Playing live with rack/MIDI presets

TheRockDoc

TheRockDoc

New member
OK- the old man is reawakening...slowly.

Looks like I'll be playing out live again. Back in the day, it was basically heavy/clean, chorus on most of the time.

Now I will be playing more diverse covers. I haven't used foot pedals (except for an orginal Mu-Tron III) in about, oh 25 years. When I used to use rack gear, I never got into the ADA preamp mode- always used tube heads and pretty much had 1-3 sounds witht the rack sounds on- or one piece that I cahnged pre-sets from.

I had a friend who used to program his entire set lists in order so he would just keep going up every time he needed to change sounds, but I never quite knew how he got everything to change.

SOOO here I am looking at about 6-7 pieces of rack gear that I've accumulated over the years. Now that I've gone digital, I use plug ins, so I have even more rack gear.

Bottom line-I went and purchased a Beheringer 1010. I was looking at a Ground Control, but thought I ought to figure it out on the cheap stuff first. I want to be able to change multiple effects at once, along with the presets from my Line 6 DuoVerb (Let's stay on track here :) Example- Boogie setting uses reverb from one rack piece and chorus from another. Vox setting uses chorus from one and compressor from another

How the hell do I get started? lol The manual is not really helping- someone throw me a lifeline please...
 
TheRockDoc said:
OK-

How the hell do I get started? lol The manual is not really helping- someone throw me a lifeline please...
Click to expand...

You will need to check the manuals of the rack gear, they will tell you how each piece utilises MIDI. Look under program change info.

Usually, the unit lets you take program change info from the controller and map it to a preset. So say you make program 1 on your footboard the Boogie setting. On your reverb box, say the reverb you want is preset 63. The reverb unit will ask you which preset you want it to go to when it receives "change to program 1" info from the controller. You tell it to go to preset 63.

Program info used to be pretty much "up" or "down" in the (not-so-old) days. This led to things like your friend did, with mapped-out sets, or set lists with program numbers by them, and people scrolling up and down like mad between songs to get to the right sounds. :p "Hold, it guys, I need to get to program 1, and I'm on 24. Tell a joke or something."

Also, more than one program on your footboard can lead to the same rack preset. So if you wanted the same reverb on your Vox as your Boogie setting for example, you can make the same reverb setting on your rack piece come up when you select either Vox or Boogie.

Some units need to be set to receive program change info certain ways. I have a Lexicon MPX 500, for instance. It's effects are in banks, grouped by type, eight or ten in each bank. The way the MPX 500 comes from the factory, the controller needs to tell the MPX 500 which bank to go to first, then which of the programs in the bank to choose from. This can be changed so the MPX 500 does not need bank info, and any program can be selected with just program change info.
 
ps- You may need to check the controller manual for program info as well. Some controllers use banks as well, even if they don't send bank info. I had a controller that had ten banks of four, so on the display instead of being 1-40 they were
01
02
03
04
11
12
13
14
21
22
23
24
etc.


And the program change info wasn't the same as the controller display. So when my controller said it was on program 11, the unit was transmitting "Program change 5" info. :mad: Took me awhile to figure that one out.
 
Yeah, it would really help if we knew what gear you are using and what you want to do with it in more detail.
 
Gear:
Behringer 1010
Line 6 DuoVerb
Yamaha Rev 7
Roland SRV2000
MidiVerb 4
DigiTech DSP 256
PV Autograph
PV Ultraverb
non-MIDI:
Aphex Type C
DBX 1066
Hush IIc

Although I don't plan to use all the gear all the time, some of these oldies but goodies have one or two things that I like- and more importantly I already on them, collected over years. My thought initially is simple is best, and 80% I'll probably use chorus and rvb from the Rev7 and Alesis, but want to have options as the set list expands...

Thanks, I was really gonna check for body odor :)- or maybe that was the PV that smelled...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top