Worship Musician November 2018 | Page 144

KEYS MODERNIZING YOUR KEYBOARD RIG WITH MAINSTAGE | David Pfaltzgraff In the mid-2000’s Hillsong United single- what MainStage was, but I assumed it was you’re letting MainStage function as the brain handedly rewrote the job description for the something expensive. Then, one day, I learned instead of your keyboard. average worship guitar player as they released that MainStage was an app for Mac computers a series of groundbreaking worship albums that could connect to almost any keyboard, Unfortunately filled with amazing guitar work. As United and that it was only $30! MainStage I had no grasp of this concept. I when I first started using broke new ground, worship guitarists around had cables running between my computer and the world dove headfirst into a new world full my keyboard with no real rhyme, reason, or of effects pedals, amps, and dotted-eight delay understanding. After countless hours and cups as they tried to keep up. In recent years I’ve seen another paradigm shift take place. Where ten years ago there were walls of electric guitars, it’s now just as likely you’ll hear stacks of synth bass, pads, and programming. As a worship leader I remember hearing Hillsong Young & Free’s We Are Young & Free album for the first time in 2013 and knowing immediately that those songs would become staples for my worship teams. As I began to wrestle with how to incorporate them into our song rotations I ran into two problems. First, I didn’t have room in the worship budget to invest in backing tracks, and second, my church’s ‘90s era keyboards were quite lacking in the “cutting-edge synth- pop sounds” department. I felt like I’d run into a technological wall. How could we pull off these amazing songs live without investing thousands of dollars into new Then, one day, I learned that MainStage was an app for Mac computers that could connect to almost any keyboard, and that it was of coffee I stumbled upon the right combination of connections and played my first notes through MainStage. As I continued to explore I learned that MainStage solved many of my issues and frustrations with our older hardware keyboards in elegant ways. If you’re not familiar with MainStage, here are a few of my favorite features that made it a game changer for my worship teams. YOU CAN BUILD YOUR SETLIST IN ADVANCE In MainStage, you’re able to arrange your sounds (in MainStage they’re called ‘patches’) in any order you’d like. Need to swap the order of the first and second song at the last second? That’s as easy as drag-and-drop in MainStage. MAINSTAGE IS DESIGNED FOR LIVE PERFORMANCE MainStage only $30! is entirely focused on live performance, so it includes a lot of built-in tools that make live performance easier. For example, equipment? So, I did what any self-respecting you can set the BPM of any patch in advance 21st century worship leader would do. I turned so when you select it the tempo is dialed-in and to worship leading groups on Facebook for I downloaded MainStage that day and have ready-to-go. Other handy tools like a built-in help. It was in those groups that I discovered never looked back. metronome, the ability to transpose any preset a whole new world of possibilities that changed the game for me and my worship teams. independently, and the freedom to connect to MAINSTAGE 101 literally any combination of keyboard gear make The simplest way to understand MainStage it even easier to nail your live performances. I CAN DO ALL OF THAT FOR $30? is to think of it as the ‘brain’ of your keyboard As I spent time in those worship leading setup. Traditional hardware keyboards have a TOTALLY CUSTOMIZABLE Facebook groups I began to notice talk about built-in brain that generates all of the different, MainStage features a unique “Workspace” something called “MainStage” that people pre-loaded sounds. When you connect your visual onscreen that is completely customizable. were using with their keyboards. I had no idea keyboard to your Mac running MainStage, You can display keyboards, faders, knobs, 144 November 2018 WorshipMusician.com