You may or may not have heard about Aliases in MainStage. It's an under-utilized function that can really help in a few situations.
What is an Alias, you ask? Let me tell ya:
An Alias is a mirror image of a channel strip, patch, or set that appears more than once in your concert.
Why use an Alias, you ask? Let me tell ya:
There are a couple reasons. 1, to reduce CPU and memory strain. If you're using the same piano sound in 8 patches, you can make an alias of the patch so it is only using the CPU/Memory of one patch.
The second reason: you can use an alias if you're not sure what sound you're going to end up using in multiple patches. Create an alias and then when you finalize the sound design, it will be ready to go!
How to use an Alias, you ask? Let me tell ya:
It's as simple as copying and pasting. Select the channel strip, patch, or set, you'd like to alias and press command-c. Navigate to where you'd like your alias to be and then press option-command-c. That's all there is to it!
What limitations when using an Alias, you ask? Let me tell ya:
Any change made to an alias will affect all instances of that alias with a few exceptions: velocity curve, layer and split settings, channel volume, pan, and midi input settings can be adjusted on each alias instance.
You can add channel strips to an aliased patch without it affecting the other aliases.
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I don’t think I am using aliases and I think I’m doing something different and Aliases might be what I ultimately want.
My MainStage concerts are primarily used for high school and community theater. The number if different instruments/patches used in modern Musicals are huge. I can reuse the patch multiple times. My process: I am copying the patch so that I only have to advance the patch in the order it is introduced in the book.
I want to create a patch one time and use it in multiple places within the concert. If I make a change to the original patch, such as volume, I want that one change to affect all the other instances.
It sounds like what you described as aliases is what I want to do, but I was wondering if there’s a tutorial for how to do this or something step-by-step that you’ve created. I didn’t understand your concept from what you described in the original post. It could be because I haven’t had my coffee yet. Thank you for teaching me something new in MainStage.
Thank you so much for helping me. I’ve been using Sunday keys for a few years and we moved for simplicity sake to the iPad app. I love your work.