I am putting together a song for Come on Eileen. I use setlist mode.
So, my plan was to create a rackspace with 5 instruments: horns, accordion, violin, piano and banjo.
I thought I would use variations to bypass instruments when they are silent.
So, in my first variation I was going to have violin (using my CTK7200) and piano (Addictive Keys). I was going to have all other instruments in the variation, including banjo, bypassed.
Then I was going to change to a new song part and use a different rackspace variation where the banjo was no longer bypassed. So on this variation and in this song part, the banjo would be layered with the piano.
But, every time I bypass the banjo in one variation it makes the same change in the other variation.
I did not expect this. I thought I could use rackspace variations to bypass and “un-bypass” as required. (In order to avoid using up ram unnecessarily by creating new rackspaces for each change).
So I have to ask the question (again): what am I missing?
Always remember:
A variation of a rackspace only stores the values of the widgets that are used on this rackspace’s panel(s).
If there are no widgets, there will be nothing to store! Simple as that!
Whereas a rackspace itself does store the whole state of all the plugins it contains - even if there are no widgets used… so you could do what you tried with diffrent rackspaces (and no widgets), but life gets easier when you are going to use widgets.
In the past I always just created new rackspaces. To me the primary benefit of using variations in this way is you do not “waste” ram by duplicating rackspaces.
Hah, nothing, but I am always adding stuff (rackspaces and songs) and I’m starting close to 90% ram usage (at least on start up). I would like to keep running the “old” laptop, so I figured it is just more efficient not to unnecessarily use ram.
Instead of bypassing instrument plug-ins, I would recommend to use multiple MIDI in blocks, form the same controller, routed to the different instruments. Then you can use widgets to block note-on (!) mesages in the different MIDI-In blocks, thus switch plyaing this sound off and on. Then you can have different variations with different widget states giving different sounds.
Yes, one benefit of using different rackspaces is patch persist. It is the way I am most comfortable doing things.
I was aware that a sciptlet was available to get the same effect if you use bypass. Up to now I have not used scriplets (or scripts(?)). But, maybe I should
I will have to consider what you are saying about different midi output channels. Right know that’s a bit ahead of where I am.
At least you could. Scriptlets are nothing else then GP plugins built using GPScript. If you know what to do with a plugin you know what to do with a Scriptlet, no need to program anything simply use them.
With the methods I have described you can have patch persist of different sounds while switching them within one rackspace, just with variations.
Either without scriptlets, just by some widgets, or with scriptlets. It’s up to your preferences.
Okay, but in the case of sample-based instruments the bulk of the memory is due to that “data”. So, using variations and bypassing instruments would allow more efficient use of ram, it seems to me. [When I started I just always duplicated rackspaces. It was simple and intuitive. But, I am trying to be a bit more “ram aware” going forward.]
Of course, if I am missing something, I am always willing to learn.
Sure — and that’s one of the reasons why, as much as possible, I prefer to avoid sample based plugins as much as possible for my core sounds (acoustic pianos, electric pianos, organs, synths, etc)
