Starting an automation track not at the beginning but with an time offset

[arlo]

The whole thing can only really work if you can tell the automation by (MIDI) command that it has to move to a certain position.

You can do that by sending a MIDI control message to trigger the Seek Automation action. As you said, the resolution is only 1/128 of the duration of the song, but that should be fine in a rehearsal context.

Jumping to a different position in an automation track will not automatically select the lyrics line that the automation track would have selected if it were playing up to that time. I could add that. Meanwhile, you could send a second MIDI message after the Seek Automation message that selects the line of lyrics that would be selected if you had played to that position. Or you can simply jump to a position a little earlier so you catch the previous Select Lyrics Line event.

[garysn]

OK, I can see you're not going to give up 

With a resolution of 1/128 of the song length, this means that I can reach a song position every 2.34 seconds for a song that is 5 minutes long.

That's not really interesting for the beginning of a song, you're right.

Unfortunately, there are also the click track and backing tracks that are triggered and played by GigPerformer.

Let's say I jump to section 'C', which starts exactly at 01:00:000. Then the GigPerformer's position pointer for the click track and the backing tracks will be exactly at this point.

With the 'Seek Automation' command, the best I can get is (25 * 2.34 =) 00:58:500. This means that the BandHelper automation runs 1.5 seconds behind my click- and backing tracks throughout the entire song.

In the lyrics display, this no longer looks really synchronised. Our experience is that with an offset of 300ms the whole thing already looks a bit asynchronous, 1.5 seconds is really too much.

What's more, in the lyrics display we don't just show the lyrics, we also show all the chord changes. Everything has to be pretty synchronised, otherwise no one will want to use this solution. 

[arlo]

And you want to play the recordings from Gig Performer rather than from BandHelper because those are different than the recordings you have set up in BandHelper?

In that case, you're right, you can't jump around in a song and keep Gig Performer's recordings and BandHelper's lyrics selections in sync with sub-second accuracy. I can add a new app control action for that to my wish list.