This is the first time I’m using the global rackspace! I’ve been using GigPerformer onstage since 2018, with '80s new wave band The Wavos, primarily for our drummer’s Roland HD-3 kit. We don’t use the HD-3’s own sounds, only its pads as MIDI triggers for NI Battery 4. I’m still primarily playing my Nord Modular G2X, but since we’ve expanded our Battery 4 kits with custom samples and loops, I’ve also been using the G2X to trigger samples in NI Kontakt. Although the G2X is synth-only (no sample playback), it has fantastic modular MIDI routing capabilities, giving me incredible control over my MIDI output. However, Nord discontinued the G2X many years ago, so I’m looking at porting my sounds and setups into plugins in GP. The Wavos have about 80 songs in our current rotation. Our GP gigfile contains 40 rackspaces, one with “standard meat & potatoes drums” for most songs and the rest with song-specific Battery kits and/or Kontakt multis.
To jump-start an all-GP keyboard setup, I ported over the G2X sounds for our new original song, Love Beach. I was already using Kontakt samples for right-hand keys, so I just had to re-create the bass patches (I play synth bass in most of our songs), and Arturia Pigments worked great for this. My G2X bass patches are all mono, but Pigments is stereo and there have been a couple of times in the band’s 14 years when we had access to a stereo P.A., so I realized it was time to reconfigure our live audio interface (here, the 8-channel MOTU mk3). I still want the bass to be mono, but the drums and keys should be able to send either mono or stereo to the P.A. For that I added a Gain and Balance block after each plugin, sending a stereo feed to two of the MOTU’s outputs and a mixed mono feed (with attenuation widget) to a third output. This is for the Battery drums and all the synth plugins, filling up six of the MOTU’s outputs with mono/stereo alternatives for the P.A. The bass gets mixed (to mono, with attenuation) into a seventh MOTU output, and the eighth output is reserved for a rhythmic reference that goes to our drummer’s amp.
After creating all this wiring, I realized that I would have to make similar changes in each of our 40 rackspaces. The global rackspace was the perfect solution! So I moved all the wiring and widgets there, and updated each rackspace to send its plugins’ output (stereo drums, stereo bass, stereo keys) to the global rackspace instead of the audio interface. In the global rackspace I added widgets for controlling & monitoring volume levels and toggling the mono and stereo outputs. My default setup is mono, so the wiring view shows the stereo synth and drums as Muted.
I also added a “MOTU Monitor” block which, when unmuted, re-routes all 3 stereo output pairs to Outs 1 and 2. This is important for when I’m playing and programming at home, since only the first two MOTU outputs are plugged into my stereo system. I need to remember to re-mute the MOTU Monitor before saving any changes to the GP gigfile, so we don’t end up with drums, bass and overmodulated keys going into my personal synth feed when we play live.
One last thing: some of my bass patches, like the Love Beach ones, have high frequency components that I want to hear, in stereo, through a full-spectrum keyboard amp rather than our bass amp. So the Love Beach rackspace has an additional “Bass HIGHS” block that mixes those highs into my stereo keys feed. Sorry if this post is super-long, I just wanted to get it all down in writing!
