MS2 and such

Ragtime went well!  I was pleased with the music side of things, both pit-wise (horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, bass, drums, flute, clarinet and two keyboards) and Mainstage2-wise (MS2 from now on). MS2 worked beautifully.

The details I had to figure out: I used a normal sustain pedal as a foot switch (since the main foot switches I've seen advertised were unnecessary for my purposes).  This discussion explains the trick to doing that on MS2:  1)in Layout mode, select the "next Patch" button and 2) in Edit mode, set your controller to just respond to 64 - 127 (so it switches one patch at a time, not two).

Sound patches on MS2 are good, but their volume levels needed to be tweaked.  The harp and accordion patches, for example, were really loud compared to the piano patch.  Rather than depend on the expression pedal to keep sound levels maintained,  I went into their specific patch channels and lowered their overall volume to a comparable level.


Next up: Once Upon a Mattress and By Jeeves