If you have the capacity to run multiple instances of GP, I’d suggest putting that piano with the huge sample library in it’s own instance.
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You can also use Predictive Loading…
@edm11
Presuming I can easily route midi between instances, am I correct that I would be introducing a “gotcha” of “forgetting to open the second instance” and find that out (the hard way) during the live performance.
You should Check that during soundcheck
@pianopaul
Yes I know about this “soundcheck” concept 
.
The question is focused on how second instance works. In the future there might a feature to consider: Maybe it would be called “Open Set of Instances” that nicely handles the situation where a particular set of instances are required for the gig/rehearsal.
@dougalex I can only speak from my own experience. I use 3 instances of GP and one instance of Reaper in my setup. I’ve created a .bat file on Windows that loads each of those instances. Even without that though, I wouldn’t ‘forget’ to open one of the instances. They’ve all become a part of how I practice and perform, and it’s all very straightforward.
I’m quite sure that you’d get used opening multiple instances very quickly. Spend some time setting it up, get used to how it works for you.
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You should consider using a startup script - that’s what I typically do (macOS):
- closing all unwanted apps (mail, drive sync, etc.)
- starting GP Main instance
- starting GP 2nd instance
- enjoy
OS doesn’t matter… Of course you could also do different startup scripts for different situations…
I’m also using a shutdown script…
BBB
I’m curious, as someone who was initially looking at the Kronos, why you’ve made the switch to Gig Performer?
I haven’t quite made that switch yet. I bought GP because I love how tweakable and powerful it is, but I’m still not sure what I’ll do with it. I have a pair of Kronos 61s (the original model from 2011) - they’re fully programmed for both of the bands I play with, so redoing all of that programming would be a lot of work. However, one of my bands is a 70s-era Genesis tribute, so maybe I’ll start there because it’s a handful of keyboards to replicate (piano, pianet, RMI, Pro Soloist, Mellotron and organ). I also have a Kurzweil PC4 and that would make the perfect complement to a GP-based Genesis rig.
dhj is right. You don’t really need to put your instruments in the global rackspace. perfect for effects loops
which is very useful. I just think this program is soooo brilliantly well thought out ! dhj would definately agree here 
So let me explain my own set up using gig performer .
This might help other people and paint a clearer picture on how to go about a live set up from the start.
Quick run down, I use 2 midi keyboards live. for every sound patch ( or rack space ) I create 2 midi in devices both assigned to each of there own vst instruments.
So get your sounds together first and play them with your songs. Use a single rackspace for each of your
sound patches ( NOT for each song ) .
so rule is : just dont duplicate the same sounds. This is important !
No need to have 2 exact pianos ! Just create one in a normal rackspace ( NOT the global rack space ) and call it Main Piano. Or like me I have 3 different pianos. 1 that is bright rock piano, another which is dark grand and filtered with assigned effects. etc…
Although each use different sampled pianos so i need to have 3.
After this you might end up with a whole bunch of rack spaces. I have approx 24 goto sounds.
make sure you name them too specifically what they are used for.
example :
rackspace 1 : song ‘change’ - chorus piano
rackspace 2: song ’ friends’, - intro sound
rackspace 3: Wurly A
rackspace 4: Jupiter pad
Notice I have named specific sounds that are unique that will need to be assigned to the song later.
next…
SetList Creation. Learn how to assign your new rackspaces to each setlist songs.
side note for external midi program receives
*Turn of the program midi in receive on the rackspaces and receive only on the setlist songs. *
( that is if you are externally triggering your sounds like me )
So, my first song, I use the following rackspaces:
song 1 is : rackspace 2 for intro, 3 for chorus 11 for bridge and 22 for outro
song 2 is: rackspace 3 , rackspace 5 , 11 and 20
song 3 is: rackspaces: 1 , 11 and 19
did you notice something here ?
I used rackspace 11 in all these songs.
So armed with this info it’s time to create a SetList.
Hope this helped !
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I think that might work for simpler approach. But I have many splits, many sounds, many one shot samples, 4 keyboard controllers with breath controller, drum pad, and on some songs two keyboard players. I could never use Gig Performer, and be able to “follow what the hell I am doing”, without having a “dedicated Rackspace for each song”.
I think this just demonstrates the flexibility available thereby allowing different users to use different approaches.
Indeed, I use both approaches depending on the band. For two of my bands, I have dedicated rackspaces per song. For my third band, I use songs and reuse a smaller number of rackspaces.
Really, it depends on the material and how one wants to approach the performance.
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@ Dougalex
Mmmm your set up sounds big too. and no, I don’t have all the answers too.
I do know one thing … you can’t escape the rackspace patch editing work and the time required to do this.
What I suggested was more the approach and how you look at the rackspaces compared to song racks.
You cant really take out what I said in context of what was said as a whole.
Like your live set up, my patches are very specific and equally complex to each song as well.
My main point was, it’s silly to load a piano sound more than twice , if that is all you are using in that moment of the song. And i do know that sometimes in the song you need that piano running side by side with other sounds too. i do get that , so you do end up loading it again within a rackspace anyways.
So yes, I understand, my suggestions may not work with your setup.
Sometime its nice to get ideas from other people too .
Mmmm, just thinking how simple my set up is ! ( to me that is )
I actually use 3 PCs with GP4 on 2 of them . one for keyboards ( GP4 ) one for drums ( GP4 ) one with a DAW playback list ( reaper )
So keyboard set up , i use 2 midi keyboards, 1 control surface , 1 midi foot pedal , 3 pads or phones ( these are only used for for songlist display , beat count , live lyric generation ( sometimes good for me when singing backing )
So our drummer has electronic triggerred midi kit and assigned one shot drum samples specific to each song of ours.
His sound patches change during the parts of each song as he plays along.
Example bigger snare and kik during the chorus. verse , small 808 snare or so. He just has to sync to click and play away.
Also like my keys, the sound(s) for that song changes during the chorus/ verse etc.
So all I do is play away too. so my 2 feet ( 2 sustains ) and my 2 hands are busy and glued to the chords, leads etc…
Whilst the playback PC plays a song, It generates the relevant midi program change messages to change both the drums ( PC ) and keyboard ( PC ) sound patches both independantly , all in real time…
oh man does this work fantastically for us !
Coming back to editing , the above described is a simpler approach for me. ( although a bit more gear to buy )
So when editing rackspaces . I can keep all of the drummers patches independant to my own keyboard patches.
Let him play the pads with one shot samples as he is the rhythm department anyways.
and I still have the flexability to have 8 sounds per song across my 2 main midi keyboards. That is without zoning ranges on them too.
Back to global piano thing…
Honestly I too, started to put a piano as a global piano and tried it, thought about it.
It was simply not going to work for me like that. so stuck with what i mentioned.
There are easier ways to keep your set up straight forward. Mind just grew out of particular needs.
I have gone as far as a completing a DMX light show using midi to dmx . this was a huuuuugggge undertaking.
i am not going there though here.
Food for thought too.
I’m using the 1 Rackspace per song approach in GP for my live performances and I use some of my favourite VSTI (Keyscape Rhodes LA, Keyscape LA Custom C7 and the GSI VB3 and the Blue 3) in lets say 70% of my Rackspaces. And each of them requires a huge startup loading time and memory since each of them must be loaded multiple times for each rackspace which is using it.
So the idea was to put them into the global rackspace in order to load them only once and use this global rackspace in each rackspace which needs this favourite and ressource intensive VSTIs.
Since I dont want to play them “all the time” I do not connect them to the physical external midi inputs but to a “virtual midi cable” routing any specifically filtered and pre-processed midi from my “normal” rackspaces to the global rackspace. This is a workaround since GP4 is only supporting audio connections from a normal to global rackspace and vice vesa. Any rackspaces which are not “midi - connected” to the gloabl rackspace will never let flow any midi messages to the global rackspace not causing any unwanted audio. This will work so far at least for me.
But there is one issue I’m still facing. When I use e.g. Keyscape VSTi in lets say 40 songs I was able to select the type of instrument and configure the whole bunch of settings like auto panning depth and noise, colour shift, equalizing, effects and others statically as needed in each song/rackspace by just using the plugins editor. But now, when I put it in the global rackspace there is one single configuration of this parameteres in the global rackspace only. I can not adjust them individually in all the 30 rackspaces using this plugins editor. So trying to save ressources (memory, startup loading time) this way is impossible for me which is very disappointing since it was the main reason for upgrading to GP4.
Or is there anything I’m missing or missunderstanding? Is the only solution I have to go for to use VST automation and add huge number of widgets on the global racksapces panel and connnect them to all the parameters I want to configure individually in each song/rackspace?
You could use widgets in the local rackspac e and map them to widgets in the global rackspace.
And when you move your local widget, the global is also.
This way you can tweak via local widgets.
I can make a small gig with blue3 (you can download a demo) to show you the concept.
Ok I’ll try but “connecting” rackspaces to the global one seems to be a solution e. g. for a guitarrist which has to configure just a couple of parameters. But as a Keyboarder I’m using many instruments with many parameters simultaneously and this would require a lot of work to add all these knobs and sliders to design an “interface” which is able to store global VSTI settings per rackspace. And furthermore this interface would never be as intuitiv, as the plugin editors which are already there.
May be a “sharing pool” of widgets created by GP users for the most commonly used VST plugins could help us making things easier.
Unfortunately I’m not familiar with the technical details of the VSTi API to understand why it is not possible to just let a user open the plugin editors of global VSTI in order to configure static VST parameter instances per rackspace. This is what I’m missing. And afterwards, each time a rackspace is selected this “global parameters” are applied to the global rackspace in the same way as it is already done for normal rackspaces itself. Could this be somthing to put on a wishlist? Or is this kind of solution really completely impossible?
I sent you a private Message
Why not use local rackspaces?
Are you afraid of the loading time and memory usage?
Do you know predictive load?
You save a huge amount of resources and loading time goes massively down.
Yes of course I use local rackspaces but I dont like to do all this work to add a lot of widgets to for parameters in global plugins just to configure them statically. In GP3 I also do not use panels and widgets to setup this parameters, I just use the buildin editors and that’s it. And yes I know predictive loading and loading time is not an issue at all. It’s the big effort I don’t like to do for creating a selfmade graphical user interface of panels and widgets just to be able to store those instances of global rackspace settings per local rackspace. For every perameter I want to control dynamically during my performace I just assign a midi controller (control change message etc.) without adding a specific widget for it.
So you map your controller directly to the VST parameters via MIDI?