Arranging for medleys

Hey GP-mates,

Do you have any experience and recommendations for arranging medleys?
In my band we have several medleys, up to 8 songs in a single medley.

Each song has its own programming.
I take advantage of having two keyboards and usually arrange (see below) so one keyboard is the current song while the other keyboard is ready for the next song and so on.

The problem is that I need to mix different songs in a single rackspace, this makes the wiring view cluttered and hard to maintain.
Furthermore, the same song is placed in two rackspaces which is also bad.

Any idea how to solve it?

E.g.

Top Keyboard: Song A
Bottom keyboard: Song B

→ While playing Song B, I switch the top keyboard to song C:

Top Keyboard: Song C
Bottom keyboard: Song B

→ While playing Song C, I switch the bottom keyboard to song D:

Top Keyboard: Song C
Bottom keyboard: Song D

Etc…

Why so complicated, just use both keyboards for each song.

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Indeed, with the use of patch persist, I used to use a single keyboard and just used a button on my foot pedal controller to step through the parts. I would occasionally include the second keyboard if I needed more stuff for the SAME song.

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This will not work as I’m playing without pausing when the songs are changing (for example while playing 1/16 notes).
The layers of the new song needs to be ready right at the first off-beat to trigger new arps or play notes.
Furthermore I need to send PC to external HW synth which might take a lot of ms and so it can miss the first note.

Then just use two instances, one for the top, one for the bottom, and alternate between them

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This is interesting and might work, thanks.
Need to check if it brings any complexities to the gig programming and to the playing flow, as it is relevant only at a specific song parts.

I suppose you have to play, e.g. a bit of Song B while starting to play Song C ?

So, what stops you to have:

Rackspace 1:
Top Keyboard: Song A
Bottom keyboard: Song B

Rackspace 2:
Top Keyboard: Song C
Bottom keyboard: remaining sounds to finish playing Song B

Rackspace 3:
Top Keyboard: remaining sounds to finish playing Song C
Bottom keyboard: Song D

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I know there might be reasons to stay within one rackspace for an entire medley, @Dadi. Yes, it gets pretty full in that wiring view…

What has helped me both organize my brain and switch all the plugins is using a master MIDI in (different keyboard on different channels) that is fed to one dummy (OSC) MIDI InBlock for each part of the medley. Each dummy block distributes the signal to all the plugins used for the individual part. Its note-on filter is turned on and off with variations.
This keeps the canvas pretty organized, the flow can be processed by my brain, and I can step through the parts easily.

I don’t know if this helps you, but if you are controlling all changes via GP, would using Setlist mode help?

You could re-use rackspaces for different songs as much as you want.

Do you really need to have the next song set up in the other keyboard before? Could you just hit a button to immediately change to the next song? [I would think changing songs in a medley is not all that different from changing song parts within a song, except you would change to the next song instead of the next song part. But you should be able to change songs as seamlessly as you can change song parts.]

If you do need to have the other keyboard all set up, I suppose you could have it set up within the same rackspace (you can only use one rackspace at a time in the same instance).

Or, if that is the problem, you could set up two instances of GP like David suggested.

Jeff