concert or rehearsals or gigs.

 

Big questions is layout. Would it be best to make a layout at the set level or patch level for each song? If I go from a piano sound then need a B3 Which way would be best to allow me to use sliders to control B3? Set sliders at Set level and then assign them at patch level? If I save a patch with sliders assigned to drawbars then I could just put that patch in a set and it would be good to go?

 

I would like the layout to show only what is needed for that patch or at most the Set (song).

 

What is recommended to be set up at the Concert level?

 

That's enough to for now I suppose. Thanks

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this is just my opinion.

 

Yes to a set per song, and then patches per song "underneath" or "within" the set.

 

You've obviously seen that sounds, even layers etc get repeated from patch to patch, song to song, instead of creating new channel strips, in patches, you're bouncing back and forth between song (set)-specific patches and a kind of multi-purpose multi, where you're muting layers or parts per song and need.

 

In other words, you completely understand the challenge :-) that's the good part.

 

Cover band probably pays somewhere between 40 to 55 songs per night? That's going to be a BIG concert file...

 

MainStage has something called aliases which allow one to "paste" a copied channel strip to other patches, without completely making a 2nd copy of that patch (saves memory!). There are also patch busses. Also useful. So... I have a set of patches, generic ones, at the "bottom" of concert file. They're just there so that they can be copy/pasted-AS-ALIASES to channel strips, within patches, within songs/sets. The cool thing about aliases is that certain parameters can be changed in the location where they are pasted, without changing the source where it was copied from (in particular MIDI parameters, such as lo-key, hi-key limit and more. What about audio? Not all songs are the same tempo, effects and EQ will also need to be different per song yes? Here's where patch busses are useful. We can take the output of a pasted-alias channel strip, send the audio output to a patch-specific bus, and then add an audio channel in that same patch, the picks up up the output of that pasted-as-an-alias channel strip, meaning you can do whatever you want with that audio, patch-specific (EQ, effects, levels, all the usual stuff). You copy/paste-as-an-alias exactly what you need per patch/song - no need to "mess around" with the generic "multi" you're building - you can go pretty far with this method. I have no patches at concert level, and do MIDI mapping of controls per patch. You'll likely have a standard approach to things that you'll program per patch... I tend to layer using two volume pedals, so the left one is usually expression for some target channel strips from my lower controller, right one the same for upper controller. One footswitch tends to be leslie on/off. I have lots of knobs and sliders available - have a quasi-standard just to try and make it all a little bit "consistent" - same applies for where to put various sounds on zones - all depends on what seems best "playable". There's also some degree of samples to trigger, and then there's also the question as to whether I'm standing or sitting for a particular song.

 

You can take this up to "steroids" level by using multi-timbral instruments like Kontakt, Omni and some of the other "big" AUs, and even use the "multichannel" abilities within a patch to use even less instances of the to-be-copied-and-pasted-as-alias channel strips.

 

Hope this helps you a bit in determining what your approach will be - this is just how *I* attack this, and aliases and the patch busses functionality basically allows "re-using" patches, making them specific to the concert->set->patch->channel strip paradigm so that you can organize that way. Set list order changes? No prob, "collapse" all the items in the concert file, and drag the sets (songs) around in the new order, renumber the patches and you can step sequentially through whatever your gig is for the night.

 

Flexible? yes. Feels sometimes like a straightjacket? also yes... requires a TON of pre-thought? definitely, but this is how I get the most mileage out of my live rig.

 

The aliases and patch busses are *really* powerful/flexible - the manual does not come even close to explaining what we can do with them - I just starting trying them out to see what could be done because I needed to find a way to manage the memory used. The question of organizing songs and patches with a "proper" hierarchy was also supported by using the aliases and patch busses. Before we had patch busses, i just used the global ones, but today, I choose patch specific busses since they're available and they're patch specific - and I'm always building a patch specific "sound".

 

Oh lastly. Layout for me is at concert level... per patch/channel strip, I just assign as needed. At concert level, there are standard assignments for sustain pedals and two expression pedals, oh... and one tap-tempo button. Everything else is specific to patch - but obviously there are "standards" I apply as described above.

 

Anyway... hope this helps you (and is actually what you were asking - it seemed like you were). By the way, I have some generic patches because you-never-know-whats-going-to-happen, or if someone wants to "sit in" for a song or two, they'll need bread-and-butter setup, there's no press A01 for a piano in MainStage - that's actually a challenge if someone else sits behind my highly-customized per song setup ;-)

 

Good luck!

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