Gig Performer 4

A typical mid‑gig view of Gig Performer. The main stompbox‑like controls are built from a range of knobs, buttons and other objects provided in the app, all mapped to plug‑ins running in the background. In this Setlist view, the preconfigured list of songs and song parts can step through variant or even wildly different setups, instantaneously and glitch‑free.

Gig Performer is a live plug‑in platform that’s as configurable as it is crash‑proof.

Modern, powerful laptops running software instruments and effects hold lots of promise for live use. You’ll need the right software for the job, though, if you don’t want the experience to get messy, and that’s where Gig Performer comes in. Since its first release in 2016 it has gained a reputation for both flexibility and crash‑resistant robustness, and it’s one of the very few applications in this relatively niche software area that’s available for both macOS and Windows. What else does it offer, and could it really let you abandon your hardware on stage?

Basics

At its core, Gig Performer is a plug‑in host: it’ll open 64‑bit VST and VST3 plug‑ins in Windows, and also Audio Units on the Mac. Just as much, it’s an environment in which to connect those plug‑ins with the outside world, handling all sorts of signal inputs and outputs. It can use multiple channels of a connected audio interface, and multiple MIDI devices such as controller keyboards, control surfaces, pedalboards and hardware synths. It’s also compatible with the OSC (Open Sound Control) protocol, letting you build custom control surfaces for it in suitably equipped third‑party iOS and Android apps.

Signal flow in the program is displayed and configured with a virtual wiring view. End‑to‑end connections — from audio and MIDI inputs, through instruments and effects, to eventual outputs — are clearly and intuitively displayed, with colour‑coded blocks and virtual, draggable wires connecting them together. The blocks have little dot symbols representing inputs and output ports, and there’s nice flexibility here, with the outputs capable of splitting signals and inputs merging them, when multiple wires are connected. For more complex and ambitious setups, some dedicated utility plug‑ins are provided: MIDI processors, mixers, gain controls, media players and more. Double‑clicking a block opens controls for it in a floating window, ranging in complexity from one or two simple faders to full plug‑in interfaces.

The Wiring view, however, is conceptually only the place where you build your live rigs. For on‑stage use it’s intended you’ll work in the Panels and/or Setlists view. These typically show a simplified front end for the underlying setup, using the familiar visual paradigm of a virtual rack unit. You get to choose the appearance, building control surfaces from a range of virtual knobs, sliders, buttons, switches, labels, LEDs and meters, which are linked to plug‑in parameters, or send other commands. If that sounds quite labour‑intensive, well, yes, it has the potential to be. In practice it’s not, though, because the trick is to expose just those few parameters you’ll really need in the heat of the moment. The resulting chunky, high‑vis ‘large print’ look is potentially then a real advantage on stage.

What lies beneath... The same rackspace as that shown in the fist screen, in its Wiring view, with windows open for one of the bundled virtual instruments and the powerful MIDI In block, which can perform all sorts of processing and filtering, and set up keyboard splits and velocity switches.

Panel controls (known as Widgets) can be manipulated with mouse clicks and drags, but for stage use can be driven by MIDI and OSC messages too, allowing you to tie them to a MIDI keyboard or floor unit in remote‑control fashion. The relationship between a knob, say, and the plug‑in parameter it controls can be complex: it could have its value range reversed, constrained, or scaled in a logarithmic, exponential, stair‑step or other user‑defined relationship. There are also facilities for handling hardware controllers with both standard knobs/pots and endless encoders using several different value‑increment schemes.

We’re nearly there with Gig Performer’s core concepts, but the last few are particularly interesting for performing musicians. First, any virtual rack design, and the concoction of plug‑ins behind it, is called a Rackspace. Many of these, dozens if necessary, can be loaded at one time into a single Gig Performer ‘.gig’ file, and while only one Rackspace is active at a time, its neighbours stay in a state of readiness. That means Gig Performer can do what various stage keyboard manufacturers call ‘seamless’ or smooth sound transitions — here it’s known as Patch Persist — so that currently sounding virtual instrument notes (or indeed delay or reverb effect tails) are not cut off when you switch to another Rackspace, which itself will load without a delay or any audible glitches. This gives the possibility of associating different (and perhaps wildly different) Rackspaces with different songs in a set, and moving instantly between them.

An associated feature, Variations, lets you save different settings for a single Rackspace, like automation snapshots. This comes into its own when you have a single Rackspace that does and has all you need (think guitar pedalboard for example) and you only need to bypass some plug‑ins or tweak settings for different parts of a song.

Following logically on from these, there’s Setlists. In another dedicated view mode, you’re able to formally build a sequential list of the musical numbers (or ‘songs’ in Gig Performer parlance) you’re intending to perform in a live set, and break them down into sections (Intro, Verse, Chorus, and so on) if you like. Each of those...