Mainstage Tips: Getting a Trance Synth Sound for Worship

So many modern worship songs are now using trance–based synth patches, and Mainstage 3 has some of the best synthesizers plug-ins on the market to get that sound in your rig. Here's how: 

1. Open Mainstage.  click the "+" button to add a new software instrument.

2. In the instrument view, select ES2 synthesizer as your software  synthesizer plugin in your channel strip. 

3. open the ES2 window, and find a sound that you like. 

4. Select the ES2 channel strip, copy, then paste it into the channel strip window.

5. In the oscillator section of the duplicated ES2 channel strip, switch all of the oscillator waveforms to white noise. Adjust the filter cutoff so the sound isn't quite as bright.

6. Play both channel strips with your keyboard. Blend the white noise channel strip in until it sounds beefy, but not overpowering. 

Violà! Instant trance lead. This patch will work great for the lead sound on "This is Amazing Grace", "God's Great Dance Floor", and many others. 

Have questions? Leave a comment below.

10 Tricks to Using Mainstage 3 Live

So you just downloaded Mainstage 3 and all of the additional sounds, hooked up your audio interface, and got your midi controller working with Mainstage. What now? Here's 10 tricks I've learned to use Mainstage 3 live:

1. Test your patches before you go to the show. Make sure they're all roughly the same loudness level.

2. Put together a bunch of stock sounds you like to refer to during the practice or show. Write me, and I'll give you a bunch of my favorites.

3. In a hurry? Use a 1/8th inch audio cable hooked into your mac instead of hauling an audio interface. The sound quality and latency difference live is pretty negligible, in my opinion.

4. Make sure you're running in mono, if you're running a single audio cable out to a DI box. You can change the main output from stereo to mono in the channel strip window.

5. Put a light compressor/limiter on your master output to tame loud and quiet sections.

6. If you have faders or knobs, map one of them to the master expression fader (not the master audio out) to control your volume live. Make sure to move it once before you begin playing, to avoid any sudden jumps in volume on stage.

7. There's a tricky way to add chord charts to a live program. Write me, and I'll send you a step-by-step guide for free.

8. Quit all other programs and restart your computer before taking the stage. This will clear out your memory, and make sure everything runs smoothly live.

9. Take notes during the practice of what worked patch-wise, and what didn't. When you get home, make modifications to your patches using your notes as a reference.

10. When you're done, export all of your patches in folders to your desktop for next time. That way, you can add only the songs you need next set. This works particularly well for cover bands with large repertoires, and worship bands.