Transition from Mainstage to Gig Performer Sticky?

Gig Performer on Mac OS X
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Hi, I have made a quick draft, that can hopefully help a few of the basic questions for Noobs (Like Me). Feel free to add extra info, that I have missed, however, I give permission for this to be used as a Document/Wiki/Sticky etc.

Guide to transitioning from Mainstage to Gig Performer

  1. Why leave Mainstage?

A. Firstly, Mainstage is a brilliant program that is great for beginners, and extremely powerful, and has a powerful user base, especially amongst the Christian User community, however, the fact that you are reading this indicates that you have had issues.

  1. What are the advantages of Gig Performer over Mainstage?

A. Firstly, Mainstage is MacOS Only and works best with 16GB. Apples newest Silicon based processors, despite being Powerful, struggle with only 8GB of Ram. Mainstage is very CPU/Resource hungry.
B. Most Windows devices these days have Touch screen compatibility, thus making it easier to use, and not relying on OSC via the iPad.
C. Gig Performer has a built-in Midi File Player
D. CPU usage is optimised for live use
E. You can run multiple instances of Gig Performer
F. Routing plugins is as simple as ‘patching cables’
G. Links with Ableton Live
H. Support for the popular Chord Pro format
I. 14 Day trial available
J. Quite a few plugins are Windows only
K. And much more

  1. So, I’ve downloaded the trial, What Next?
    a. Watch a few YouTube videos. A simple Google Search will provide many guides and tutorials.
    b. Experiment and play, you won’t kill the Computer

  2. Mainstage has a great sound Library, where do I start?
    a. There are some fantastic free Plugins available, and quite often most users received plugins as part of buying hardware, whether it be an Audio Interface, or Keyboard Controller.

  3. Mainstage has some great Internal Plugins, what are the best alternatives?
    • Arpeggiator – BlueArp is a MacOs alternative that is quite as powerful
    • Chord Trigger – Ripchord is very easy to use ana available on both platforms
    • Modifier - TBA
    • Modulator - TBA
    • Note Repeater - TBA
    • Note Randomizer - TBA
    • Scripter - TBA
    • Transposer – Built-in
    • Velocity Processor – Built-in
    • Other
    o Sampler TBA

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If you’re willing to edit this a bit more and fill in missing details, we could turn this into a guest blog article which would be really cool

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Could you please describe what the “TBA” plugin do? We could then help to find alternatives.

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TBA - to be added (or announced).
I understood that he’d edit the post and update these entries :slight_smile:

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I understood this :wink:, but we could help to update these entries if we understand what the plugins marked with “TBA” are supposed to do.

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Ah, OK. Time to sleep :expressionless:
My mind is shutting down. :slight_smile:

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I haven’t had much experience with the Midi FX, with TBA beside them, hence any suggestions would be welcome, and I’ll edit the above.

Also, I thought about adding suggested YT channels.

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What I meant is that, if you want an alternative to a MS plugin, we need to understand what the original MS plugin do…

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Admittedly, I’ve only used a few of these Midi FX, so I have no idea really what some of them do. I just did a quick look, and found these:-
Modifier
Modulator
Note Randomizer
Note Repeater
Sampler
Scripter

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Done.
Modifier
Modulator
Note Randomizer
Note Repeater
Sampler
Scripter

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So perhaps:
• Modifier - Built-in (as basic Widget properties)
• Modulator - Pizmidi? (midiCCModulator, midiSimpleLFO)
• Note Repeater - Pizmidi? (midiDelay)
• Note Randomizer - probably something for a GP Scriptlet
• Scripter - Built-in (goes probably beyond what MS does)

But if you don’t need these plugin, you could perhaps not mention them.

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I never needed them, so we could remove some? I am just trying to cover any bases, before this becomes an FAQ/Sticky etc.
Best sites for Free plugins?

KVRAudio, plugin boutique?

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Here: Top websites for free audio plugins

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True, but if it’s there, it may save someone looking for it. etc

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At some point, I’ll amend the original with this.

Thank you. :wink:

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