Surprised how quickly this became the center of our live performance.

I bought this when I bought Logic Pro X just because the other keyboardist in my band was using it, I really didn’t expect to use it much but it immediately became to workstation for our live performances. I previously used Ableton Live for performances and Logic Pro 9 for recording. The flexibility and powerful features got my to try it out, but it’s vastly superior stability over Ableton Live 9 is what made this my go-to app for live music performance. I immediately fell in love with the MIDI FX in Logic Pro and was very happy to see the same feature in Mainstage.

The ability to customize my screen was surprisingly powerful, and being able to have tracks at the concert, set, and patch levels is fantastic. I love that I don’t have to touch my laptop at all, I can just switch songs with the appropriate buttons on my MIDI controller. Also, by connecting up to the other keyboardist’s MIDI via the networking features in Audio MIDI Setup, I am able to see what keys key is pressing on his keyboard in real-time… which is VERY important considering we do a lot of improvisational pieces. Previously I had to create an implant for my Launchpad to display this information.

I am a little disappointed that I haven’t been able to get my Launchpad to light up directly and control Mainstage, but I happen to be developing software to build custom javascript implants for the launchpad, so I’ve been able to do what I want to do using that software. I’m so inspired by Mainstage that I may make a branch of my software specifically geared toward Mainstage/Launchpad integration.

This is really amazing work.

JMitting about MainStage