At the beginning of this year I tested Gigperformer, but unfortunately it was unusable for my use case.
Apparently the features i need are still not implemented, so I thought I should explain what I need, since i’m probably not alone.
Consider this: I mostly play progressive rock and progressive metal.
In this genre, songs are quite complex. I need to change patches a lot of time per song.
Obviously, most songs use variations of the same patches: for example in a setlist of 5 songs I might need 2 pianos (variations of a single rackspace), 4 leads synths (multiple leads in multiple songs), some pads, some organs, etc.
Some songs even go back and forth between 2 patches for quite some time.
It goes without saying that I need to be able do switch to the next patch just pressing a pedal.
At the moment, there is no way to use gigperformer like this, for a couple of reasons:
There is no way to make “pointers” to rackspaces. You must replicate the same patch over and over a lot, just so you can have them all in the correct order for all the songs. If i have to go back and forth between 2 patches, i have to copy them all over the place. If want to use the same piano in 10 different places, i’m forced to copy it 10 times.
Ideally you should be able to make 1 rackspace with 10 variations and you should be able to insert into the setlist a pointer to a specific variation.
Again, this basically mean adding a layer so that the setlist doesn’t act directly on rackspaces but just point to them.
The next level of this concept is rackspace nesting, allowing me to create a rackspace that is composed by multiple rackspaces which are layered or assigned to different splits basically considering a whole rackspace as a node (without duplicating resources!).
There is no setlist hierarchy: I would like to group rackspaces into song sections and song sections into songs.
I know that i ask a lot, but i would love to use Gigperformer in the future
Hi, I have the similar situation than you.
I create 1 rackspace for 1 song with all plugins needed for that song.
With Filtering Note On Events I can simulate the Patch Resist Feature, so no need for more than 1 rackspace for a song.
And Yes you are right, when some songs use the same piano sound, I have to include the same plugin and use the same sound in eachr rackspace where the sound is needed - but that is not really an issue.
In GigPerformer there is no way to use plugins like in Mainstage with patches on Concert Level.
But GigPerformer is much more flexible and at the end of the day easy to understand and easy to change sounds.
We are working on a setlist support that will work well And be on top of the current GP workflow.
Some players have a “pallet” of sounds that They use while playing live. This works perfectly well with the current GP state.
To have it work with a setlist support we need to do exactly what has been suggested here. Create pointers to rackspaces/variations as “song parts” easily accessible with foot or any other controllers.
There are many other considerations, some advanced functions we are planning, but it’s coming
Cool, please also consider implementing some king of setlist grouping.
I understand that a full hierarchical approach can be overkill, but at least a simple 1 level group (for full songs) is pretty important.
From a software engineering point of view is pretty simple to make this work with predictive loading, so real setlist and predictive loading should work fine together.
Yes T. - we will make the setlist order determine the predictive loading and it should be completely seamless for you to use.
I cannot comment too much on how will we implement this. The main goal is that it should work intuitively and seamlessly. I can tell you that there will be a notion of a “Song” and each song will have several “Song parts”. I guess that’s the one level of hierarchy we’re talking about.
I had a similar problem that was solved by one of the the contributors to this forum. I needed to have a digital guitar switch from picking to strumming. So I inserted two Guitars with one set to strum and the other set to pick. On the midi in block I set the strum guitar to ch 4 and the pick guitar to ch 5. Using my iPad through a wireless network and an iPad app called OnSong, I can send cc# 7 messages instantly to set the strum guitar volume to zero and the pick guitar to 127 and vise verse at the same time. Would this work in your situation?
You could set up a rack space with say four instruments plugged in to a common mixer insert. Then you could write a set in OnSong on an iPad as a numbered list with the song headings down the page. Each heading would send cc#7 messages on four different channels and three would have a #cc7 zero to mute them all, and the fourth (the one you want to hear) would have a 127 volume cc so you could hear it. I’m only telling you this because this is what I currently do, and it works with GP as it is.
You would need an iPad running OnSong, a bluetoooth page turner and a wireless router such as an Apple Airport Express.
It’s way too much work, it won’t scale. Also my CPU and RAM will literally explode and the graphical routing thing will literally be a plate of spaghetti
I’ll consider moving to Gig performer once it has the minimum set of features that i need.
One thing that I have to say is that i love the fact that the developers are so much involved with the community, it’s a HUGE green flag, at least for me
Hi all,
Similar issue bere: prog metal player with ~40 songs , ~10 variations each to account for volumes layers etc that i use multiple times in a song
In Forte, my typical Song is like:
Intro
Strofa
Rit
Strofa
Rit
Rit2
Solo
Rit
End
I use a pedal switch to go to the next sound but in gigperformed i cannot copy or link variations…
While this will be better addressed with setlists, as @djogonmentioned back in july, right now, you can duplicate your variations and then drag then to reorder them.
How would u duplicate a variation , there’s a duplicate rackspace , but no duplicate variation command or is that an irrelevant question , as the same widget parameters are there in a ‘ new variation ‘
In the past you had many questions and we all are pleased to help you.
BUT: Why don’t you read the user manual?
Most of your questions are well documented.
Fair point. A “new” variation just gets the same settings as whatever variation was previously active so it may be that we should call it “Duplicate” instead.
Hi I’m new to the forum and just started my GP trial after suffering too many crashes in Forte.
I agree that GP needs to have another layer of Set list management. Whats been promised here by the developers is very important to me and I hope it comes soon, so +1.
Variations isnt quite hitting it for me yet, but I’m still learning. It doesnt seem to store differences in Kontakt patch mute state or volume. Is there some way to preserve the loaded samples of a sample player to avoid lengthy loading time? In general loading plugins and sample libraries whilst playing makes me nervous. Really it all should be preloaded once and then patches are changing settings etc, like Forte.
We need a way to store an image per variation/song of a chord chart. Is there a vst plugin that will do this that can be changing within song sections/variations? I could then put that on a dedicated screen.
You can uncheck predictive load and the switch between rackspaces is absolutely glitch free.
Or you could load all your needed instruments in Kontakt and assign different midi channels.
With a widget you can change the midi channel in the midi in plugin which is connected to Kontakt and
each variation switches to a different midi channel.
So many options in GigPerformer and with scripting the possibilities are endless, believe me
