Using Mixcraft 7 live questions

[jddrock]

Hello all!
My band and I are going to be playing at a local youth event in April and I just upgraded to Mixcraft 7. I'm liking the new cool stuff! Our normal keyboard player is at college a few hours away and unavailable to play at this event with us. That leaves us with just vocals, bass, drums, and I will either play keys or guitar. I'm thinking of trying something different and going for a very synthy EDM sound this go round. So, I have a few questions on Mixcraft's capabilities in a live setting of this sort.
Ideally, I would like to have all my pre-recoreded loops and backing tracks playing off of Mixcraft with a click track being sent off seperate from the laptop's main out to our in ear monitoring system. This way any arps I use and time based effects will sync right up with each tracks tempo without any effort on my part. I know how to do this part. Is there any way that while I'm running through each song I can program Mixcraft to switch sounds for me at certain sections of a song? Or can I program Mixcraft to switch the sound I'm using when a new track begins??? I've heard of other DAWs having "scenes" for live use. Is this possible in Mixcraft? Any ideas on how to makes this work? There are a few reasons I would like to do this, but overall I will be singing some and possibly switching intruments on some songs, so this feature would come in handy for me.
Also, is there a way when stacking vsts on a channel to only make effects apply only on certain vsts in the stack and not others???
Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

[jddrock]

Any help anybody????

[Mab098157]

I have never use mixcraft in a live performance. Some theoretical suggestions...
You could ad a track to the piece that only has a click on the beat then route that track to output bus and assign it out to your monitor only? I don't think you can assign the metronome to a specific output. I am not familiar with what the possibilities are of using the performance panel to "trigger" loops, etc.

Also, is there a way when stacking vsts on a channel to only make effects apply only on certain vsts in the stack and not others???

This is a little hard to interpret? Are talking about multiple vst assigned to 1 track ( example, piano, strings, bass) ? If so then I believe all effects applied to that track would apply to all VSTs. If you have multiple VSTs assign to same track (all playing the same midi detail), then I would duplicate the track and assign only 1 VST to each track. Then you can add effects to the individual VSTs per track, as well as have better control over their mix.

[jddrock]

Yes, I would route the metrenome the way you described. You interpreted my question right. It would be nice to be able to add effects to individual vsts in a instrument track because then if you're playing live, and want that flexibility, you won't have to arm several instrument tracks to play what you want. Also, if you want to switch the instrument tracks seamlessly with the click of a button in the middle of a song, you can't do that to my knowledge when you have several intrument channels armed. You would have to unarm them before switching channels. I may have figured out a workaround to this. It's not as convenient but hopefully it will work. Thanks for the advice Mab098157!
Any body have any ideas on how to program Mixcraft to switch sounds for you at certain points in a song???

[Anorax]

There should be a Control Surface setting that lets you "go to next track" or "go to previous track" which would be great for you to do if you are not arming any tracks.

Simply line up the instruments in different tracks, in the order you want to use them, and use the MIDI trigger of your choice to select the next track. As long as tracks aren't armed, any MIDI you play will be sent to the selected track. So, mid performance, you hit your Next Track trigger, and you should switch from your organ sound to your wailing synth guitar immediately!*

*Haven't tested this. This is all in theory.

[jddrock]

Yes, I can do this Anorax. But say I want to have half my midi keyboard set to play a synth bass sound and the other half set to play a reverby piano and pads. If I wanted to put some distortion on only the bass synth and reverb on only the piano, I couldn't, unless I seperated the bass and piano into seperate instrument tracks with the said effects and armed them so they could be played simultaneously. In a live setting this isn't ideal. If I want to switch sounds quickly in the middle of a song I would have to unarm both tracks before switching to another sound. And when your playing live, you normally don't have that much time to change sounds. That's really what I was getting at. When you have to switch sounds live you have to take one hand of the midi keyboard to do so, sometimes leaving a little empty space. In my band I sing and play keys simultaneously sometimes, so if we're using a backing track in Mixcraft while I'm playing it would be cool to be able to program Mixcraft to change sounds for me at certain points in a song. This feature could really come in handy for staying focused on singing AND playing well, not so much on trying to make a tone switch smooth.
I'm definitely well aware that these would be pretty complex features, but Mixcraft has suprised me before. Thought I'd ask about it to see if any of the very helpful people on this forum had any ideas of how to make this work. Thanks for your input!