Newbie trying out GP instead of MainStage - How to use like this?

General discussion about Gig Performer
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Hello all,

I’m very new to GP, in fact even MainStage I’m fairly new to, but I’m trying to build out my patches and setup in MS and finding it’s not doing what I need. Trying out the GP trial so far, it might have the ability to do what I want but I’m not sure.

At a basic level, it’s a semi mobile guitar live rig/recording set up. The recording side is fine, the live part is where I want to use GP. I want to use it as a clear and easy to use front end for changing/modifying presets in Amplitube, plus vocals and acoustic guitar directly into GP.

I basically want a list of choices down the left, and each choice selects an Amplitube preset loaded with its standard settings, with knobs and buttons I can use to adjust various things in those presets. In MS, I can pretty much do this but it only has a global layout in perform view, with little individual customisation between patches.

In GP, firstly which view is the one you’d use for live performances, is it the Rackspace?
Secondly, I’ve tried with numerous variations of a single Rackspace and the controls in each variation can only be assigned to the same parameter, not different ones, so therefore my assumption is that using a variation for each different preset is not the way to do it. Do I need to use a new backspace for each preset?

You can see this is all basic, and not sure if people use GP in this way but any advice would be great.
Thanks

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To add one thing, this will primarily be used with a touchscreen, so any way to make it more touchscreen friendly would be great.

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Welcome!

In case this prior thread is helpful for issues unique to Amplitube, I figured I would post it:

In terms of your main question, there are many other people here more capable to guide you.

Jeff

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Welcome Technoholic.

With GP there are several ways to do similar things and the way you make GP work for you depends on some of the nuances of what you want it to do.

Any parameter a VST/plugin exposes can be mapped to a widget (the graphic controls like knobs and buttons). There are then many posibliites from there how you can use the widgets.

Rackspaces by default always have 1 variation. You can’t change certain things between multiple variations of a rackspace… such as what plugins are in that rackspace, but you can change anything between variations that a widget can be mapped to.

Anything you can’t change between variations can be changed by switching rackspaces. A lot of people make a master rackspace that they duplicate or use as a template and then iterate their changes per rackspace.

Somepeople use a rackspace per song. I do this for some things, but I also use a racksapce that has about 10 variations which I re-use for multiple songs.

The setlist mode is an optinal part of GP but I use it and it works by associating songs and song parts to rackspaces and rackspace variations.

There is also a global racksapce which is a good place to set up all your i/o (your interface connections) and then share these connections to the rackspaces, also sometimes referred to as local rackspaces.

I’d figure out everyting you want amplitude to do for you, save those presets not in amplitude but using the GP plugin preset manager (see the wiring view for this) and try to map widgets to everything you might want to control and see how far that gets you.

One other key thing, for a guitar player, think of variations as clicking on a stomp box. When you change variations your sound will change immediately. Think of switching between rackspaces as cross fading (this time can be changed) between sounds.

That should get you started down a good path.

One other thing… if you are using midi controllers of any kind… set them up first in Rig Manager! Create aliases for all the controls on the midi controllers before you start associating them with widgets! This is optional but works much better for most things if you do this first and work with the Rig Manager.

Let us know how it goes!

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Oh, here is my suggestion. In addition to reading the manual (although it is excellent, it is tough for me to follow manuals), watch Youtube videos on using GP. I believe there are several for guitarists using GP (and other non keyboardists). When you are watching, just keep an eye on the date of the video and, therefore, the version of GP as there have been some changes (added functions and improvements) over time.

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This is great information; thank you. I understand it all I think, except how to wire up the global rack space but I think wiring each rack space would work ok for me for now.

Am I right in thinking then that the rack space view is what I’d use “live”? Especially with a touchscreen? Or should I try to use the set list view which doesn’t look as useful for my needs as the rack space.

This is definitely more flexible than MainStage but that MainStage full screen performer view is very useful so I’m trying to recreate that as best as possible.

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Start with rackspaces and over time you can start using setlists if and when they make sense to you as you become more familiar with GP

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GP has a full screen mode and you can change the column width of the rackspaces to shrink that down quite far which zooms up the pannels of your rackspaces to maximize the icon view to the interface.

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That’s why we have a very special article to get people started :slight_smile:
Link: Gig Performer | Getting started with Gig Performer

Welcome to our Community! :beers:

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Thanks, I read the getting started articles and lots more of the documentation but real world experience of this specific use case is valuable for learning.

How do I have the controls that are mapped to parameters in Amplitube update themselves with what the current settings (or default settings) are for a saved Amplitube preset when loading? Everything just shows as 0 on load or the last setting I set in GP when I load but this doesn’t represent the correct settings for a preset of a specific sound that I’ve created in Amplitube.

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Can you please post a screenshot of what you are doing? Are you using multiple rackspaces or multiple variations in a rackspace?

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Screenshot 2023-01-30 at 21.12.24
Screenshot 2023-01-30 at 21.12.241920×1080 231 KB

This is just a basic test, this just loads a clean preset that I’ve created in Amplitube and then saved as a GP Preset. That obviously has all those 7 knobs set at numbers I want between 0-10 to make the amp sound like I want. When I open GP, this rack space loads up as shown, but all the knobs are at 0, except Volume and Treble for some reason. I just want it to load reflecting the settings of the Amplitube preset so it’s ready to play the sound I want.

Likewise, if I used a second rack space with a different Amplitube preset, I’d want that to load the preset values too and show them on that rack space etc

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When you say “GP Preset”, you mean that you saved a gig file?

What version and format of Amplitube you use? VST?

but all the knobs are at 0

If all widget knobs are mapped to parameters they should be remembered when you save and then re-open your gig file. If that’s not the case, then please try another format of the plugin.

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Please activate “edit” mode in panel view and then select one widget, switch to the “MIDI” properties tab and make a screenshot of that condition over the whole width of the screen. This will show wether you did the parameter and MIDI conections for the widget/plugin right.
Thanks.
Oh, and of course welcome on board! :beers:

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No, let me try to explain more simply as I’m new to this.

So, very basic set up, input wired to Amplitube Plugin, wired to output

In the Amplitube plugin, I opened one of my presets, made previously, then saved that using the GP menu in the plug as a GP User Preset.

I mapped controls on a panel to the parameters in the plugin, let’s just focus on the amp knobs for now.

In my preset in Amplitube, there are 7 knobs, left to right for volume, treble etc. The numbers I’ve set them to in the preset are not important but let’s just say they are, in order, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

When I go into the plugin editor, the knobs on the panel that I’ve mapped to those parameters change to match what I’ve set in the preset in Amplitube. So that’s good. If I then make a change to the knobs on the GP Panel, this change is reflected in the Amplitude plugin and the settings change as expected, so that’s good too.

What I want, is that when I open GP, or when I switch back to that rack space, that the knobs on the panel in that rack space are reset to the settings of the saves preset in Amplitube. So effectively, each time I open GP or switch back to my “clean” rackspace, the settings are vanilla, as if it’s freshly loaded that preset.

I hope that makes sense, can that be done?

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Generally speaking, once you map a plugin parameter to a widget, the widget becomes the master. You can use variations to have different fixed settings of these widgets.

By default, widgets will remember their last state, including if you have manually changed them via the UI or via a midi controller.

However, if you want to set the widgets to a specific value every time you open GP or every time you switch to the rackspace - go into the widget Edit mode and have a look at the ‘Value’ tab and ‘Initial value’ options.

Details can be found in this page the manual:

If you eventually start using the Setlist/Song feature in GP, this may also help - but that can come later :wink:

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Thanks for the detailed clarification, now we can understand what you want to achieve… :+1:
Like @rank13 already stated, you should have a look at the “Values” tab of the widget’s properties… that’s what you need to set according to that purpose.
See also the documentation:


Set the parameters to the desired values (or load a preset), then switch off “Last saved” and switch on “This value” instead - you simply can copy the current value of the widget by using the corresponding button… you might even want to enable “Also Reset on Rackspace Activation”.

EDIT: @rank13 Seems that you edited faster than i could post. Well then he’s just got twice the information. :smiley:

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Both of you are great! So I had my thinking backwards I guess, in that the plugin was the master and GP was just displaying the settings of the plugin, rather than the settings in GP being the master, so I should recreate my plugin settings to give me a specific sound in GP, then save those settings using the features you’ve shown above, which I had just also discovered too.

I thought I’d have to go down the scripting route to load the settings etc, so good that it’s a bit easier

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Or you use SetList Mode

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don’t confuse me even more! I’m just learning the basics, I haven’t even touched setlist mode yet!

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