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Sets and Program Changes


gacki

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Hello everyone;

 

new member but longtime Mainstage user here, currently on 3.4.4.

 

I'm trying to find a usable way to organize my concerts. When gigging I often sub for other players or play Open Mic Nights, meaning that I have various and constantly changing concerts.

 

What I'm trying to achieve is to switch between Patches easily and with good visual feedback while keeping the Concerts easily editable. Due to the changing nature of the Concerts it's not practical to use fixed assignments since songs and jingles and whatnot are moved around often.

So I somehow pressed an Behringer Xtouch into service. Their Program Change implementation is completely useless since they insist on sending a Bank Change as well - and that can't be turned off. But I managed to use their "send note" function instead; and that works (in theory!) just as well.

The XTouch Mini has two rows of 8 buttons each. This would give my 8 Sets with 8 Patches each. My plan was to use the upper row to select Sets and the lower row to select Patches within the respective Set. While the former works fine (using "Current Set") I'm struggling with the latter.

 

When using Program Changes 1 to 8 within each set I can go forward but not backward: using a higher Program Change uses the higher Patch within the set but using a lower Program Change switches to that Patch in the next Set (in fact, pressing the same button repeatedly cycles through the respective Patches in all Sets).

This is regardless if I create the assignment on the Concert level or on the Set level.

 

I've also tried using "Current Patch", "Jump To Patch" and so on - but those seem to depend on that the number of Patches "higher up" stays the same. So if I'm adding another Patch to a Set near the top everything in the following Sets will be off and would need to be changed.

 

Another attempt was to use Bank Changes (B1/P1 to P8 for the first set, B2/Pt to P8 for the second and so on) and to make the assignments on the Set level - but that somehow doesn't work (assigning "Current Bank Number" followed by "Current Program Number").

 

I'm grateful for any ideas or pointers.

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FIY: I've found a way to reliably select Sets and Patches within the Sets. Re-organizing works with an acceptable amount of hassle (for me); most importantly I don't have to touch the assignments afterwards. However so far I'm not yet happy with the visual feedback so I'll be working on it a bit more.
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  • 1 month later...

Another update: I've found a workable solution that easily allows an 8x8 Bank Change/Program Change matrix (actually 16x8 when using both Xtouch mini layers) with good feedback in the Xtouch itself (all buttons light up correctly, "bank" button is blinking until a new Program Change is sent). I'm still not happy with the visual feedback in MainStage itself though.

Is there a simple way to have different short Patch Lists, each one for a single Set?

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

It's not really an option because a lot of stuff is not done with set lists (bumper music and so on); also I often have to switch patches several times during a song.

I also like the idea of being able to access patches directly; like having a bank with 8 organs and another one with 8 different string combinations and so on.

I've always been very fond of the way many of the older keyboards selected patches.

Yamaha DX7: two rows of 16 buttons each and a numeric LED readout. You can put the most crucial patches on number 1, 16, 17 and 32 and you'll hit those easily - and you'll see immediately if you really hit them from the LED readout.

Roland JV80: the "11 to 88" system with two rows going from 1 to 8 each. It's easy to run a finger vertically across the rows and hence hit 11, 22, 33 and so on up to 88

Kurzweil K2000: While it had a keypad for selecting patches (which I usually don't like at all) there also was a way to access 10 patches directly; I think by holding down the "enter" key and then pressing one numeric key. Bonus: the layout of the display and the layout of the keypad were identical (or could be set up like that).

 

I think Mainstage could really make more use of screen real estate. It should be easy to display 8 banks with 8 patches on most screens in a matrix. As one long list: not so much.

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