I need to layer or replace sounds on my hardware synth with Cantabile. I’m too busy onstage to interact with the laptop and my band rarely follows a set list. I can bring up a vst with a binding that responds to a program change. On my next program change I need that vst to go to zero volume or switch to a silent patch. Is there a binding that behaves like a NOT operator? One that watches all Program Change msgs and will do a thing if the number does not match the vst sound?
I could upgrade from my Solo edition to the Performer and use States as someone has pointed out. Before I spend the extra $100 I wonder if others have found a way to do this.
I can’t say if anybody else has a work around in Solo, as I don’t use that version, but states will do exactly what you want, and well worth the extra $100.
I used to do similar things. for example in Welsh Floyd, we sometimes had a sax player and sometimes didn’t. So I needed a means of having a song where I could mute or unmuted the sax we had on the backing track. If we had a sax player then the default state was sax muted (so I had to positively enable it). If we had no sax man, then all I had to do was hit an unused key on the keyboard and I could change state and unmute the sax.
Thanks for all the suggestions I’ve gotten from this and a previous post. One involved upgrading to Performer edition to take advantage of Song States. Another said I could achieve the same results in my Solo edition by using Songs. Both sound like exactly the situation I am trying to avoid. Creating dozens of empty Songs.
My band chooses each show from a repertoire of about 60 or more frequently played songs. Outliers are possible, including songs we haven’t played in years. It seems I would have to create a Song State or Song for each and every possibility just to try this out.
I imagine many Cantabile users have accomplished this. But I’m viewing this “new” technology skeptically. I still haven’t decided to replace my 40 years of confidence with hardware synths onstage with a Windows computer - the kind that sometimes fails on my desktop for no reason or does other unpredictable things. What do I do if my show comes to a standstill with this? My idea was to try this out with a few sounds at first to see if I’m comfortable. (I’ve spent decades understanding what I can about MS hardware and software peculiarities and thousands of $ on it as well. Otherwise I would switch to Apple.)
I hope the developer would consider adding a logical NOT operator to Songs or Bindings which would allow me to add vsts to my live setup one at a time as my usage grows. This would massively reduce my workload in adding Cantabile to my act, and greatly reduce my risk of unintended consequences as well. I have to know that there will be no surprises onstage.
When I started migrating to VST’s, I used a hard synth, using the resident sounds, and also MIDI controlling a Roland module. I also used a key controller triggering the VST B4 organ on a laptop… I finally went 100% soft synths after my hard synth failed. Two things I pondered in that decision: 1) hard synths ARE computers, and they can and will fail. They usually are out of my budget to replace. They are usually locked into the resident sounds, which usually have a handful I would use, and hundreds I had no use for, many because they sucked. 2) I bought a laptop for a few hundred dollars, compared to the thousands needed to buy a hard synth. I could select what sounds I wanted on the soft synth, many of them free or just a few dollars. Laptops are much more reliable than 10 years ago. I only had a laptop fail when a power surge took out my amplifier and my powered mixing board. The laptop revived, but the amp and mixer did not.
If you are depending on hard synths, you can also expect them to fail, as any other electronics. I would rather replace a laptop than a hard synth. Also, knowing that electronics will fail, a backup laptop is much cheaper, and easier to lug around, than a hard synth. There are thousands of users and their comments on this forum about the success they have found with soft synths and Cantabile 3. Sorry you can’t use Cantabile right now. I really believe if you understood the process, you would be amazed, as I was when I made the transition many years ago. I work with 5 different bands with a total repertoire of about 750 songs, and I manage to keep it all organized and can call songs on the fly or in a setlist, along with notes that include chord changes and lyrics. I never had that with hard synths. It is just a choice I made in which computer I was willing to rely on …the hard synth or soft synth…or even both. With C3, I can do it all, the way I want to.
@kennykeys: honestly, I think you’re being a bit unfair to @brad and Cantabile, stating you can’t use it because it doesn’t have a NOT operator. The performer edition has far more powerful capabilities than just a NOT operator for bindings, as many of us have now tried to explain and help you on your route to live VST use. Is it just that you don’t want to spend the $100 to upgrade to Performer, which could do all that you need (and more)?
If you want setups that are customized to your live usage, you’ll definitely need Cantabile Performer - and if you compare the price to just a simple hardware module, its bang-for-the-buck is amazing!
I’d suggest you give Cantabile Solo a try for some time with more simple setups - maybe not in your complex live situation, which seems to require more sophisticated configurations (all of which are achievable with Performer, I assure you). Once you’re satisfied that Cantabile holds up to your performance and stability expectations, you should make the investment and go for Performer.
Look at it from @brad’s side - he’s running Cantabile development as a business. So if everything needed for sophisticated live setups was in Solo, nobody would buy Performer - not a winning proposition. So, Cantabile Solo is a stripped-down version for simpler requirements; but the workhorse for the gigging musician is definitely Performer.
I was in your shoes about 6 months ago. Playing in 2 cover bands and doing solo gigs as well, I was trying to use my MoXF to handle all my custom programming. I wanted Cantabile solely to manage my multiple keyboard layer sets per song, but was disheartened that Performer was the only version that would do what I needed. I bit the bullet and spent the $200, and I honestly think that was the best money I’ve spent on gear in 30 years.
I do have individual song files for all my songs now as that just provides the most flexibility. I may have 5 instruments active at a time on some songs. However, I also created a few common setups. They make it easy to throw something new in on the fly, and provide a base when adding new songs to my repertoire.