


A footswitch can be assigned to change patches, and a pedal can be mapped to control volume. Multiple patches can be chained in order and put into sets. Multiple sounds can be combined together to create patches. MainStage’s intended use is for live performance, and happens to have an almost perfect feature set for musical theatre. With that said, Logic has seen occasional use in live productions, most notably at Matilda the Musical. While they do have some overlapping features, Logic is a DAW (digital audio workstation), and it’s intended use is for music production in a controlled studio setting. It’s important to distinguish the difference between MainStage and Logic. Since then, it’s become the leading piece of software for musical theatre keyboard programming. A few years ago, Apple released MainStage as a standalone app. That package was quite expensive and simply out of the price range of many hobbyist musicians. MainStage vs. Logicīefore MainStage was available as an affordable standalone app, it could only be obtained by purchasing Logic Studio.
#MAINSTAGE 3 KEYBOARD SETUP HOW TO#
In this series, we’ll be taking an in-depth look at all the possibilities that MainStage offers, and how to integrate these concepts into your own keyboard programming. Recently, Apple MainStage has become the most popular software solution for keyboard programming. Over the years, keyboard programming has evolved from primitive hardware synthesizers to complex software counterparts with infinite routing capabilities. Most theatergoers have no clue it even exists, yet it’s one of the most important aspects of modern musical theatre productions.

Keyboard programming is definitely on the top ten list of the world’s most misunderstood trades.
