two keyboards with mainstage

Question

two keyboards with mainstage

Hi folks, this is not a question, but a solution. I tried numerous possibilties, to play with two keyboards and mainstage. With different program changes, different patches etc. Just the same like if you had two synths.... Nothing worked, till I found out that you you could start up two mainstage programs. Just copy the one you have and give it a different name.

This only works with a midi interface, instead of USB, and you have to filter your control-functions as they can't be seperated, in the version, we have now. This counts also for program-changes. So one from 1 til 10, and other from 11 tol 20, for example. In this case it works charmig, and as two seperate keyboards! Just to let you know, it works very good. No Ram or CPU issues! Take your advantage!

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jun 15, 2009 1:05 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 15, 2009 1:07 PM in response to Arjen Mooijer

By the way, hope apple lets mainstage to learn control functions per keyboard or midi port! Would be a great update!! Apple????

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Answer 2

Caramby

Level 4

1,523 points

Jun 15, 2009 1:09 PM in response to Arjen Mooijer

Good solution. Would you like to mark it as 'Answered'?

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Answer 3

Jun 15, 2009 1:10 PM in response to Caramby

How do i do that

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Answer 4

Caramby

Level 4

1,523 points

Jun 15, 2009 1:27 PM in response to Arjen Mooijer

When you reply to this post, one of the options you will be offered is "Mark this discussion as answered?"

Just say yes.

The reason for doing this is so that other people can search in Answered Questions, & find your post (which otherwise would be missed).

Be careful not to accidentally give me any points, because I'm not helping you with your question, I'm just helping you to use the Forum!

🙂

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Answer 5

Blueberry

Level 4

3,087 points

Jun 15, 2009 8:43 PM in response to Arjen Mooijer

Several keyboards work just fine in MainStage: add two keyboard screen objects in the Layout mode and assign them to the keyboards. In Edit mode you can then select each keyboard as an input for every channel strip. No need to launch the app twice.

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Answer 6

Jun 16, 2009 11:42 AM in response to Blueberry

Yes, this I true ofcourse, but I want to send different program-changes from different keyboards! In your case, you can select one patch at the time for two keyboards. Or am I wrong? So the switch to one channelstrip e.q. patch, for one keyboard, without affecting the patch played by the other. You alwaus have to make sets of channelstrips in this case, wich always are played together.....

Regards!

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Answer 7

cnkz

Level 1

0 points

Jun 16, 2009 11:33 PM in response to Arjen Mooijer

I have two keyboards connected to one mainstage. First keyboard uses midi-channel 1, the second midi channel 2.

In layout mode i have put two keyboards on the screen. And of course i can have different patches for each keyboard. You can select the midi-channel a patch will use and mainstages moves it automatically to the correct keyboard in the layout.

Only drawback is, if you use a lot of patches the CPU performance increases a lot. Once I used 8-patches for keyboard 1 and 4 for keyboard 2 and was close to the performance limit

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Answer 8

gilapuki

Level 3

530 points

Jun 20, 2009 12:59 AM in response to cnkz

This is a similar solution to the one I use. Sometimes I assign several different synths to my MIDI guitar - one for each string. Each string sends on a different channel, so I set each synth to the channel of the string I want to control it. e.g. string four always sends on channel four, so I set the synth for that string to channel four. Each channel strip can have its own set of plugins and bus sends. I have had no problems with this set up.

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