DJ’s regularly use cross faders to adjust the volume of two sound sources simultaneously (i.e. fade out one track while fading in another track). There are several really useful ways to use a crossfader as a keyboardist- probably my favorite is adjusting the volume balance between two channel strips (a piano and a pad, for instance). Here’s how to do it: 

I realized that I've never shared which MainStage blogs were the most read of all time. Here’s the results, according to the numbers: 

MainStage stores a ton of samples in memory during a set, and up until a few month’s ago it was impossible to find out which patches were the memory hogs. Along came MainStage 3.2, and a bunch of small tweaks including the ability to view memory usage per patch. Here’s how: 

If you’ve read this blog at all, you know I love Apple's MainStage live performance program. But I’ve got to confess: I’ve been seeing other keyboards. Let me explain.

Sometimes things go colossally wrong live, and you need to cut all sound coming from MainStage. Before you hit the command-Q, consider using MainStage’s panic button. Here’s how: 

I recently had several of you write me about how to mute midi messages from controller keyboards. While there’s not a single way to do this quickly in MainStage, there is a workaround that accomplishes the same goal. Here’s how to do it: 

I received this question from one of my readers this week:

Hi Eric,

I use a very similar live setup to yours using 3 controllers - one of them being a Nord Electro 3. I use that NE3 for its Native Organ Sounds, but would love to have Mainstage reach out and change the patches for me using the midi program change function in Mainstage - have you had any luck having mainstage send midi messages to change the patches on your Nord?

-Paul

One of the handy features of MainStage is its ability to split and layer dozens of sounds across your keyboard. For instance, you could put a synth bass in the bottom half of the keyboard, and a piano sound layered with a pad in the right. Here’s how to create your first keyboard split: 

MainStage has a massive treasure trove of very musical, usable patches. Unfortunately, shifting through tens of thousands of patches for the right sound can be daunting. Here's a quick way of locating the file you're looking for quickly:

I received this email from a blog reader this week:

Hey Eric,

I want to copy a patch -- Delta Phase Pad, for example, into a new concert that I've made for a performance set. I can copy the patch and paste it into the new concert of course, and then copy and paste the control strip as well, but it stubbornly sounds quite different after copying and pasting.

Can you shed any light on what I'm doing wrong, or not doing?