Sound organization

So, I’m trying to get my head around the underlying logic of GP3 vs Cantabile. They use similar names for different concepts sometimes. For instance, in Cantabile, a “rack” can contain a bunch of sounds and routings and various states (similar to GP3’s rack space and variations I suppose), but I can have a whole bunch of “racks” in one song, and even share racks between songs (linked racks) so they only get loaded once. In this way it works as sort of a hardware sound module or synth where you have patches that are always available to recall at any time.

What I’m trying to get my head around is - can I use multiple rackspaces in one song in GP3, and change between multiple variations?

The main reason I’m asking is because I’ve built sort of a flexible compact setup for a trio where I use 4 pads to pick a main keyboard sound for my 88 key, 4 pads to pick a layer sound (also on the 88 key), and 4 pads to pick a bass sound that I play from another keyboard. Additionally, I use a hardware button to then switch to a split between bass and the main keyboard sound on the 88 key and flip the “layer” sound to the upper keyboard (which is normally bass).

I have a few rotary encoders for fx, a tap tempo for delay, level faders and organ drawbars for controls. All of these stay consistent when I change sounds or split mode. I hope someone can follow what I’m doing and maybe give some idea if this is possible in Gig Performer. As far as I understand, switching between song parts or songs would reset all parameters and also switch both keyboard sounds and the bass sound, plus it would mean having lots of redundant plugins running… right?

Oh and - I really really like the visual approach of GP3 and the widgets that show you what’s going on and what your buttons do. This for me is the main drawback of Cantabile; once you have more than a few controls set up, especially if they vary from song to song, it gets really hard to see at a glance what your rotary encoders, switches and faders actually do.

Sounds complicated, but I think it is not :wink:
You can define your rackspaces which holds the sounds with splits layers etc.
In Setlist Mode you can define a song with song parts.
Each Song Part references a Rackspace variation. Thats all.
But it could be that I did not completely understand what you wanted to say.
Keep in mind that you cannot use Rackspace variations in parallel and distribute or layer that!
When you want to do that you should enable multi-instance support.
With this enabled you can start another instance of Gig Performer so you can use rackspaces in parallel.

I think the problem is that, in this specific band, my sound organisation isn’t really “song oriented”, or rather, I need to switch quickly between only a few of the same sounds but leave the “second keyboard” unaffected. If I switch between piano and rhodes, I don’t want the bass keyboard to be interrupted in any way. In Cantabile, if I use a “linked rack” with the bass sounds in both songs, it remains entirely unaffected when I switch other sounds around. The way I understand GP, I could make a rack with four different keyboard sounds and four different bass sounds, but I can only save variations with a combination of both, instead of being able to choose each independantly.

If you have enough RAM, you could load all the instruments into one rack space, then create a front end with widgets to control either muting or bypassing. Or maybe the gurus here could help you with scripting so that when you push a button, some combination of that happens.

Each individual instrument could have a widget / button that would correspond to the hardware pad on your controller, and midi filters or scripting would be used to decide what action happens to what widget(s) when you push a hardware button.

That’ll get you close.

If you have a bass+piano and a bass+Rhodes rackspace and switch from one to the other with the Patch persist option enabled, the bass won’t be interrupted.

That’s good to know. But what happens if I’ve adjusted the volume of the bass (or piano) during playing and then switch to the other rackspace? I suppose they would jump? Also, I would need to make 16 presets with four sounds on each board, and 64 if I want to layer them too.

I seem to be talking myself into running in parallel but in that case I don’t see how I could switch to “split” mode.

Is it possible for @sanderxpander to use a second instance of GP? Would that work in this case?

I think it could but I don’t see how I could switch between having my bass on the upper board and a layer of two keys sound on the bottom, and having the layer sound on the top board with a split of bass and main keys on the bottom.

The way this works in Cantabile basically you can have a bunch of independent sound modules (organized into what they call racks) and then select their “states”. So I can switch one module’s state without touching another at all. Then separately you can select a “song state” that just changes midi routings and filters. I can see how I could do either one of these with GP but not both at the same time…