I’ve been building sounds mainly as a “test environment” for now, I’ve done a rehearsal with some 12 songs but eventually I need about 300/400 songs for the various bands I play. Maybe about 100 at the same time for one band. I would like to use linked racks for this purpose so that I can not only use the same piano patch within one set list (and, using the preload function, save lots of RAM) but also between bands. So far so good. In one band I playleft hand bass with a Scarbee JBass or a Monark sound. Right hand sounds can be very different and involve more splits. My idea was to use a rack for the bass and one for the various right hand configurations. But obviously there are songs when I use the same basic configuration (say, JBass and piano), even down to the same split point and midi filters, although there would be different notes/sheets and in some cases different song states where for instance the piano switches to organ. Rather than building every song from scratch I’m searching for a way to quickly adapt existing setups. I’m coming from a Korg Kronos where I have a bunch of splits like piano/brass, piano/strings, rhodes/brass, rhodes/strings etc. I use the setlist feature to line them up, or sometimes Set List Maker on iPad which will refer to the first patch I need on the Kronos, allowing me to hit the increment button to switch to the next sound.
Now, I realize I can use songs called “split bass/piano” and resave/rename them but a few things are tripping me up:
I don’t really understand the difference between “Save As…” and “Save a Copy As…” and this seems significant if I want to use a “basic split setup” and adapt it to a new song without overwriting the original.
I don’t really see a way how I could get multiple combinations like piano/bass and organ/bass; I can’t somehow export/import combinations of racks, can I?
“Save As” for a song will save the current song with a new filename, and update the current setlist to point to the new name. “Save Copy As” will save a copy with a new name, but won’t modify the setlist. It sounds like “Save Copy As” is what you need, for making copies of “template” songs. The same wording applies to saving racks by the way (“Save As” will save with a new name, and the song will point at the newly-saved one, “Save Copy As” will just save a separate copy without changing the song).
You can copy/paste racks and routes from one song to another, just with normal clipboard operations, which might achieve what you want. But I’m not sure why you’d need to do that - can’t you just make a copy of a “Piano/bass split” song template, which would contain your piano and bass racks, and suitable routes/splits, and just work from that?
Thanks for the clarification! Ok so yeah Save Copy As sounds like a good way to work from templates.
The reason I need to “merge” songs is because sometimes a song switches from rhodes to hammond and back, while the bass stays the same. I’ll try copy/pasting routes, thanks!
That sounds like a classic use for song states. Put racks for Rhodes, Hammond and bass into your song, and add song states for each section of songs with different instrumentation. Then for each state just set your MIDI routes differently to route your performance to the different racks as you require. No need to “merge” songs.
Also note that different song states can have routes that have different splits/zones defined, so you could for example have a full keyboard Rhodes for the first section, then for the next section have a bass/Hammond split, and so on.
Ok, but in neither case is the original file on disk altered, correct? If I choose “save as…” the original still remains on disk, just as if I would do the same with a Word document?
If you didn’t save it it’s still on disk the way it loaded.
Yes, that is the case, the previously saved and named version will be on disk and the newly named file will be open in C3 with any changes you made intact.