BandHelper used in a live setup workflow questions

[coachz]

I'm trying to come up with a good setup for live use and have some ideas but would like your input as I'm a noob with BandHelper.  Thanks in advance for bearing with me.  My questions is.......

During a live show, what is the best way to navigate a Set through Songs, Presets and Recordings please?

I'm not using tempo playback or backing tracks but a song will have multiple presets and/or recordings that I need to trigger manually. 

I want to have footswitch 4 (see below) that will fire off new events as I go.  An event in my world can be multiple presets to switch multple devices and/or an mp3 recording that will play for one shot.  Here is how I'm currently thinking.

Show Example:
--------------------------
The show starts by touching the 1st Song on tablet (send initial presets and play 1st mp3 for 1st song).  Does BandHelper have a count in feature or do I need to add one ?  One way to do count in might be to add count in to all of my recordings and set the "trim to start" to turn them all off until the song is assigned as the first in a set.

As the song progresses I would press Scroll Down to follow the lyrics and also press footswitch 4 to fire the next set of presets and/or play the next mp3 for that song.

I will continue to the end of the song firing events as needed.

Footswitches
   1 Go to Next Song

   2 Scroll down
   3 Scroll up

   4 Next event        (I define an event as having either a preset, an mp3 recording or both)
   5 Previous event

   6 Stop mp3 playback


These pedals appear to be able to send 6 events to BandHelper.
https://store.airturn.com/collections/bluetooth-pedals/products/airturn-bt200s-6
https://store.airturn.com/products/airturn-stomp6

[arlo]

It sounds like your MP3s are short samples, not full backing tracks, is that correct?

[coachz]

correct

[arlo]

Are you asking what remote control actions to assign to your foot switch buttons?

On a side note, you might want to use auto-scrolling instead of manually scrolling your lyrics, since you're going to be busy triggering the MIDI and recording events.

[coachz]

The auto scrolling is definitely an option down the road but I want to make sure that I can do manual scrolling. My question is really about if it's possible to do what I'm asking.   I've read most of the Docs but I don't really understand yet how I would interweave presets and short samples to trigger in a specific order either individually or together as needed for each song all from one switch.  I just don't understand if bandhelper does that and if so how.

[arlo]

Yes, it's possible. To trigger a predefined sequence of MIDI presets or recordings, you would attach them all to a song in the desired order (you can attach the same item multiple times if needed), then map the Send Next MIDI Preset and Send Next Recording actions to your foot switch buttons. The Remote Control tutorial has more details...

http://www.bandhelper.com/tutorials/remote_control.html

...and you can go to the Settings > Remote Control page and scroll through all the actions to see what is controllable.

[coachz]

Thanks for the reply Arlo.  It seems that to have the ability to have a single footswitch fire what i call an event that I would need to have an empty mp3 recording.  I would  have my footswitch for my next event assigned to both actions next midi preset and next recording.  Using the example below would seem to work.

Example song

Intro:  midi preset 1 and recording 1 fired
Verse1:  midi preset 2  and dummy recording fired
Chorus:  midi preset 2 and recording 2 fired........if dummy recording  was not on verse 1 then recording 2 would have fired  on verse 1
Verse 2:  midi preset  2 and recording 3 fired
Outro:  midi preset 3 fired

So during rehearsal if we want to practice the Chorus, is there a way to fire midi preset 2 and recording 3 without triggering the recording in the Intro?

[arlo]

I think you should use one foot switch button for Next MIDI Preset and another foot switch button for Next Recording. Then you wouldn't have to create dummy items for the times you need to send a MIDI preset without playing a recording, or vice-versa.

If you are using a backing track or click track so that your timing and arrangement is precise whenever you play, then an alternative to all the foot switch work is an automation track, where you can record and play back all the MIDI and recording events for each song:

http://www.bandhelper.com/tutorials/automation_tracks.html

If you need to skip around to different parts in a rehearsal, you can use the More Controls layout, which has a separate button for each MIDI preset, and you can customize it to add a separate button for each recording (Buttons > Multiple Recording Buttons). Then you can just call up the items you need by clicking them from the list rather than stepping through in order using the foot switch. That's a good example of why the app supports different layouts for different situations like performance vs. rehearsal.

[coachz]

I hear you Arlo but separate footswitches would be too much tap dancing.  Also we don't play to a click or automation and never will because we like to keep it loose.  I tried the more controls layout and think it is super!   if you get bored feel free to program an object called an event that will let you assign presets, recordings Etc to a single object that can be inserted into a song.    it makes sense to me but then again so do a lot of weird things. I do think your software is pretty awesome and feel like it will do everything I need to do. Now I just need to buy a pedal.