The best $30 you will ever spend!

This application is worth a lot more than $30. Over the years, Apple has purchased quite a few gems like the Halion sampler, the Alchemy synthesizer, and the Redmatica Automated Sampler - all of which are included in MainStage. Just one of these virtual instruments alone used to cost a couple hundred dollars! You could easily spend thousands of dollars on an integrated keyboard workstation like the Kronos or Phantom and get a lot less than you get from this $30 gem. Believe me, I have owned both of those workstation, I know.

So what is MainStage, really? Think of it as Logic without the tracks. Or, think of it as the live version of Logic. You can actually save your channel strip settings in Logic and then import them into MainStage. If you use Logic, knowing this will undoubtedly make you grin from ear to ear because you realize that not only can you take the exact same instruments and effects you used in your Logic session and onto the stage, but you also get to transfer all of the settings, the order of effects, and other parameters, saving you a lot of time.

If you do not use Logic, that’s OK too. Mainstage does not require you to be a Logic user and you don’t even have to have Logic installed. Mainstage will allow you to create ‘concerts’ that are further divided into ‘sets’ and ‘patches.’ This makes Mainstage very flexible and suitable for almost any live performance situation. You could group all your favorite piano sounds, for example, into a set and then use a different set to group all of your favorite synth leads, for example. In this way, you could build a concert that has all of your favorite patches, quickly accessible. You could also use sets as songs, for example. Grouping all of the patches for a certain song within that one set, and so on. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

The power of Mainstage comes from its flexibility. Spend the time getting to know the software and you will be rewarded with unlimited sonic possibilities. You will appreciate how Mainstage intelligently switches between patches, seamlessly transitioning from sound to sound. Mainstage’s layers will open up all sorts of possibilities as well. And you will absolutely fall in love with the Alchemy synthesizer. And this is just the beginning.

With Mainstage, you will get access to the same powerful effects processors, virtual instruments, and channel strips included with Logic Pro X and a few others that are specific to Mainstage. You also get the Redmatica autosampler, which has now been integrated into Mainstage, so you can sample any of your hardware MIDI synths and sound modules painlessly. Additionally, you get the ability to create custom patch lists and beautiful screen control panels whose knobs, sliders, and buttons can be assigned to any controllable parameter of your AUs and VSTs (yes, Mainstage supports VST 2 and 3 instruments and effects) and then mapped to any MIDI message sent by your MIDI controller(s) for total expressive control when perfotming live.

But all of the things described above woudl be worthless if Mainstage was unreliable. Luckily, that is not the case as Mainstage is super stable and rock-solid. However, these is always the possibility of a rogue VST bringing down your Mainstage session, just like it happens in any other DAW. Apple should rethink its approach to plugin handling to prevent this from happening in both Logic and MainStage. Until they do, just avoid using plugins from shady developers and you should be OK.

All in all, Mainstage is an incredible value at $30. Buy it. Get to know it. You will wonder how you did without it.

mrforged about MainStage