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Depending on what you’re doing, it may be more convenient to use a Select statement.
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Like you Alfonso, I don’t have fixed parts for songs (improv based performing), but I do have a good idea of the instruments I’ll use in a song. I use GP in a manner I’m sure is not recommended (and probably frowned upon by long term GP users) but it really suits me. In a nutshell, I use one rackspace which contains all the instrument configurations I use. Every instrument has a bypass switch. To play a particular instrument, all I have to do is un-bypass (solo) it. In the Setlist view I use a song part for each instrument within each song (so instead of song parts, I’ve got bass, eguitar, organ etc). I then use the snapshot function to capture the settings relevant to the instrument & FX for that “song part” (which is actually an instrument “patch”, not a song part). I don’t need song parts in the typical GP sense, so I found another way to use that function which suits me.
I’ve found it to be rock solid stable, with instantaneous switching between songs & parts (instruments).
It doesn’t allow me to load presets as per your query, but effectively each song part becomes an instrument preset, including FX configs. There are some complexities & limitations, but no showstoppers. Mostly plain sailing. Although I’m sure my needs could be achieved in more typical ways in GP, this approach works exceptionally well for me, so if it aint broke, I ain’t gonna fix it.
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Hello,
Proud new owner of Gig Performer! On PC platform, what would be the most elegant approach to selecting presets for a Vst synth plugin?
Best regards,
Ash
Use different rackspaces
Thanks piano paul. Hmm… I don’t see how it would be practical creating hundreds of Rackspaces for the simple purpose of selecting presets. The plug-in is CPU intense to begin with. I would not feel good about having hundreds of instances of a vst synth loaded within hundreds of Rackspaces to merely have access to the presets. Any other approach, more closely resembling the way we select patches on a hardware keyboard?
That’s one of the best parts of GP. You can create any number of rackspaces, each with their own plugins. Only the active rackspace will act upon the CPU. So, you can have hundreds of rackspaces with the same CPU-intensive plugin, but only the rackspace you’re using in any given moment will be in play. You can change between rackspaces as freely as you change patches on your keyboard.
Kontakt has banks which is great. One bank holds 128 presets, I send pc changes via a widget assigned to Kontakt it works perfectly. Variations within one Rackspace to access different presets. Other vst’s don’t offer banks, so the suggestion of creating 100 instances of a particular vst for the sole purpose of accessing different presets is not practical. Any other suggestions? Thank you.
Generally, it’s not really a good idea to use PC events with plugins. Apart from the fact that only some plugins have support for it, you also don’t know how long it will take for a plugin to change its patch after receives a PC event.
Depending on the plugin’s implementation, you may even get stuck notes if you were holding keys or the sustain pedal down when a program change is sent. It’s rarely instantaneous and you can’t take advantage of features such as Gig Performer’s Patch Persist mechanism that allows an “old” sound to continue even after you switch to a different set of plugins, using the standard rackspace mechanism.
Use rackspaces instead.
As mentioned above, even if only for quick auditioning of sounds, having access to a widget like the setup in Kontakt using a bank loaded with 128 presets is so much easier than creating one hundred twenty eight Rackspaces. Anyway I hope this can be addressed at some point. Wonderful software none the less!
To do quick auditioning, one could just open the plugin editor in question and scroll directly through presets, e.g.,
Kontakt
FM8
The Legend
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Thank you for the quick responses. So, if a VST plugin does not have a feature like Kontakt’s bank or Massive where you can send PC changes to access the presets stored within the bank, the only option would be to create ie: 25 Rackspaces each hosting a single instance of the vst plugin with a different preset?
It’s actually a main feature of GP. As was mentioned above by @npudar, using PC events to switch plugin presets can be very inconsistent. Creating rackspaces/variations for such a thing is the more stable way to go. It doesn’t take long to duplicate a rackspace many times over (Ctrl+Shift+D), change the preset within each rackspace, and save. Not sure how that takes much more(if any) time than setting up multiple banks in Kontakt.
definitely a new way of thinking. When you translate this concept into hardware it’s like powering up 100 keyboards each with their own preset rather than using a numeric keypad or jog wheel on a single unit. I will try it out but am curious can a standard pc really handle 100 instances of a single vst synth? Thanks again for the amazingly quick responses. Again, Gig Performer is a wonderfully designed software I just want to make sure I’m approaching it correctly.
Ok. Hold on a moment. It seems to me you are confusing auditioning with performance.
There is no point in creating 100 (say) rackspaces simply to audition sounds. Just open the plugin editor and cycle through the presets. You may even want to tweak parameters of the presets.
When you find one you like, then just duplicate the rackspace (to save you inserting the same plugin again) and open the plugin editor again and keep browsing in the new rackspace.
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If someone wants to have access to 50 presets of a vst plug-in for a live performance how is this accomplished? It sounds like the approach is to create 50 Rackspaces if indeed the vst does not support banks.
What’s the catch: you don’t generally want to change the complete plugin state (plugin preset) while performing live. Not or plugins are built to meet best programming standards (e.g. they might change GUI elements in non-GUI threads) and you can experience glitches, bad response times or even a plugin might hang or crash.
To keep the story short, the rackspace concept is the ultimate solution to possible weird things that may happen with a plugin:
- changes are instant
- changes are glitch-free
- you can use other GP features, such as Patch Persist.
- the whole setup is more stable.
If you just want to experiment home, you might want to check out this experimental feature: Recalling GP user presets - #5 by dhj