skytech

OK....may have hit a bit of a snafu with MainStage. My MacBook Air only has 4GB RAM. Been doing some reading and am wondering if this will be unstable? 8GB seems to be recommended. Thanks everyone, Mike

Thanks for the info Eric. MainStage is definitely in my future. Because I'm on a bit of a budget I'll just be getting my feet wet with GarageBand, and I'm assuming MainStage would be a pretty seamless fit with it as they are both Apple products?

Are you asking this as a general question, or only to compare the ease of use of a laptop on a gig versus in a home studio environment? It's really the same thing except for the additional considerations involved with safely transporting and setting up a laptop on a stage. In general the answer to your question is yes, it's pretty easy if you're computer-literate, but not as easy as putting a hardware keyboard on a stand and turning the power on. A few of us on this forum use laptops exclusively. I started using a laptop on stage almost 20 years ago, with a Titanium PowerBook G4, and went exclusively laptop about 13 years ago. Do you want or need the additional variety (and increased quality) of sounds that 3rd-party VI plugins can give you? Do you want or need the additional control over a virtual instrument's parameters when you're playing a gig? Are you ready to deal with possible software conflicts and troubleshoot them? If the answer to these questions is "no" then a laptop/controller setup may not be for you. In my case, I started years ago wanting to bring the best-quality sounds to a gig that I could, and I was also an amateur programmer that enjoyed "getting under the hood" of my computers and software. One thing about going all software is that it won't cost you much to try. You already have the laptop. Mainstage, for $30, has a few decent if not spectacular instrument plugins (I'm not sure if they're the same as what's in Garage Band), controller keyboards in general cost less than workstations, and a Mac's headphone output is perfectly fine to drive an amplifier. Gotcha. Looks like I'll do just fine with a controller/laptop. Best get myself down to the shop to try out some controllers to get a feel for them and what I like/don't like.

Thanks for the reply. And I guess for the real simpleton question: is it easy to use a controller/macbook in a live situation?

Hey, Just sold my 01/WFD to a collector fellow locally......wow, what a beauty bunch of equipment he had!! Looking at buying an inexpensive controller to use with my Mac. Thinking 61 key, but maybe 88, so I can set it up in a corner of the living room as opposed to being in the garage. Any suggestions? M Audio and Arturia seem to be flooding Craigslist here. Also, is it feasible to use this sort of setup live? I play "out" about once a month where I'm hooked up to a pretty decent sound system. The draw to the controller/Mac setup is the sheer number of sounds available. Thanks for any advice. Mike

So here's another question about the good ol' Korg. Used it last weekend and it was run through a sound system along with guitar/bass/vocals. After one song I noticed it had lost volume in the monitor. Mentioned it to the sound gal and she said, "yeah, it was there, faded out and then came back." Hmmmm. Switched patch cord and the box it feeds into. Still seemed to do it. Any thoughts?

Just to dovetail onto Mike's post... if you pick up MainStage and an audio interface, you can sample your Korg 01/WFD's sounds into MainStage using the EXS24 plugin, then you have your Korg's sounds available in MainStage whether you use it as a controller or not! Thanks for the info guys. Definitely makes sense to simply load up on software sounds. The Korg has some dated (but cool) sounds, so I'm thinking it would best spend the rest of its life as a controller.

Thanks for the reply. Any suggestions as to anyone's favourite software?

Hi everyone, It's been a long time since I had my Korg 01/WFD set up.....let's just say well over 10 years. It seems to work just fine except for a dim LCD screen, which from what I've been reading is a common malady for this synth. So here are my questions: - is there a way to get new sounds for this synth? I have a MacBook Air that I'm hoping I could download some sound libraries to, but have no idea as to how I'd transfer them to the Korg. - I'm hoping to use Garage Band with the Korg and am thinking that I could use it as a 'controller' to access and play the sounds that Garage Band comes with. Simply plug in a patch cord from the headphone output on the Mac to my amp and turn the volume off on the Korg to do so? I have a Roland Midi to USB adapter that I'll hopefully be able to figure out how to configure. Thanks for any and all advice. Mike