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GIG PERFORMER® FEATURES

Effortlessly Control Your Sounds And Manage Your Setlists

  • Easily design your sounds by connecting plugin blocks with wires
  • Take total control of your sounds and performance using MIDI mappable widgets
  • Smoothly switch to any backline gear using the Rig Manager
  • Automate your live performance using versatile Timeline Actions
  • Join the elite of top notch musicians that Own The Stage every day
  • Mac and Windows compatible
Gig Performer Audio Plugin Host for macOS and Windows

Audio/MIDI Playback and Control

Streaming Audio File Player

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Load thousands of songs into your Gig files without depleting RAM resources, removing the ceiling on backing tracks available during a show.

Seamlessly integrate thousands of backing tracks into your gig files while preserving your precious RAM resources. The Streaming Audio File Player plugin, which supports multiple audio formats including MP3, WAV, OGG, and FLAC, lets you switch instantly from one song to another as needed, and, of course, it supports host automation for easy control via Gig Performer widgets.

This new Player offers remarkable playback and intuitive control while your tracks are running.

Timeline and Actions

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Add markers on your audio track to effortlessly trigger actions as your song plays back, letting you focus on playing, not software control.

The Streaming Audio File Player allows you to insert markers in song tracks and add actions triggered during audio playback as each marker is reached.

New to Gig Performer? You can easily take advantage of numerous actions to control widgets, set captions, send out MIDI events and switch rackspaces or song parts. Advanced users can leverage Gig Performer’s proprietary GPScript programming language to trigger custom actions and functionality developed by 3rd parties using Gig Performer’s SDK.

MIDI Finger Tap

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Stay in perfect tempo as you step through a MIDI file with finger taps, freeing you from the constraints of a metronome.

MIDI Finger Tap, previously available only by using GPScript, is now easily accessible via the MIDI File Player plugin. With this feature, you can playback MIDI files with multiple tracks sequentially by simply tapping a key (or even a foot pedal) to trigger the next note or chord. Each time you tap, the Player will step by a quarter or eighth note (or any duration chosen), and the MIDI events in that range will be triggered.
This keeps your performance in sync with the rest of the band while enjoying freedom from click tracks. With one hand liberated, you are then free to embellish melodies or play other essential parts. See this feature in action in this video.

MIDI File Player

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Load up to 128 standard MIDI files into the MIDI File Player Plugin. Enable or mute individual tracks. Route different tracks to different plugins for the best possible sound. Use Tap Tempo to control playback speed or let the song control Gig Performer’s global BPM.

Widget and UI Management

Plugin Manager

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Organize plugins with custom tags and keywords, to improve workflow and efficiency.

Having dozens, if not hundreds, of plugins at your disposal can open new avenues of creativity in performance. Still, these tools can easily become a cluttered mess if not managed properly. Gig Performer 4.7 provides improved plugin management, enabling keyword tagging for individual plugins and a filtering mechanism to find them instantly. Plugin collections, i.e., those used routinely in setups, can be added as “favorites,” which can then be recalled to quickly recreate sections of a system to streamline workflow with greater efficiency and organization.

Radio Groups

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Make mutually exclusive parameter switching simple with Radio buttons.

A feature often requested and now realized in Gig Performer 4.7 is radio groups, which makes it easy to define mutually exclusive parameters such as the Fast-Off-Slow choices for the well-known Leslie rotary sound.

You can assign a radio group number to a collection of buttons and then click any button to turn it on while automatically turning off other buttons in the same radio group. Up to 99 radio button groups can be deployed. See this feature in action in this video.

Locked Widgets

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Guard against accidental changes while maintaining MIDI control, eliminating surprise sound changes during live performance.

Gig Performer’s locked widgets feature prevents your widgets from being inadvertently altered by mouse clicks while allowing control via your MIDI device, bringing you peace of mind during preparation, rehearsal and performance. See this feature in action in this video.

Widget Scaling

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Dive into expanded visual creativity with a range of new knob, fader, and slider styles, elevating your front panel design.

With Gig Performer’s new widgets, prepare to take your visual creativity to the next level. Now included is an expanded range of knob, fader, and slider styles, each destined to elevate front panel design. Let your imagination run wild as you design interfaces as captivating as your music.

Custom Font Support

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Enhance readability and visual appeal by integrating your favorite fonts into Gig Performer, making your workspace truly yours.

Gig Performer’s custom font support allows you to incorporate your favorite fonts to enhance readability and visual appeal, design front panels that resonate with their unique style, imitate the design of your favorite hardware tools, or create a look that quickly grabs your attention. Every glance at your workspace provides inspiration and a personal touch to your live performance experience. See this feature in action in this video.

System Controls

Show Plugins in Use

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Instantly visualize which plugins your gig files rely on, ensuring seamless compatibility and effortless updates.

Quickly review your gig file’s plugin lineup, regardless of its scale, with the new Plugins In Use feature. You can easily view and export plugin names and formats for quick identification and seamlessly transition from old VSTs to upgraded alternatives with pinpoint accuracy. This enables you to have a clear view of plugin formats and to choose and monitor your tools in a highly informed manner, which is particularly important when working cross-platform.

Multiple Tap Tempo Algorithms

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Achieve the right tempo every time you tap with multiple algorithms that fit your style of music and your time feel.

With new Multiple Tap Tempo algorithms, you can simply tap a key to achieve the perfect tempo, no matter the genre of music or personal expression of time. These algorithms work to align the system tempo or to shift effects, ensuring precision each time the tempo is adjusted and providing the ultimate companions for achieving correct tempos quickly.

Touch-Friendly Input

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A new large keypad makes it easier to enter values, complete with immediate validation.

Any entry field can be changed by either dragging your mouse (or finger) up or down, or by using the large popup touchpad where you can just tap on the squares to enter a value. The large popup keypad also does validation so you can’t enter an invalid value. You can also just tap the BPM field to pop up a larger view where you can quickly change tempo, tranpose, trigger Tap Tempo and enable Ableton Link, the last allowing you to synchronize Gig Performer with any other application that also supports Ableton Link.

System Actions

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Control Gig Performer parameters effortlessly using widgets or MIDI mapping. Manage global tempo, display rackspace names on your front panels, send program changes, and more. Explore the full list of available system actions for detailed customization.

Advanced MIDI Processing

MIDI In Blocks

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Effortlessly receive MIDI from external devices, allowing precise control over MIDI flow in your setup. Manage, block, and re-route MIDI channels with ease. Create custom velocity curve, and keyboard splits. For more information, check out this Backstage with Gig Performer episode.

MIDI Channel Constrainer

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Adjust MIDI channels seamlessly at any point in the MIDI signal flow. Easily send one channel of incoming MIDI to multiple channels within Gig Performer, particularly useful for plugins with different sounds on different channels. Check out this video for more info.

MIDI Filter

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Block or remap incoming MIDI messages ensuring the correct data passes through to devices.

Visual and Design Features

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Zoomable Wiring View

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Gig Performer’s new wiring view lets you layout your plugins neatly regardless of the size of your screen. Use a large virtual view, zoom in or out and scoll horizontally or vertically to position your plugins wherever you need them without squashing them together.

Gig Performer 4 provides a virtual view allowing you to spread out your blocks and connections to make them easier to see and manage, even if you have a very small screen. You can zoom in or out and you can use the Auto-Fit option to position your blocks to fit in the available space.

Scaling Curves

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Create keyboard velocity curves and widget scaling curves. Choose from predefined shapes or draw your own. Copy them or save them for later reuse.

Scaling curves allow you to control the shape of the output of a widget or convert an incoming note velocity to a new velocity. Various predefined curves are available and they can be tweaked as necessary. You can also just draw your own curve as well to achieve the effect you require.

Probabilistic Sound Designer

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Create completely new sounds or tweak existing ones using controlled randomization of selected parameters of any plugin.

Parameters you select in an open plugin are captured into the Probabilistic Sound Designer dialog window. When you click Randomize, you’re only adjusting those selected parameters. Each entry in the PSD dialog has a curve but unlike widgets where the curve controls scaling, in the PSD the curves are used to define the probability of particular values being selected. Make sure the filter cutoff never gets too slow so as to block all sound. Perhaps adjust the max range of the VCA attack parameter so that the sound doesn’t have too much delay. Constrain the octave ranges of the oscillators, perhaps ensuring that 1/3rd of the time we select 8′ and 2/3rds of the time we select 4′. The possibilities are endless.

Global Rackspace

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Share your most used effects globally and use them from all your rackspaces. Keep your looper or backing tracks running while you change other sounds on the fly. The Global Rackspace™ can pass audio in both directions. Preprocess all incoming audio before adding local effects. Create instruments that are always available.

The Global Rackspace can receive audio from whatever rackspace is currently active. Instead of inserting effects in every rackspace, simply insert them once in the Global Rackspace and all your local rackspaces will have access to them. The Global Rackspace can also send audio to the currently active rackspace. So you can insert a looper that receives audio directly from your guitar (say) and then send the looped audio to different effects in different rackspaces. If a particular instrument such as a piano or organ is needed everywhere (or almost everywhere), put it in the Global Rackspace.

Favorites and Presets

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Select multiple interconnected plugins and save as a named favorite for easy reuse. Favorites automatically appear in plugin insertion menus or you can simply drop them into Gig Performer from a folder. Saved plugin presets also appear in popup menus and selecting a preset will automatically insert the required plugin.

Create a sound by placing and interconnecting your desired plugins, such as a synth, some effects and perhaps a mixer. Select them all and then save the selection as a named favorite. The favorite will subsequently show up in all plugin insert menus, making it easy for you to recreate that configuration whenever you need it again. This feature is also very powerful for creating your needed sounds on your studio computer and then transferring them to your touring laptop.

Visual Workflow

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Forget about channel strips, busses, auxes and sends. Just route audio from one plugin to another by connecting them together with wires. Functionality like inserts, sends and side-chaining become trivial.

Performance

Instant Switching

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Gig Performer’s revolutionary rackspace mechanism allows for instant and glitch free sound switching, even in a middle of a beat.

Input Muting and Output Fading

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Control the input muting time and output fade time independently

Rather than a single audio length tail, Gig Performer 4 gives you the ability to control input muting and output fading separately. Input muting controls how much time it takes for audio input to be silenced when you leave the rackspace. Output fading controls how much time will be taken for audio to fade out when you leave the rackspace.

Adjust Channel Count Per Plugin

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Restrict the number of audio ports displayed on each plugin independently.

Some plugins support a large number of outputs and they depend on the traditional channel strip to control how many ports should be available.   When you only need a stereo pair, it is convenient not to have a large horizontal block. In Gig Performer, the number of available ports  is controlled by the channel count override, which can be applied to individual plugins and will be remembered when the gigfile is reloaded or if the plugin is saved as a favorite.

MIDI Message Helper

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A new intelligent dialog makes it easy to edit or change previously learned MIDI messages. Easily define multiple MIDI messages to be sent out through MIDI Out blocks.

Select MIDI devices by name. Choose the MIDI message type and adjust the appropriate parameters for the specific type.

Faster Plugin Finder

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Find the plugin you need using multiple partial search strings.

Instead of searching through menus of perhaps hundreds of plugins (you know who you are!), the Quick Plugin Finder makes it easy to find the plugin you need by simply typing partial strings. For example, as shown here, to find the Modartt Pianoteq 7 plugins, it’s enough to type pia mod 7 (in any order, by the way)  to restrict the list of available plugins to those matching your query. The Quick Plugin Finder also knows about manufacturers, presets and favorites.

Predictive Loading

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Gig Performer’s Predictive Loading™ feature, which slims resource demands by loading only the next few rackspaces that will be needed, can now be applied at the song level. All parts of a song are loaded into memory when the song is selected for glitchless, instant switching. At the same time, Predictive Loading limits CPU and memory requirements.

Predictive Loading is an advanced feature that reduces your RAM and CPU resources by only loading rackspaces (or songs) as needed.

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Bi-Directional MIDI Control & Sysex Support

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Control surface support has been strengthened with the addition of bidirectional MIDI control of widgets on Gig Performer rack panels, and the program now allows programming and transmitting sysex (MIDI System Exclusive) messages, commonly used with hardware synthesizers.

Built-in Audio/MIDI Recorder

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Record all incoming audio inputs and outputs easily for later post processing in a DAW. Saved wave files are automatically timestamped – perfect for touring bands. All incoming MIDI data can be saved to a Standard MIDI File, complete with tempo changes.

Low CPU Usage

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We’ve spent countless hours making sure that Gig Performer uses as few CPU cycles as possible.

Multiple Instances Support

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Run multiple instances of Gig Performer simultaneously to support multiple players on one machine or organize setups by function. Enjoy the flexibility to tailor your configurations based on your needs. Check out this article for more detailed information.

Synchronized Instances Switching

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Keep multiple open instances in perfect sync, ensuring seamless transitions as you change songs or rackspaces in one instance of Gig Performer, with the others automatically following along.

Auto Sampler

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Effortlessly capture CPU-intensive synth sounds and play them on your preferred sampler, reducing CPU usage and creating new sound possibilities.

The Auto Sampler allows you to create a set of samples from your plugins that, if used together, would demand too much CPU to be practical for live performance. Alternatively, you can sample sounds from your external synths, eliminating the need to bring them to a show.

The image illustrates how we simultaneously create samples from three sources—two VST plugins, each followed by effects, and an external synthesizer. You can play the sounds manually from your keyboard to create the desired mix and then run the Auto Sampler to capture the results for individual notes. The Auto Sampler can also capture multiple velocities if desired. See this feature in action in this video.

Compatibility and Integration

Cross Platform (VST, VST3, AU)

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Gig Performer runs on macOS and Windows computers. Gig Performer project files (“gig files”) can be opened on both platforms. Gig Performer supports VST, VST3 and AU (macOS only) audio plugins.

Chord Pro Support

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Gig Performer adds support for the Chord Pro lead sheet format. This allows Chord Pro documents to be created, edited, and linked to songs in a setlist so a chords-and-lyrics chart can be opened when a song is selected.

Ableton Link

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Synchronize Gig Performer’s tempo with applications running on other connected computers or tablets.

Powerful MIDI & OSC Support

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Gig Performer’s unparalleled processing capabilities and advanced implementation allows you to create very sophisticated live setups. You can easily filter, remap, MIDI messages, send them out to external hardware devices and many more. Combined with OSC, Gig Performer is effortlessly integrated with applications such as TouchOSC and Song Master.

Rig Manager

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Our Rig Manager allows you to move between your home and studio setup with a single click

Extensions & the SDK

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Extensions are basically libraries (.dll files on Windows and .dylib files on macOS) independently developed that Gig Performer can load so as to provide additional functionality, i.e., additional support for a hardware device, some new GUI functionality or even additional GPScript functions. For the first, an extension would make your hardware device usable directly from within Gig Performer as if it was already built-in.

Gig Performer 4 exposes an API (application programming interface) that allows third-party developers to create libraries that can be used to interface with Gig Performer. The primary purpose of the API is to enable the creation of libraries to manage control surfaces and other hardware that one might want to use with Gig Performer but it is also possible to create 3rd party GUI tools as well.

Extensions are developed using Gig Performer’s SDK (software development kit) that is freely available under the GPL-3.0 license and can be downloaded from GitHub. Visit that link to learn more about SDK and fundamentals.

Advanced Features

Scriptlets

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Scriptlets are plugins created with GP Script. They are useful for creating more sophisticated MIDI processing tools.

Scriptlets make creating custom MIDI processors easy. You don’t have to be a programmer to use them – you can just download scriptlets from our ever-growing collection on our website and drop them right into your rackspaces to use them. Use scriptlets for simple operations such as turning your single notes into chords, modifying, duplicating or converting one kind of message into another, automatic chord latching (AutoSustain), threshold detection, sysex manipulation… imagination is the limit.

Audio Mixer/Router

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Gig Performer’s Audio Mixer is a multi-channel gain control plugin that provides you with flexible audio mixing and routing, allowing for quickly switching from one effect to another.

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Advanced MIDI Functions

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Associate specific MIDI devices with particular plugins easily and visually. Use transpose, channel mapping, MIDI out settings and more.

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GPScript Language

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A powerful, proprietary scripting language allows you to customize your rig’s behaviour to the max.

Local GP Port

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Unlock advanced MIDI functions with a dedicated virtual MIDI port within Gig Performer. Rechannelize incoming notes, create MIDI messages that appear to come from external devices but originate in Gig Performer, and more.