In this article, you will learn about Gig Performer Essentials, a new product created by Deskew Technologies dedicated to musicians who want a reliable, powerful, and easy-to-use live performance environment without the complexity or cost of advanced features they’re unlikely to need.
.
.
Gig Performer Essentials includes all the core functionality that makes Gig Performer a favorite among professionals—such as seamless plugin hosting, real-time control, setlist management, and rock-solid performance stability—while streamlining the experience to focus on what truly matters on stage.
Whether you’re a keyboardist, guitarist, or vocalist, Gig Performer Essentials delivers everything you need to perform with confidence, without the distractions of features designed for more specialized or technical workflows. Gig Performer Essentials is for solo performers, duos, backing track users, amateur and professional musicians that want to play live with VSTs and hardware synths, perhaps using backing tracks, and managing their setlists.
Download a 14-day free trial here: DOWNLOAD.
.
.
Here are the top 15 features of Gig Performer Essentials.
Some of the features included in Gig Performer Essentials.
.
.
Tweak your sounds as much as you like, and make adjustments to your sounds in real time.
.
Use your favorite plugins to create global effects – e.g., EQ, a common reverb, delay, or chorus, that can be used in multiple songs.
Keep your most commonly used effects and sounds in the Global rackspace, creating a cohesive sound across your whole performance.
.
The Streaming Audio File Player plugin lets you manage and play any of thousands of songs without using significant RAM.
The Streaming Audio Player plugin streams all loaded audio files from a disk.
.
The Timeline feature in the Streaming Audio File Player lets you trigger actions as your backing track plays. Specify actions at specific points in the song to adjust sounds (clean, distorted, reverb changes, etc.) as you play, change split points on the fly, adjust your keyboard transpose among many other possibilities.
Automatically adjust your sounds as a backing track is playing.
.
Send MIDI messages to external hardware to change presets or adjust parameters.
Cakewalk-style INS files are available to automatically select the correct program change message to be sent out to an external device.
.
The Audio File Player plugin allows you to load and play up to eight audio files simultaneously.
Audio File Player with stems loaded.
.
Trigger MIDI sequences within Gig Performer and route tracks to individual plugins for the best possible sound quality.
You can load up to 128 standard MIDI files into the MIDI File Player plugin, enable or mute individual tracks, route different tracks to different plugins, and much more.
.
.
Transpose, block messages, remap messages or MIDI channels using Gig Performer Essentials’ included plugins.
In this example, the MIDI Channel Constrainer plugin blocks remap all MIDI channels to channel 1.
.
Extend your performance capabilities with the ability to play complex chords with a single finger.
For example, you can simultaneously perform bass, strings and choir, each part using different chords in different inversions, all with one finger, thus freeing up your other hand to perform a dedicated piano part. Chord Maker features MIDI learn capabilities to speed up your workflow when you map notes to chords.
.
.
The built-in Song Lyrics/Chords Editor allows you to create and edit lyrics and chords.
The ChordPro lead sheet file format is also supported.
You can automatically scroll the lyrics or lead sheets as you move through the parts of a song.
.
.
The Gig Performer scaling mechanism allows you to shape the response of MIDI controllers to better match your playing style, ensuring a more natural and expressive performance.
Example of a step curve and a curve generated using the Curve Designer tool.
.
Audio Mixers allow multiple audio sources to be combined, adjusted, and routed within Gig Performer.
.
You can control multiple plugin parameters with a same physical knob of your MIDI controller each with its own scaling curve.
Simply group the parameters you want to adjust and fine-tune their changes per your liking.
.
The Wiring Activity feature allows you to easily review the audio levels and MIDI activity.
Selecting Simple will allow the color of audio wires to change from dark blue to lighter nuances or blue, and MIDI wires light up to show MIDI activity. This feature is useful not only for clear audio and MIDI signal overview, but also for troubleshooting.
.
.
The last, but not least feature that we want to highlight here, Gig Performer Essentials comes with some third-party plugins and templates to get you started as soon as possible.
Templates and some plugins used in Gig Performer Essentials: HanonB70 and special version of Overloud TH-U.
Needless to say, you can also use these plugins to build your own sounds. As the matter of fact, one of these sounds is used by the well-known guitarist Igor Paspalj for his sound Full Throttle.
There are many more features included, such as the excellent Plugin Manager with the custom keywords feature, a metronome, a tuner, the System Actions block, Patch Persist, and multiple tap tempo algorithms.
Download a 14-day free trial of Gig Performer Essentials: DOWNLOAD.
In this video, singer, keytar player, and Gig Performer community member Marty Wade introduces Gig Performer Essentials:
.
.
Here are some frequently asked questions about Gig Performer Essentials.
Yes. There is a 14-day free trial of Gig Performer Essentials. Download it here.
If you choose to upgrade:
a) Within three months after your purchase, you will receive full credit towards the upgrade (you pay only the difference).
b) after first three months after your purchase, the upgrade price will be slightly higher.
To upgrade, please click here.
No, there are no upgrade paths or discounts available from Gig Performer 4 to Gig Performer Essentials.
Our academic discount applies to the full version of Gig Performer only.
Yes. To claim your discount, please create a new support ticket here and we will create a 10% coupon for you.
Yes. As our customer, you are entitled to a 10% discount from our partners. To claim your discount, please go to our Partner page, choose the desired product and then click on the Get my discount button.
You can activate 5 different computers. There is no platform restriction. For example, with the same Gig Performer license, you can activate 2 Windows computers and 3 macOS computers.
.
We hope that you will like Gig Performer Essentials! Equipped with common features needed for live performance, rock-solid reliability and competitive price, getting Gig Performer Essentials is a no-brainer.
Share this article to support Gig Performer Essentials and spread the word!
Own The Stage® with Gig Performer®
Nemanja Pudar
.
1. How To Play Your Plugins Live (YouTube)
2. Global rackspace resources (community compilation)
3. Streaming Audio File Player (YouTube)
4. Timeline and Actions (YouTube)
5. How to send Program Change messages out to hardware devices and other applications (blog article)
6. Gig Performer and Backing Track Users (blog article)
7. How to improve the sound quality of instruments in your MIDI files (blog article)
8. The MIDI Channel Constrainer (blog article)
9. How to use the Chord Maker (YouTube)
10. How to use ChordPro files (blog article)
11. What are Scaling Curves and how to use them (blog article)
12. Audio Mixer applications (user manual)
13. Widget Link groups and Radio Button groups
14. Why a graphic interface is superior to the channel strip model (blog article)
15. How to optimize your workflow using bundled templates (live stream)