I am brand new to MIDI stuff and decided to go with what appears to be the best company out there for MIDI pedals. I decided to go with the MC3 so I wouldn’t have to increase my pedal board size. I am in a cover band where we will sometimes play 3 or 4 45 min sets in a night and was wanting to program my set lists as efficiently and as (re)arrangeable-y as possible. Thanks to the intertubes I have a basic concept of how MIDI works…i think I understand “banks” and “pages” and grasp the concepts of most of the button customization (i.e. double tap/long press/release/toggle … etc) but am not well versed in much else.
So I wanted throw out there how I am programming a single set-list in the MC3 and wondered if anyone has a better way.
For sake of illustration let’s imagine a 20 song set. Most songs have more than 1 preset that will be triggered for the song. I have therefore programmed a series of nested banks. Banks 1 - 4 act as a display for the songs. Banks 5 - 14 house the presets to be used for each song. Page 1 (A,B,C) holding one song worth of presets and page 2 (D,E,F) holding another songs worth of presets. I then map a secondary input (long press) to the last song on page 1 of a given bank to toggle to page 2 of that bank to access the next 3 songs. I also do some mapping on individual presets to advance/go back to songs/banks.
My problem is that rearranging songs is hugely time consuming since nested banks means 3 songs are affected instead of just one, and buttons mapped with “navigation” options have to be re-programmed.
Is it better to just have no nested banks and work only with 2 songs per bank (i.e. one page of presets per song? It would still be some effort re-programming but would take less time.
What are some of the things you guys have done to manage set-lists on the MC3? Multiple set lists?
Hi… I would suggest reading up on adding a three button external switch on the omniport if it’s free. I’ve added one to my MC6 and it gives me a dedicated Bank Change Mode switch which lets me browse my Song banks (I have them A-Z), and a dedicated switch for page toggle. And then in each bank preset F long press jumps back to bank 1 (my core sounds).
So in my case I just have my core sounds as bank one (page one filters, octaves, dirt, chorus; page two synths) and then banks 2 upwards as songs arranged A-Z
You might find the set list manager function in the editor to be useful for manipulating your MC3 JSON export files.
Seconded on a 3 button switch, almost essential for this type of thing ( I got the EHX 3 button one) I have it set up to bank up, bank down and page toggle on an MC3.
1 bank per song. This makes it nice and east to rearrange Bank/Song order in the editor under controller settings, bank arrangement. Most of the setting I have are very simple with en expression to boost and cut gain/volume. Moley6Knipe set up of a long press on preset F to go to a core sound bank is a great idea.
Very good point from @Petergeo - you can just drag and drop banks in the editor into the required sequence. If you adopt the one bank per song method and end up with more songs than banks, you can use the editor and/or set list manager to drag in the songs/banks you need for tonight’s gig
Yes, use the Bank Arrangement feature if you need to re-arrange banks (if you use songs as banks).
Or, use the Setlist manager (Morningstar MIDI Editor), load your controller backup file in, and then rearrange the banks/do any preset edits you need etc, download the file and then load it back into your controller
Thanks for the tips everyone! I was trying to maximize the number of songs available to be stored in the unit since we will be playing more than 30 songs on some nights. But it looks like there is also the ability to load new lists via iPhone app, so I can just load saved sets during the breaks. If using the “one bank per song” method, what do you all suggest is the best use for the second page of the banks (if any at all)?
Yeh that’s the way I had it set up so I could maximize song count into 30 banks. Rearranging becomes more difficult because two are linked together in one bank. Luckily they have the offline editor.
