Live Setup for Guitar, Keys and Vocals?

General discussion about Gig Performer
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Hi everyone, I am new to GigPerformer and I am trying to build out a one man band type setup for live performances. I am a little confused and was curious if anyone has some tips or suggestions on how best to get started and configure my Gigs and Rackspaces.

Gear I plan on utilizing:

  • Two Keyboards (Studiologic Numa 2 & Alesis V49)
  • An Electric Acoustic Guitar
  • Vocal Mic
  • Boss VE-500 Harmonizer
  • Streamdeck
  • Behringer FCB1010 with UNO Chip

Ultimately I would like to perform songs either on Piano, guitar, utilize audio stem files for some songs, and also live loop.

My thought is I would create a Gig file and rackspaces for particular songs. So if it is a song I am planning on playing piano on only or utilizing the streaming audio, I would set that as itā€™s own rackspace? Correct? But what about songs I am looping guitar, piano, and utilizing a pre-recorded stem? Would that be 3 seperate rackspaces? Sorry if this is either a dumb question or confusing, I am just trying to best understand how to go about this setup.

Thanks in advance, Mike

3

I would recommend using setlist mode. It just gives you more flexibility.

You might consider putting the Streaming Audio Player in the Global Rackspace.

I suppose both of those choices require a bit more learning curve up front, but that is what I would look at.

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One place to start is with Rig Manager. Itā€™s not 100% necessary, but if you change your hardware in the future, you can possibly avoid having to touch every Rackspace to make the change.

Regarding Rackspaces, the Global Rackspace is always available. The Local Rackspaces are used one at a time.

A general architecture that I use is to have the Audio (mic & guitar) go into the Global Rackspace. Here you can apply things that are always there, like trimming the input gain, or EQ to take out low-end plosives. Maybe some gentle compression that you always use. Send the resulting audio to the Local Rackspaces with the ā€œTo Rackspacesā€ block.

In your local Rackspaces, add the ā€œFrom Global Rackspaceā€ block. Here, you can do unique things, like phasers, flangers, etc. Maybe you have a unique synth sound for a song or two, so add that instrument here. Send the audio back with the ā€œTo Global Rackspaceā€ block.

In the Global Rackspace, take the audio from the ā€œFrom Rackspacesā€ block, do the final processing, like mixing, and send it to your audio interface.

This architecture has some nice advantages. First, if you change your audio interface in the future, you just change it once in the Global Rackspace, rather than in many Local Rackspaces. Second, you have some processing that is always there for you before and after your Local Rackspaces.

Think of your non-global Rackspaces as your hardware and wiring. Each Rackspace can have multiple variations. Think of variations as different, preconfigured settings. For instance, with a pedal board, you might need to press two buttons to go from a clean sound to distorted with echo. By switching a variation, you can change any number of things at once.

Songs and Set Lists are straightforward. Each song can have multiple Song Parts. Each Song Part can be associated with a different Variation. This lets you sequence the Song Part in order (Verse 1, Verse 2, Chorus, Verse 3) and reuse your variations (A, A, B, A),

I hope this is helpful.

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I would recommend creating each song in its own rackspace. I have 550 rackspaces / songs in one large Gigfile and they are all their own entity. I have them all responding to midi sent from an iPad via Ethernet cable.

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Thatā€™s only useful for songs that donā€™t require a lot of different sounds at different points.

Songs and song parts allow rackspaces to be reused. For example, if you have 50 songs that only need a piano) you can use create 50 songs all of which just use the same rackspace containing a piano so you donā€™t need to create 50 piano plugins instances

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When I first started with GP and mentioned that I was using drums and bass along with other lead instruments in most of my songs, it was suggested that I use individual rackspaces for each song. Does the quote above still hold in my case?

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When you first started with GP, we didnā€™t have songs and setlists (and we thank you for years of support)

But a key feature of songs is the ability to reuse rackspaces. So if you have lots of songs that use the same instruments, then you can just use one rackspace for those instruments and each song can have a song part that refers to the same rackspace. You can even tweak widgets in song parts so that, for example, suppose you have one song that requires piano, bass and drums and another song that just requires piano ā€“ then you could have a single rackspace with your piano, bass and drums in it and add buttons to bypass the bass and drums when you donā€™t need them) and then song parts can remember those button settings (snapshots of variations)

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I think the premise is still the same as when I started. But what happens when the bass needs to be acoustic instead of fretless, the drum kit needs to be rock instead of country, and the piano needs to be electric instead of acoustic? Because Iā€™m playing solo all the time and use different instruments for each song, and the set up for each song needs to change for each rackspace. If I was in a group as say a keyboard player, I would only need a variety of instrument based around keyboards. In fact, I have been doing this just recently when asked to play in the backing band for a country music club day. In that case I had seven or eight instruments loaded into one rackspace and only selected the one needed for the song of the moment. No drums or bass required as they were there as live players. So I donā€™t see any other way that I can perform as a soloist except by using individual rackspaces for each song. This is the advice I was given by one of the moderators way back in those early days.

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With setlist mode you can do that. Just connect each song part with the rackspace variation you want. Done.

But, setlist mode also allows you to change song parts and connect them to any other rackspace variation you want. Plus, you can change the order you use variations in a song (by deciding which variation to connect to a song part) without actually changing the rackspace/variations order.

Also there are now a bunch of ā€œactionsā€ that can be triggered by song parts.

So, I think using setlist mode allows you to do everything you can by using a single rackspace, plus a lot more options.

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11

You might want to check this episode out. Iā€˜m explaining my GP setup for my three piece acoustic band (vocals, guitar, piano).

Let me know if you have questions.

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This is my Acoustic band:

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I have been doing this since 1991 with a rackful of hardware.

Gig Performer does it with laptop and software. See more here:

EllerySir - Musician in Tucson AZ - BandMix.com

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