Logic Studio apps Mainstage and Playback: Can it do...?

A

affuman

New Member
Hi all!

I'm a long-time SONAR guy thinking about jumping to Logic for Mainstage and the ability to play live. But I'm not sure if it can do the one thing I'm looking for in a live application:

I'd like the ability to for Mainstage (or whatever program) to play variations of a part while looping. For instance, say I'm playing a song, doing a hot solo over the verse, and want to keep playing over that section. From my understanding, this is simple enough to do in Playback...just hit Cycle anytime during that current section.

But... what I'd like to happen is a "round robin" type of result, where a slightly different version(s) of that section plays randomly each time the loop cycles through.

Is this possible?

I was hoping to solve this problem by inserting Battery or another drum machine emulator into Mainstage, and loading segments of the song in cells so they would be triggered in round robin fashion. My research, however, suggests that this is not possible since there is no sequencing in Mainstage, hence there would be nothing to automatically send a note on MIDI message to Battery.

I RTFM, and it says there IS a way to have variations using Playback and groups...but it doesn't say how. Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance for your help...I've been scratching my head about this for awhile. If I can figure it out, I'd love to jump ship!

BTW, manually triggering a different sample-cell at the right time in Battery is a non-starter for me...I'm a saxophonist using both hands for my primary instrument. What I'm looking for is a way to loop a section via MIDI foot controller, and have that section play variations of the theme...

Help!
-A
 
I'm not very familiar with Playback but I have fiddled with Loopback and as far as I understand the grouping works the same. You should assign all your Playback instances group numbers. The plug-ins with the same group number can not play simultaneously (in parallel). This means that if you have one Playback assigned to group C going and kick the pedal for Play in another Playback also assigned to group C this new loop (or file) with mute the other one and take over.

If Playback's are set to different group numbers they can play in parallel just like any multi track system.

Then there are settings for sync etc inside each plug-in but they are pretty self explanatory.

A nice trick is to use one Loopback plugin to catch a live audio snippet and set the tempo for Mainstage. I tried this with a live band and it works much better than Tap Tempo to correct your Mainstage tempo to follow the band. Nice way to get rid of a lame click track on stage.
 
Per Boysen said:
A nice trick is to use one Loopback plugin to catch a live audio snippet and set the tempo for Mainstage. I tried this with a live band and it works much better than Tap Tempo to correct your Mainstage tempo to follow the band. Nice way to get rid of a lame click track on stage.
Click to expand...

Wow, this is really working?
Sorry to hijack this thread, and admittedly, I haven't even checked Mainstage 2 in a remotely decent fashion, yet. But that'd be absolutely kickass for something I have in mind (in general, I need tempo synced FX for some guitar stuff I plan to do, and permanently tapping the tempo in isn't exactly ideal).

- Sascha
 
Per Boysen,

Thanks for the reply! From what I read, I was thinking Playback grouping would operate as you describe, but just wanted to make sure that the playing of different groups could be synced to Section, i.e. when you send a command for Group B, Group A doesn't quit until its finished playing...

Any thoughts?
 
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