Setlists and Patch Changes - What category do you fit in?

[Iconoclast]

20 hours ago, Dr Nursers said:

D/E - I use Mainstage to send Midi CC to both my boards to switch patches

What kind of boards are you using? Any issues sending patch changes to both from MS?

[Iconoclast]

4 hours ago, ABECK said:

Onboard setlist creator works well enough for my needs (Previously Jupiter 80, currently K2700).  Simple but effective.

In the past, I used Setlist Maker on the iPad, which was great as I had all my patches assigned to my charts.  I switched to OnSong and found that programming MIDI program changes was overly complicated, so now i just use the iPad for charts and manage the patches on my hardware manually.

 

My understanding is the 2700 doesn't have a setlist/song mode? Is that wrong?

Were you commanding PC's to the 2700 from an offboard source at any time?

[wineandkeyz]

For years, I've used the Master mode on Yamaha S-series keyboards to send patch changes to my other keyboards. Starting about 13-15 years ago, it was an S90ES sending PCs to a Roland VR-760 and Fantom X7. In about 2014 I replaced the S90ES with an S70XS in my gigging rig. Today the VR-760 is long gone, so the S70XS only controls a Jupiter-80. On occasion I bring out a Hammond SK Pro, but I only use it for organ tones so no patch changes are needed.

The S70XS has 128 memory slots for its Master mode, and I've used over 100 of them. About 8 are dedicated to bread-n-butter setups (strings over AP, organ over AP, strings over EP, etc.) and the rest are song-specific and are named as such.

As for keeping track of which memory slot goes with which song, I use a spreadsheet on my iPad mini, alphabetized by song title, and scroll through as needed. The bands I play in jump around too much to bother with trying to step through patch changes in a predetermined order.

[nursers]

1 hour ago, Iconoclast said:

What kind of boards are you using? Any issues sending patch changes to both from MS?

None at at all - I've had Mainstag control the following two board set-ups:

 

MODX7 / Arturia Keylab (so Arturia is in fact running plugins from Mainstage)

MODX 7 / Crumar 7

MODX 7 / YC61

MODX 7 / Novation Summit

Kronos / Nord Electro 5D

 

 

[RABid]

C, with a touch of F. But mainly it was patch organization for me. Minimal patches and know exactly where your sounds are. 

[D. Gauss]

mostly we don't use setlists in my band (at a festival we might).  there's a big ass list of 200 plus original songs and also a handful of covers at the bass player's feet, and we go from there, calling out as we see fit.  as for patches, i only ever want to hear piano, whurly, B3 or the rare accordion.  our keyboard player seems to think otherwise sometimes, but hey, if it worked for 90% of tom petty/springsteen, etc.... i.e. we ain't doing tales from "topographical oceans," a cars tribute, or some other such thing...

[Shamanzarek]

I don't use any setlists or written notes. It is all by memory. For a few years in the late 80s/early 90s I carried four keyboards plus a sampler and drum machine. I was using an Atari STacy 4 to run MIDI basslines and drum parts. For each song I would send program changes to a DX7, S50, S770, Matrix 12, Poly 800, and the guitarist's effects module. Since then despite a few attempts I've forgotten how to work all that gear and just do everything on the fly from memory.

[stoken6]

7 hours ago, RABid said:

C, with a touch of F

That's the definition of "keyboard blues"...

 

Cheers, Mike.

[ABECK]

14 hours ago, Iconoclast said:

My understanding is the 2700 doesn't have a setlist/song mode? Is that wrong?

Were you commanding PC's to the 2700 from an offboard source at any time?

Kurzweil calls it Quick Access mode.  You can arrange programs and multis into QA banks, then access them from the keypad.  Simple and effective 

[Outkaster]

I'd say B but I'm interested in being a better player more than anything.

[RABid]

I assume that I am not the only one that sees these threads and ends up feeling old. I mean, seriously, I'm not the only one here that used to dial in every synth patch manually AND had the delay settings memorized in milliseconds for the songs that needed echo to be in time. 🥵

[Bobadohshe]

My system might not be the most efficient but it's very battle tested and works pretty well:

 

No prearranging of patch order on my Montage. I just call em up as I go down the night. But I know where they all are. I have them grouped by song decade (!).

 

Having to make a new live page with all of them in order for every gig would be way to much work for a 4 hour top 40 hit that might go 1,000 different directions during the night. Knowing where each patch is and being able to get there with a swift press of 2 buttons works swimmingly.

[Iconoclast]

On 12/6/2022 at 4:42 AM, ABECK said:

Kurzweil calls it Quick Access mode.  You can arrange programs and multis into QA banks, then access them from the keypad.  Simple and effective 

Quick Access is simple and does help quite a bit but it's pretty far short of what a song mode can do for you.  It's really a favorites bank.

[Iconoclast]

OK, I''ll answer my own post.  --D-- but wish I could go to E but I seem to lack the tech skills.

In Mainstage I build every song as a folder with the individual patches in order inside that folder. I use a footswitch to patch change fwd so this can result in a lot of patches for a single song. I make big use of alias patches and alias channel strips to cut down on memory usage.  As I also use a Nord Stage for almost all pianos/organs/eps, some of the patches in Mainstage are only there to command the Nord to a certain patch.

My footswitch doesn't actually plug into the Nord, it's a USB midi footswitch, so it will work with any rig that I use Mainstage on. It just plugs into the USB hub or directly into the computer.

If I get a different setlist, I can just drop/drag the folders into the order of the new setlist.

A lot of the songs actually have the same patches in them. For example, any song that just uses piano probably has the same piano patchs. I'll actually put a couple of different pianos in those patches and that gives me options depending on the room/mix.

[AnotherScott]

12 minutes ago, Iconoclast said:

Quick Access is simple and does help quite a bit but it's pretty far short of what a song mode can do for you.  It's really a favorites bank.

You mean a Set List mode? (Kurzweil does have a Song mode, i.e. for its sequencer). Yes, Quick Access is basically Favorites, but the distinction is subtle. Kronos Set List, Fantom Scene Chain, MODX/Montage Live Set, and even something like Juno DS Favorites are all sets of physical and/or on-screen buttons that are not "sounds" so much as they are pointers to sounds or sound combinations that exist elsewhere, which is what Quick Access mode is. One thing that differentiates the approaches is the ease of re-ordering them.

 

One thing I have yet to figure out is whether the Kurzweil Soundtower editors support easy re-ordering of the items in the Quick Access screens. In a brief look, I was unable to find a way to do it. :-(

[Iconoclast]

10 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

You mean a Set List mode? (Kurzweil does have a Song mode, i.e. for its sequencer). Yes, Quick Access is basically Favorites, but the distinction is subtle. Kronos Set List, Fantom Scene Chain, MODX/Montage Live Set, and even something like Juno DS Favorites are all sets of physical and/or on-screen buttons that are not "sounds" so much as they are pointers to sounds or sound combinations that exist elsewhere, which is what Quick Access mode is. One thing that differentiates the approaches is the ease of re-ordering them.

 

One thing I have yet to figure out is whether the Kurzweil Soundtower editors support easy re-ordering of the items in the Quick Access screens. In a brief look, I was unable to find a way to do it. 😞

I've found that anything with the Soundtower name on it is honestly not worth the time, and certainly not worth any money.  Their OB-6 editor is barely workable but full of bugs. Their VAST/Kurzweil editor is a complete and total waste of time. I won't even try with it anymore. I have no idea how Soundtower stays in business.  And then you have things like the Hydrasynth editor which was made by a kind user who donated his time...works great for free.  You would think that with the enormous amount of user memory locations in the Kurz products, that a simple decent drop/drag/cut/paste editor would be the equivalent of a song/setlist mode.

I'm fortunate enough to have a couple different boards and setups and am able to compare the differences. I do shows on my Kurz because I love some of the sounds and the keyboard action, but my shows that require a lot of patch changes mid song I go with a different board. A true song or setlist mode might seem like a subtle difference, but for many of us, that subtlety IS the difference. You are right, in that "Favorites" are just alias's just like "Setlists" are alias's. But the ability to order and edit entire groups of patches by song title is pretty powerful, and uses almost no memory resources.

[AnotherScott]

20 minutes ago, Iconoclast said:

You are right, in that "Favorites" are just alias's just like "Setlists" are alias's. But the ability to order and edit entire groups of patches by song title is pretty powerful, and uses almost no memory resources.

Oh yes, besides the ease of re-ordering, also the re-naming. That's an irritating limitation of Fantom's Scene Chain. You can create lists of aliases for convenient access to the sounds you need for a gig/project, but you can't name them differently from what the actual thing (Scene) they're pointing to is named. No song titles, unless you actually save the "real" sound with the song title, which is ridiculous if you use the sound in multiple songs. You'd have to actually create multiple copies of the sound if you want the sound to appear in different "set lists" (chains) listed with the relevant song title. (And yes, Kurzweil has the same issue, though saving multiple copies is not quite as bad because at least you have many more savable locations available. Still, it complicates patch management... you don't know which sounds are merely duplicates of others.)

[RABid]

On 12/6/2022 at 12:58 AM, D. Gauss said:

mostly we don't use setlists in my band

Every band I have been in has created set lists, and every band I have been in has deviated from that list before the first set is over.

[AnotherScott]

1 hour ago, RABid said:

Every band I have been in has created set lists, and every band I have been in has deviated from that list before the first set is over.

 

And this is why I can't relate to the desire for pedals that advance to the next patch. Unless you're in something like a touring show that is tightly scripted to do the same thing night after night...

[RABid]

40 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

And this is why I can't relate to the desire for pedals that advance to the next patch.

Oh, I never did that for sets, I did it for songs. I usually had consecutive patches set up for songs, one for the body of a song and one for lead. Sometimes the lead patch would be a split with the chord sound on the bottom and lead on the top. Very handy when you need both hands on the keys but have to change patches. Next patch into the lead, then previous patch to go back to the body of the song.

[mynameisdanno]

I'm half of D, sorta.  I use BandHelper on an iPad.  It's extremely powerful and fairly finicky as a result, but I love it.  All my projects have at least two custom fields, "Nord Patch" and "Quicknotes" (used for any one-liner reminders of musical cues, which BGV part is mine, etc.).  Those fields are shown on my setlist view along with key, and that's all I need on most gigs.  If I want to refer to a chart or have a few lyrics reminders on a tune, I can load that stuff in there too and just click on a tune in the setlist to see it.  I usually keep the iPad mounted down low to one of the legs on my KS7150 with the iPad parallel to the floor, so it's very low profile from the audience perspective and usually hidden from the audience entirely by my leg.  

 

I prefer this approach to any "Setlist mode" on a keyboard, because usually with the folks I play with the setlist is being written in the green room ten minutes before showtime.

 

I haven't ever bothered with the necessary MIDI plumbing to send program changes from the iPad to the gear.  Even on the Heart tour, with four preset-capable keyboards and a few H9's to change presets on, plus the Minimoog Model D to manually repatch a few times a night, it just didn't seem worth the hassle.  I added a few more custom fields to that BandHelper project for the additional gear's patch numbers for each song, and loaded images of patch sheets for the Minimoog into the songs where I used that (with highlights on the knobs that needed to change, if going in the usual setlist order).  It only took me a few seconds to shift all the patches manually for most tunes, and after a couple weeks I was finding places where I could "work ahead" to get the Minimoog ready for the next tune I'd need it for.  

 

Bottom line, I would rather be in the habit of quickly doing it myself rather than becoming reliant on automation that becomes a point of failure and leaves me looking like a deer in the headlights when some janky dongle inevitably fails one night.

[Iconoclast]

16 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

 

And this is why I can't relate to the desire for pedals that advance to the next patch. Unless you're in something like a touring show that is tightly scripted to do the same thing night after night...

I've never toured but I have done a couple Tribute shows that are typically 2 hours or shorter and the setlist only changes in a couple predictable ways.  One of them (Kansas) was particularly demanding for the keyboard players and the incredible number of patches needed for some of the songs. Additionally I played in that band with a keyboard player who used the footswitch/Mainstage method in all his bands and I could see that it was more organized than the way I was doing it. So I switched over to his method and I've never been tempted to go back.  Now I use it for every band I play in, whether it's a 90 minute tribute show or a 50 song/4 set bar band. Once you have the songs built it's incredibly easy to build out a set. A lot of it is just drop/drag and/or cut and past as alias (and once you remember those two short-cuts it goes really fast.)

[Iconoclast]

11 hours ago, mynameisdanno said:

I'm half of D, sorta.  I use BandHelper on an iPad.  It's extremely powerful and fairly finicky as a result, but I love it.  

I hadn't even heard of BandHelper before I first broached this subject on Facebook and it seems like a whole lot of people are using this product for the same reason.

[stoken6]

2 hours ago, Iconoclast said:

I hadn't even heard of BandHelper before I first broached this subject on Facebook and it seems like a whole lot of people are using this product for the same reason.

You need to pay a modest subscription which I think is justified by the value of this incredibly useful and versatile app.

 

Cheers, Mike

[wereMole88]

Play in the same cover band, quite diverse amount of songs as a keyboardist.

 

Pre-pandemic we used to play the songs one by one with room for deviations from the setlist although usually not much.

 

Back then I had just 2 Nords with the setlists programmed into Bome Midi Translator. Patch changes were triggered by a single footswitch and it made it also possible to queue the next song with a rotary encoder. All patch combinations were linked to a single integer 0-127. Bome then also send out other preprogrammed midi to keyboards if necessary like volume settings, specific synth stuff, midi routing etc.

 

During the pandemic we've changed it so that there are no more breaks between songs and it's all one continuous performance. This put some different demands on me as I had to have everything ready instantly while also playing the previous song for as long as possible.

 

Swapped the Nords for just a laptop running reason. Keyboards are just two midi controllers controlling 2 combinators in reason representing upper keyboard and lower keyboard.  Patches are in a folder in correct order and I use a double footswitch to jump either keyboard to the next patch. Obviously it's less flexible than the previous setup but it's easier to manage and gives me the option to accommodate to the tricky and fast crossovers between songs.

 

Took the opportunity to get lighter keyboards, less pedals, less preprogramming as everything is just saved within reasons combinators, less cables and less gear. I'm happy that my rig is much smaller now 

 

I've got the setlists in notepad++ in an easily readable format and use an encoder on my midi controller to make it pop forward on my laptop and scroll for hints about which keys/parts to play as I have a lot of custom synths/sequencers.

 

Haven't used this setup live yet - first gig early Jan 2023. Haven't played live in 3 years although we never  stopped rehearsing.

 

We've also fully switched to in-ears during the pandemic. It's going to be exciting.

 

So I'm clearly in C, D and E.