Hi all–I got a call up to play synth for a musical a month ago and got the book to start practicing on my old Roland stage piano. For the first time I wasn’t showing up to a pre-loaded MacBook, and the show had a patch list far too complex to perform with the on-board scenes. After perusing the internet for a couple of days, I realized that Gig Performer was probably the best program to use on my Lenovo laptop for this gig and after testing out the trial version I decided to purchase the software.
There were some nice tutorials from the Gig Performer YouTube page that helped me get started. Since the show was primarily based around the Roland XV system I used the Roland Cloud VSTs. The “First Ten Minutes in Gig Performer” and “How to use MIDI Chord Maker” videos gave me all that I needed to know in able to set the whole thing up. I lurked on the Gig Performer community page during this time to pick up some tips from
My final Gig Performer file had 155 rackspaces with anywhere between 1 and 6 different patches in each rackspace. Many of the rackspaces were rather complex with multiple patches programmed all over the keyboard, and the MIDI chord maker commonly used. I used an AudioBox audio interface and latency was undetectable.
It took me about 8 hours of work to set up all of the rackspaces, though I’m sure that for my next show the process will be much quicker since I am more familiar with the software. During the show, there were no issues with Gig Performer. It was stable and ran perfectly for all four performances. With 155 rackspaces, the show took about 4 minutes to load each time, but once it was loaded I could switch between the rackspaces with no interruptions in sound.
I am really glad that I found this software. I will definitely continue using it in the future and I’m interested to learn about the features that I haven’t seen yet since I’m sure I’m only just scratching the surface about what some of the more experienced users are doing with Gig Performer.
Hi @zackh900 and welcome, now you are not alone with your synths anymore, you are part of the GP community!
So 155 rackspace in about 8 hours makes around 3 minutes per Rackspace. And you still want to speed up things? I think I need your advices…
By way, the take care of the Roland Cloud VST which are not the more stable and requires to call home once a month or something. If they try to call home during a Gig without an Internet connection, it could be a nightmare for you…
Hello David-san-- Yes, I have heard about the dangers of working with the Roland Cloud VST. I had a solid internet connection the whole time and luckily it worked out well, but I will be exploring some more consistent VSTs in the future.
Just wanted to add about the Roland cloud stuff.
I too use the XV and Zenology, and have found that I need to actively log in to the Cloud once a month. I thought originally that because my Mac was almost always online and I was logged in in the Cloud manager I was ok, but it seems not. Ive still had it revert back to demo and bring GP down.
I now log in before any rehearsal or gig.
That’s awesome! I used to do musicals but with workstations. VST technology wasn’t quite ready for primetime back then. I’ve found GP to be rock solid! I use it in an 80’s band and I have some crazy rackspaces too. It’s a great piece of software and glad to hear it’s working so well for you.
I will clarify that a good amount of the rackspaces were simple with some sort of electric piano split with a bass, so for many of the rackspaces I was able to just copy and paste the wiring screen onto the new rackspace and just change the patch and the split point. I had a bunch of “Warmth Pad over Bass” and “West Coast with Ac. Bass” and “Gospel Spin over Finger Bass,” etc. But there were also quite a few that were more complex, like “Music Bells with RichStrings over Banjo (add slave notes) over Ac. Bass with Tuba” and those took a longer time to set up. I only used the preset sounds, though I was often using the plugins to edit the sound a bit and make it sound better. The directors decided that they wanted us to play with amps rather than plugging directly into the front of house, so I was constantly adjusting the rackspaces and changing them from what was in the book. I did not do any effects, as I pretty much had no time to work on this other than throwing everything in the rackspaces and testing it out to make sure I could switch smoothly between them.
I had no to little experience programming shows before. I have classical training from music school and no formal training in synthesizers/electronic music. I have played many musicals but usually with the piano book, so I would only use piano/e.piano/organ voices when needed. I have played synth a few times for shows but I just used the on-board features, so I would just load up the scenes in the Roland RD-700 or the RD-88 with strings or woodwinds and switch between them manually. For one show the sound guy was a synth player and he had everything set up for me when I arrived: keyboard hooked up, MacBook running MainStage with a clicker pedal to advance the scenes, and the show already purchased and loaded up, so I just showed up and played. I will say that the quality of what I was able to do with GP and the Roland VST sounded far better than the pre-loaded MainStage show, but I know that people can use MainStage for pro-level playing so it might have just been a low-level production.
Glad you came and joined us!