MainStage 3 - MIDI program change to plug in workaround sought.

Hi CCT,

Thanks for the quick reply. I found that panel last week while trying to get things to work, but still couldn't get any response from either the Kontakt or Guitar Rig instances. Your comment raises more questions for me. I read the MS release notes introducing this feature, but have difficulty grasping where these 'unused Program Changes' originate, how MS differentiates between used and unused, and how the PG message gets to the channel strips, but will do some experimenting. I first thought it might work in tandem with the program change control in the patch attributes, but still not getting any patch change responses from my test file. Is there a specific assignment that needs to be created in Assingments & Mappings?

Here's a simplified example of what I'm trying to accomplish. A Mainstage patch contains two channel strips. The first is a Kontakt instrument bank containing 3 piano patches, the second is another containing 8 brass patches. I want this MS patch to call up piano patch 2 and brass patch 5. Is this possible in Mainstage? Hate to sound so dense, because I'm usually pretty good with MIDI implementation. If it is possible and in the absence of more detailed info from Apple, could you spare a brief walk through of how you got Kontakt to respond? Many thanks in advance.

Hi CCT,

Apologies for the delay in responding, as I had to shelf Mainstage experimenting for awhile. Finally got a chance to try and implement your suggestion and after working through some tests it does indeed seem to work very well.

Thanks much for the tip! If I could only figure a way to set up insert FX plug ins that saved their settings on a per preset basis, I'd really be rolling along.

Found a breakthrough at last! CCT's multitimbral option to this problem was a great step forward, but did not address an efficiency issue. In my previous live performance rig (NI's KORE) if I needed several Kontakt sounds (piano, strings, whatever) that had different settings, yet the used the same core samples, a Kontakt instrument bank would load the samples and each instrument would share from the same pool of samples without reloading them multiple times. Sending MIDI program change (PG) commands would call up each patch in the bank as it was needed. MainStage's big Achilles heel was that PG commands would only change the MainStage patches themselves and anything within a channel strip that might make use of PG commands was ignored.

But here's the workaround. Create a MainStage patch and add an instrument channel strip. In the channel strip, create a Kontakt instrument bank with a few instruments in it. Now create additional MainStage patches to accommodate each instrument in the Kontakt instrument bank, copy the original channel strip and paste aliases of it into the additional MainStage patches.

Now, create a new mapping assignment. When performing, I use Logic Remote on an iPad to change patches and provide a visual reference to MainStage, so I set that as the device. For the other settings I use Channel: Unassigned, Type: Absolute, Number: Any, and MIDI thru: Do not pass through. I named this mapping 'Patch Change'.

In the Control Inspector, select the Unmapped tab and you'll be presented with some control options. Choose the instrument you created and another list of options appears. Choose the folder labeled MIDI Controller and in the next list of controllers, the third one from the top is Program Change. Select that and you'll see the map parameter options, Saved Value, Range Max and Range Min. You want to set them all to the same number, which will correspond to the patch you want to choose in your Kontakt instrument bank.

Now go through the other MainStage patches and repeat the actions in the last paragraph, changing the map parameter numbers to match the instrument in the Kontakt bank you want that patch to use.

Voila, you're done! Check your work by opening the Kontakt bank from the channel strip (or alias) and select different MainStage patches while watching the instrument selector jump around within the bank to reflect the PG numbers you assigned. Though I haven't done an exhaustive test, this method also works perfectly for some of the Arturia instruments and Guitar Rig.