I couldn’t agree more with this. I am primarily a guitar player and in many instances, I use my 8 basic sounds for everything live. I may have a few spare buttons to switch on a way-wah here and there just for variety and maybe switch off my reverb/delay stuff temporarily.
We consulted with some world-class guitarists when implementing things like the setlist actually and at that time - a comment was made that really stuck with me.
“If you are making an analogy with a painter - when you’re playing live - you are using wide brush strokes to paint your picture. Your palette is limited and contains the most essential stuff you need. Anything else and your playing may get interfered with because of technology and too many choices. When recording, however, and subsequently post-producing, go crazy and tweak everything everywhere”
I think this is a good advice and analogy - for a guitar player at least. I don’t pretend to be able to get into a keyboard player’s head…
Man, I still have to suffer through rehearsals in one of my bands where one of the guitarists just can’t stop tweaking sounds even though nobody else can hear anything different!
Yeah, I bet I know him!
Yeah, that was a big goal for us — we don’t think people should have to have a Ph.D. in mix engineering to design sounds and play music
Am I remembering incorrectly or doesn’t song mode take up some (at least in my case) extremely valuable screen real estate? Maybe one reason I would prefer not to use song mode just to attain a feature I’d like in rackspace mode.
I’m not sure why emotions ran so high here, but I do know you guys are incredibly dedicated and helpful and have a great product. And I appreciate it. And in this case many options/solutions were offered, (at least for @chris_g) which is just fantastic.
I would just say that sometimes because of specific hardware, performance requirements, etc… sometimes reins are way more useful and applicable, even though you provided a steering wheel. And I fully understand the position that hey not enough people find reins useful for you to implement…But sometimes it can come across as critiquing the person as unable to get past old fashioned thinking and or unable to understand the elegance of your particular way of doing things. And actually often enough you are absolutely right, you do have a better mouse trap. Just sayin’.
This is exactly my point! Some people just have different performance needs, which has absolutely nothing to do with your idea of legacy vs newer and better, yet it often just seems to gets painted (and dismissed) with that same brush. I think that is unfortunate.
In my case, it was apparently more important for a year to put me in a box of “legacy thinking” than to actually appreciate my particular needs and point out that Song Mode actually accommodates those needs.
@LilyM I think it’s more the case that we had a particular vision in mind for the design of Gig Performer and, like any product on the market, it just can’t do everything that everyone wants, at least not yet
As an end user, I have personally had the same experience with several other products. For example, I have never been able to use Ableton Live nor Reason in my live environment, even though they are both awesome products. Same goes for some products with which we compete. We could never get them to work the way we wanted, which, by the way, is precisely the reason we decided to build our own host.
My setup is pretty simple. I was using the OMEC, but decided to just go with the Helix as my interface (details below). My setup is mostly for jamming at home (no more gigs) and sometimes jamming with friends. I want to be able to use both the Helix modeling and VSTs hosted in GP, my setup allows me to switch between the two pretty easily.
Steps to set up audio.
Connect Helix to your computer via USB
Go into GP preferences, Audio I/O and select Helix as the Input, I also choose it as my output, but you can choose other outputs if you wan. At this point the Helix is basically your computers sound card. You’ll probably need to change the audio buffer size…the lower the better tor reduce latency. How log you can go depends on your hardware, I’m able to go to 96 samples.
Helix Output is then connected to speakers (in my case a pair of Atomic CLRs)
You’ll notice in GP Backview (the view where you connect the boxes with virtual wires) that you now have 8 audio inputs at the top, and 8 audio outputs at the bottom.
A few notes on the inputs
** 1&2 are the stereo inputs from Helix and will have whatever effects you have on the patch on Helix. In other words, if you have a patch on the Helix with amp, a wah, effects etc…you’ll hear those effects.
** 7 is the DI input. It is completely unaffected by the Helix.
** 8 is the Helix mic input
Add a VST and connect from the Audio In (I use number 7 because I’m not using the Helix for processing). Side note: I’m might change this to 1&2 because then I can add a wah or some other pre-fx on the way into the computer.
From the VST, connect to one of the Audio Outputs.
A note on outputs
**1&2 bypass all Helix audio and send everything directly to the Helix outputs. They originally designed this so you could send computer audio (iTunes or YouTube) directly to the outs and play along with a Helix patch.
**3-8 are just outputs. If you want to process the audio on the Helix, you need to set the input for the path (Helix has 4 stereo paths (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b) on the Helix to USB 3/4, or 5/6 …those #'s match the audio outputs. In my case, I use outputs 3 & 4 and then in the patch in my Helix I set the input on the path to USB 3/4., I can then add effects on the Helix…I usually use this for the Helix looper, but could any other effect.
You can absolutely use the Helix to control VSTs. I haven’t tried Bias, but it should work. I mostly use Neural DSP, Mercuriall, and Nembrini VSTs for amps and Helix Native for effects. How this is setup is another post all together.
I haven’t used FTP in GP, but I would assume the little FTP receive dongle would show up as a midi device. I’m guessing you would just connect from the midi input to the FTP plugin or whatever other midi plugin you want. You would then connect the audio output to the Outputs the same as described above.
We have numerous videos to help you get started as well as a pretty deep user manual. All are available from our main support page (Gig Performer | Support) and you should feel free to ask other questions here.
and at that time - a comment was made that really stuck with me.
