I am more of a JAM Performer than a GIG Performer.
I don’t have “sets” per say. I don’t even have “Songs” all the time.
Based on the vibe of the moment I might want to change vocal rack, but not necessarily my guitar rack nor my keys racks.
I play guitar, keys, bass, vocals and want to play backtracks.
And I do have songs, so in these situations, yes, I would want to select which rack instance for each instrument.
Does my solution reside in multiple instances? And if it is… Is there a multi instance template I can start from that someone could share?
Maybe someone can point to a vide explaining Multiple instances?
Could I have ONE central GP as a main control center to change rackspace/instances or even values in other GP instances?
From what I understand I need to create 4 instances?
Master Control Panel (where I set up SETS and songs, playback, panels etc)
Guitar (Where I create all my Guitar rackspaces + Instances) - slave
Keys (Where I create all my Keys rackspaces + Instances) - slave
Vocals (Where I create all my Vocals rackspaces + Instances) - slave
In my Master Control Panel I would like to select which guitar rackspace and instance to run from. Would I be able to have a drop menus of all my Guitar Rackspaces + Instances Names to select it?
Would I be able to setup panel to change parameters in the distant rackspace?
Anyone can share their setup? Would love to learn from it! Or is there a template anging somewhere?
Thank you so much!
You want instance 2, 3 and 4 to be more or less ‘headless’ and instance 1 controlling them?
It’s possible, but doesn’t make things easier. The use case for multiple instances is often to have more cpu available.
One of the options is having a virtual MIDI cable (on Windows for every instance one cable!) On Windows you could use loopmidi for that. Mac has this inbuilt, for all I know (iac I think). Then your main instance could send MIDI messages like PC and CC to the slaves. I think you’re gonna need quite some scripting.
Another way would be using OSC. If you would use the broadcast address while sending out messages, maybe you could avoid sending multiple messages for the same setting to propagate, but that might need a rather advanced network setup.
I don’t have an example, but maybe in a few days I can build something for you to see how it might work.
All I hope for is control over the different instruments independently rather than being forced to setup all of them in advance in a rackspace instance or variation. I feel constrained, not free to improvise or try things.
So far, I must say loading multiple instances is not my preference as it is not so friendly interface wise. It’s not unified, and even moving from instance window to instance window is not clear.
Creating presets is one of the fundamental things of GP. One of slogans is/was ‘the rackspace is the preset’. On a rackspace panel you place the controls only for the parameters you’re interested in. So there you would limit yourself. You can only solve that by creating a control for each parameter of each plugin or by not using the widgets, but using the plugin interfaces directly.
The whole idea of using widgets is that you only make parameters available which you’re really need while performing (and being able to connect them easily to an external controller) and the other reason for widgets is to use them as ‘memory’ when switching between variations.
My ‘workflow’ is that I experiment at home (guitar) and then I create rackspaces with no controls whatsoever. I’ve created six presets and these are linked to a foot-pedal to switch between the rackspaces. At performance-time it will have to do, and the creativity has to be on the instrument… Limitations are not necessarily a bad thing.
I admit that that is a totally different use case from how you intend to use GP.
All in all I’m not sure how GP fits your use case. Maybe there are other free spirits on this forum with a deployment more like you need, who could shine a light how they use GP.
My two cents. If you think it’s helpful, I’m still happy to create the example I mentioned in the other post.
Thanks Frank.
I did not mean to have all parameters for all plugins in a panel. Just like you do, I want to create a certain number of presets, per instrument. And only a few parameters in panels. And play with those.
My main pain point is not being able to change my keys preset without also changing my vocal and guitar preset at the same time. This is where I feel constrained.
I’d be very interested in your multi instance example!
I’ve created a simple example: No specialties, no scripting, no virtual MIDI cables, just plain GP: The sync option.
The only special thing I did is using a broadcast address to send from in the master instance. If you’re not too network savvy, you can use an IP calculator like this: IP Calculator / IP Subnetting. You’ll find the broadcast address on the line that reads ‘Broadcast’. In the zip file, I included a PDF file with the OSC configs I used.
Hey @Wassap, I’m a little late to this post, but I’m happy to share my setup.
I use multiple instances (5-7 to be exact, depending the particular show) and fall somewhere between having an exact preset for each song and song part, and sometimes choosing one from a few different sounds for a song on a given night. In particular, I do this mostly with different lead sounds when I’m playing solos or sometimes one of the performers is having gear issues, etc … and I want/need to cover different ground. Almost all of my rackspaces only have a few widgets that do something very meaningful and I try to avoid having the ability to control everything, just whatever that preset really needs. I would guess that more half of my rackspaces / presets don’t really even need them.
For context, I play in a 7-piece band, with two other guitars, and another keyboard player, and use this setup to play guitar, keys, hand percussion and for processing my vocals. My use case and setup are probably not the norm here, but I have generally had success using a multi-instance setup in this context. That said, when I started using GigPerformer, I was on a 2016 MacBook Pro and had no choice but to use multiple instances in order to make multiple instruments on one machine work. I’m on a much newer MacBook now, and just have no real reason to start over and go back to one instance.
Treating the main / first open instance as a control center was also how I originally approached using multiple instances, but I didn’t generally find success doing that and have moved away from it. I use my main instance for an in-ear mix, and sometimes processing hand percussion. I treat each instance as it’s own thing and have had better results keeping them decoupled.
For the 4 primary instance I use and interact with, those are
The main challenge I’ve had using multiple instances are interacting with the rackspaces and selecting rackspaces for the right instance efficiently on stage. I ended up writing myself an iPad app to quickly change presets while I’m performing and have had really good results doing this. I had also tried a few other OSC apps that also worked, but either only worked with one OSC host, or did a bunch of stuff I didn’t need. I think this will be the main challenge for you using multiple instances, if you’re using them live. You’ll need to find a good controller setup to make this work.
