I’ve been using Gig Performer a few years now & am very happy with it. I would like to think I’m pretty adept at the program… except that I’ve never really understood the point of building Songs and putting them in set lists. Currently, I use an iPad running Unrealbook. Each chart (which is sometimes no more than a blank page with a song title) has a program change that calls up a Rackspace. If I need them, I’ll have variations within the Rackspace that I can step though with midi footswitches. It seems to work just fine.
So, what am I missing? I’ll be tickled pink if someone points out a great capability that I don’t get the benefit of by not using Songs & Setlists.
There are some additional things you can do with songs and song parts, like song part actions(where you can trigger certain things or even chains of things when a certain song part is activated), tempo changes, and capturing specific variation changes(where you’re changing a few things in a variation for a specific song part without changing the underlying variation itself). If you find you haven’t needed such things, then you’re right—Panels view is just fine.
One of the biggest benefits to me is you can use any rackspace variation you want as a song part (and tweak the widgets for, let’s say, the mix and save it to the song part (“snapshot”)).
(So, if 3 years ago I had created the perfect string/piano rackspace, I don’t have to recreate it).
Also, I like have a separate “song” for each song I’m doing. I know all the parts are worked out, etc.
Interesting, my question was always “why do we need variations when we have songs and song parts”
So if I understand you correctly, you simply manage your Setlists and Songs outside of GP.
Then maybe you don’t need them.
But if you did it in GP, and, say, you have 50 songs that contain the same variation, with maybe slight adjustments, for the lead part, and different racks for Chorus, how would you go about organizing all that? Then if you change a variation, it will change for all songs that use it, whereas changing a song part only affects that song without affecting others - so if you want that lead sound louder in just one place in one song, you can do it.
Songs and song parts are pointers to racks and variations that let you reuse the “real” things.
My current setup, which is kind of a one man band thing uses Setlists, Songs, and Song Parts as one might expect, but ties them to a very small number of Rackspaces. Each Rackspace is for a different style of mixing. 50s and early 60s uses plugins for a wet, saturated sound. Late 60s is drier, but still saturated, etc. (I could adjust wetness and saturation with Variations, but I’m choosing different plugins for different mix styles.)
Having few Rackspaces means fast loading and light RAM usage.
Each instrument has its own instance. No songs here; just Rackspaces and Variations.
Let’s say I have a P Bass, J Bass, and Rick Bass with a few different tones and effects. I can reuse those bases in any song. It’s very efficient and fast loading. In other words, it scales.
So yeah, the individual instruments don’t need all the layers from Set List though Variations, but the top level mixer/executive instance benefits from every layer of indirection. It’s one of many things that makes Gig Performer so powerful
Once upon a time I had around 70 different rackspaces… Some were, probably, slight adjustments of another rackspace… consequently running up RAM usage to the max 32GB+. Now I have 18 rackspaces for those 70+ songs.
Another benefit of Songs is that you can assign Lyrics/manuscripts to each song, WITHIN GP, without having to depend on another piece of software for your lyrics, independently of the rackspace.
I also control Ableton clicks from GP. So, as I select a song on GP, it automatically selects the song in Ableton with it’s specific click track for that song, so all I have to do is press play on the controller without having to “see” Ableton at all.
Thanks for all the replies. Interesting stuff. It seems like the biggest benefit I’m seeing is memory management. In my current setup, I tend to setup a unique Rackspace (with variations, if needed) for each song we do. The gig file for my primary band is about 22 GB. (I have 64 GB of RAM). I could likely streamline that a bit if I used the song mode.
Maybe. For me it’s setlist management, it’s just easier to point song parts to some existing rackspaces than to create copies. And there are cases when a song can use more than one rackspace.
Although sometimes I create copies of rackspaces to use within a song, when switching between sounds using variations causes an audio gap (this happens with some plugins).
Actually, that’s a good point. I have some Rackspaces with multiple variations to mute/unmute certain layers when I step thru variations. The patch persist doesn’t help in those cases. If I simply duplicated rackspaces and used song mode, then switching would be smoother. I just did a test with a single rackspace & it worked… so now I’m considering a deeper dive! Thanks.
I use setlists, songs and song parts. When I change songs I change the drummers drum kit on his Roland set, change the guitarists patch on his helix, and my guitar synth patch. For each song part I also trigger a different stage light chase or scene.
As a cover band that has many friends coming to every show - it’s important to have different set lists. I just drag and drop songs to make a new one
I use Setlist mode to manage my setlists each show. This allows me to switch to rackspace view if an audible is called, giving me an alphabetical list of all songs quickly. Once we are back on the current setlist again, I can switch back and GP will return to the last song selected in that mode and I can quickly cycle to the proper song with my midi controller buttons.
Early days with GP, I was wondering the same thing. Because I use drums, bass and digital guitar in 90% of my rackspaces, the best solution for me (as suggested by a senior forum member) was to use individual rackspaces for each song. At present, I am building up a monster gigfile with over 500 songs in it. The largest rs takes about 10 seconds to load and others with perhaps just a single guitar take only a few seconds. I have predictive set to 1 and my Surface Pro 9 has 32gig of ram. As a system, it works well for me
I have the same question. I have been using GP for about a year now. I don’t use songs or setlist. I use a rackspace for each song. Much easier for me. The ONLY thing that I have learned recently, is that I can put up different music charts for each song if I use a set list of songs. I can only have ONE music chart if I use rackspaces. The one thing GP doesn’t seem to work for me is music charts through their Chordpro program. I wish there was a way to just import pdf files into the panels. So, I don’t put charts or music in my GP spaces. if I need a chart or lyrics to songs, I use a separate ipad for that. Hopefully, GP will make this easier so I can get rid of the ipad.
