External Instruments & Sending Program Changes // Using Mainstage For Musical Theatre

External Instruments are great to expand your sound library with a keyboard that you have that may not be suitable as a controller, but has sounds that would be perfect for your programming. In this tutorial I show you how you can set up an external instruments to work like patches in Mainstage as well as sending program changes to that keyboard for a hands free external instrument setup.
Gear
Controller: SL88 Studio by StudioLogic
External Keyboard: Nord Electro 4D
Audio Interface: Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 USB
www.sjohnsonmusic.co.uk

[@krustyahoo7457742]

This is an underrated tutorial! Thanks for the walkthrough!

[@raicho20]

Wonderfully done! Thank you!

[@bradyaldrich2957]

Thanks for the tutorial Sam! You answered my question completely.

[@samjohnsonmusician]

Brady Aldrich Glad it helped!

[@francescocannito8729]

Yeah man..really clear explaination! :) :)

[@samjohnsonmusician]

Francesco Cannito Glad I could help! :)

[@jpbonadonna1977]

I hope this tip will be a benefit to some who may have run into a roadblock like I did. In the latest updates of Mainstage, the "Add Channel Strip" option box does NOT ask for MIDI IN. This is crucial however! If your program changes aren't working, it could be because in the MIDI IN tab, your keyboard is listed as missing, or simply not selected. As soon as I did that, no problems!

[@samjohnsonmusician]

Thanks for the update!

[@jpbonadonna1977]

Sam Johnson the degree to which it worked instantly and flawlessly for you vs. my 96 hour struggle REQUIRED me to attempt to help others.

[@klauswulfheide8052]

Hey Sam. That tutorial is great. Is it possible, to send a cc96 (Data inc) to the external keyboard when choosing the patch? Thanks a lot

[@samjohnsonmusician]

Hi Klaus, glad the tutorial is helpful! For sending CC messages on a patch as opposed to program changes you would need to create a Screen Control in layout mode in the workspace, that is mapped to cc96 on the external channel strip. Then set the values of cc96 that you need on Patch change and it should send that value when changing the patch to that external strip? Hope that makes sense!

[@owentyas]

Hey Sam really enjoy your MainStage videos. Got a Nord Stage 2 as my base controller but want to use the stock sounds from the Nord instead of Mainstage ones for things like Organ. Is there a way to do this without connecting a second controller?

[@samjohnsonmusician]

Hi Owen, yes of course, you can follow these steps the same way but just using the Nord itself as the second controller in one. If you map you midi instrument as the Nord too you can essentially add ‘patches’ of Nord instruments into the mainstage patch list!

[@darraghgriffin5074]

Hi Sam, brilliant video man thanks. I have a prophet rev 2 and want to do exactly what you did but not have a master midi keyboard at all, can this be done? Thanks, Darragh

[@darraghgriffin5074]

I just saw your response to the comment below - I'll try that. I've had so weird feedback interferance so maybe it's a routing issue

[@arthurbalfour5217]

Hi Sam, thanks for the clear instructions in your tutorial. On the same theme: Using MS3 to send patch changes to my external Yamaha MOX8. Say you're trying to call up a strings patch on the MOX - rather than scrolling through the hundreds (thousands) of patches til you hit on the right one, is there any way you can set MS to "learn" the location of a patch from the MOX, ie. do a category search on the MOX and select your instrument and the MOX sends bank and patch number automatically to the MS patch you're setting up? That would REALLY speed things up! Here's hoping.......

[@arthurbalfour5217]

.....in short, when setting up an external patch in Mainstage, on my external MOX could I just press Bank B, prog 15 and MS could "learn" the MSB, LSB & program number and set it in the Mainstage patch?

[@samjohnsonmusician]

Hi Arthur, I think if you add a button to the workspace layout, and then in the assignments window set that button to send your program number data to the right destination (being your MOX) that would work! That being said, it would make the workspace layout quite confusing if you were needing lots of buttons for lots of patches though!

[@samjohnsonmusician]

I’m not sure you could get Mainstage to ‘learn’ it though I think you’d have to pre-prepare it to route it to the MOX correctly!

[@arthurbalfour5217]

@@samjohnsonmusician Thanks for your help Sam. Moving house just now and trying to dodge coronavirus so will try it out in a week or so sooner if we're locked down - plenty of time to do everything! Cheers

[@bajtucha]

Hi Sam, great video. Do you happen to know what can be the reason of problems in connecting Yamaha reface CP to MacBook Air through usb? I don't see input MIDI (as presented on your video with "Keyboard 1"). It reacts on keystrokes and knobs but the MIDI data is not received (in any software: MainStage, Garageband, Audio MIDI setup). I've turned the MIDI control ON in reface of course.

[@samjohnsonmusician]

Oh that's a tricky one! I haven't got any experience with that particular keyboard, but I do know with my Yamaha stage piano (CP88) that it requires the Yamaha Steinberg driver (from the Yamaha website) in order to be recognised at all by software etc?

[@bajtucha]

@@samjohnsonmusician ok, thank you.

[@vibesprelude]

Thank you! This is most helpful. I'm using a MalletKat with GigKAT2 sound module. I'm assuming I can do the same thing with this, my scarlett and Mainstage 3. I'm playing backing tracks using mainstage. Do you know a way that I can assign different external patches to each backing track and have them change automatically when I call up that backing track? Also, can I assign multiple external patches at different points within the backing track?

[@vibesprelude]

Are you using Mainstage 3? the screen at 2:38 on your video comes up different on my mainstage and it calls up different settings. I've played around with it and cannot get any sound from my midi controller.

[@samjohnsonmusician]

You should be able to do the same thing with any instrument that has hardware sounds and midi connectivity yes! I’m not sure Mainstage has that option sadly no. You can have a different backing track for each patch by having a different instance of playback on each patch, but I don’t think you can have different patches for different points within a single backing track unfortunately!

[@samjohnsonmusician]

I was using Mainstage 3 I think yeah! Though it was a much older version at the time so it may look different to the current updated version

[@charli3boy]

Will this work with modules? For example a Roland Jd 990? 😜 By the way your video was very helpful... 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[@samjohnsonmusician]

Charlie Dimas Thanks! Glad it was helpful. :) it should work with modules yes, as long as the module can receive midi and more specifically program changes (which I guess the 990 would be able to!) it should work just the same as in the video!

[@charli3boy]

I will try that during the week and comeback to share my results...

[@samjohnsonmusician]

Charlie Dimas please do!

[@Limmmmmmme]

Is there a way to use 2 different sounds from the same external keyboard? Like using a layer?

[@samjohnsonmusician]

That would depend on which hardware external keyboard you are using. The only way I can think that would work is if your keyboard has different jack outputs for different layers within the keyboard. Then you can connect cables from those different keyboard outputs to different inputs on your interface, and repeat the setting up process with two different channel strips. I don’t think there is a way you could do that otherwise. There are only a few external keyboards that would allow you to do this though!

[@Limmmmmmme]

I see. Well I solved my issue by using the Auto Sampler for the two sounds i wanted :P Thx for the info and video!

[@keysureshm]

is that possible to adjust velocity for plugins...? or only for external instrument..?I tried this velocity for vst plugins, but it doesn't worked for me. Thank u.

[@samjohnsonmusician]

It should still work the same way for plugins too, if you’re having issues there is a velocity processor midi fx ‘plug-in’ that you can add at the MidiFx section at the top of a channel strip with a plug-in in, that will let you control the velocity in the same way!

[@keysureshm]

@@samjohnsonmusician Thank you Soooo much. Its a BIG Help For Me. To Play Vst Instruments With Meaningful And Expressively 🙏🙏🙏💐

[@joemurphy8613]

Is there a way to change the external instruments bank or mode? That option when checked does not seem to work

[@samjohnsonmusician]

Joe Murphy Hi Joe, sadly I haven’t been able to find a way that works with my Nord Electro or CP88, could be different for other keyboards though!

[@petrsauer]

Hi Sam, I followed your tutorial. Everything works, but the channel strip of the external instrument does not indicate the signal level.What is wrong? Thanks Petr

[@samjohnsonmusician]

Hi Petr, just so I’m clear, are you meaning that you can hear everything you should, but it is not showing up visually on the channel?

[@petrsauer]

Yes exactly

[@samjohnsonmusician]

Ah ok, I haven’t seen this issue in mainstage myself, but it has happened occasionally in logic and to fix that there a restart of the software seemed to do the trick. I assume that’s not working here? The only thing I can think it could be is whether the sound you are hearing is not actually from the audio routed into mainstage, but the sound from your external instrument into your audio interface before it reaches the software, where in that case it would not be displaying as it hasn’t gotten to the software in the signal chain?

[@petrsauer]

Yes you are right

[@petrsauer]

I already understand what there was a mistake. But I have one more question. Is it also possible to control the volume level of an external instrument via MS3 in this way?