r/NeuralDSP

Something I noticed about how I play shows: during a gig, a surprising part of my head isn't on playing. It's on my feet. Next song, which Performance? Chorus coming, slot 3 or 4? Was the delay already on? Even with only a handful of sounds, that's a small decision every minute or so, for two hours.

Most of the time it works. But my mistakes on stage were mostly wrong sounds, or losing focus on playing because I had to remember which switch to step on next.

I tried tools like Camelot and Gig Performer for this. They're great tools, but they do far more than I needed, and setting up my setlists and sounds always felt like a hack, using them in a way they're not really meant for.

So the idea: what if I decide all of that once, at home, and on stage I only ever have to think "next"?

I built a small macOS and iPadOS tool for this. Every song in the setlist gets its sounds in the order I play them.

It builds up in four simple layers. A Sound is just a name and the program change it sends, like "Crunch" or "Lead with delay". You set it up once and reuse it in as many songs as you like. A Song is a list of those Sounds in the order you play them, and the same Sound can come up more than once (Clean, Crunch, Clean, Lead). A Setlist is your Songs in order, plus breaks if you want them. At the Gig, the app turns the whole Setlist into one long chain of Sounds, and the footswitch just walks along it, one step at a time.

On the floor there's just a two-button MIDI switch: forward, and back for when I step too early. The app sends the program changes to the Kemper / QC / Fractal / Helix or any devices that can switch sounds via PC / CC messages and runs straight through the set. If the band changes the setlist or calls something spontaneous, I reorder it or jump to that song and keep stepping.

I'm curious how others handle this. Do you have a system, or is it just muscle memory by now? And would something like this be useful to you, or am I solving a problem only I have?

Basically, i cant get midi to work for the multivoicer effect. Can anyone help me please. ive checked that midi input was enabled