Still being a noob, but learning a lot, thanks to all the fantastic people here. Thank you so much for all your help. So As I am learning, am I better off the duplicating a Rackspace or using a variation. Playing keyboard for church, but in different venus. Just trying to do what is best for my 2015 MBP. Any help is appreciated.
A thankful Man
B
It depends 
To be serious: There is no better way, it really depends what you need.
Splits or Layers, Audio- MidiPlayer, scripting etc.
Hey pianopaul. I kinda learing as I go. So I have one big rack with 9 different midi blocks and widget galour . organ piano, EP, choir, strings, etc. I wanting to maybe have piano and and Ep together. Then Organ and synths together. etc. So with my limited knowledge am I better off to make a duplicate or variation
My 2 cents…
If you make a big rackspace, then duplicated it, the pros are you get patch persist between the rackspaces (overlapping sounds) and the agility to change plugin presets between rackspaces. The downside to a rackspace-centric approach, in my opinion, is if you change something about your rackspace and you want that change to be the same across all your rackspaces… you have to change each rackspace individually, so do some tests and plan accordingly for that approach. It’s what I mostly use, in conjunction with setlist mode.
If you use variations the pros are you have one rackspace and can change/reconfigure that and it will be the only one you need to change, so long as you don’t disrupt a feature that a variation relies on, like deleting a widget. The cons to variations are you don’t get patch persist between variations (unless you use scriptlets like this example). You also can’t change a plugin’s internal preset between variations so you’d need to use widgets to change all plugin values between variations.
Both can be used to control splits, transpositions, sound layering, etc… Slightly different approaches to how though.
Those are the biggest differences I find, neither is better/worse objectively on their own, as @pianopaul said… it depends on how you want to use GP… and you can use both approaches of course, with or without Setlist mode, mixed and matched as needed.
I’d set a bit of time aside and experiment with each approach on a small scale, without building out a massive gig file first, find what you determine to be strengths and limitations to each and this will help guide your ultimate approach.
I’ve evolved my approach over time as I change hardware and rethink my philosophy on how to use the software. I currently use mostly racksapces which all feed the global rackspace, with some variations mixed in, and for gigs I use the setlist mode to switch between everything, for rehearsals I usually just navigate within Rackspaces/Variations. I’m always trying new approaches though but have pretty much settled in to this approach for now.
Thank you so much, Brandon
I don’t use variations. I use individual rackspaces as songs. This has worked very well for me mainly because I control GP from an iPad over wireless. I don’t need to tweak or change a sound manually as my iPad acts as a master midi controller. On the iPad, I use an app called OnSong to control GP.
I’m in @bigalminal 's universe - one of my biggest ‘things’ is a lot of patch experimentation and the fact that rackspaces remember these is huge for what I do. One of the other features I have discovered is when I take a little extra time to experiment it’s really easy to do a bigger rackspace with varitions to see what works better for what type of playing I’m doing. Nothing gets lost so to speak - it’s like having your cake and eating it too.