Hi,

I currently use a ES8 as my main gigging keyboard. One of the most important benefits to me is that I can program 16 sounds to the USR bank buttons and access any of those instantly.

However, for a number of reasons, mainly based on the fact that I simply can’t move the thing around on its own, I’m considering moving to a ES Rack and a MIDI Controller keyboard.

So, questions:

1. If you use an ES rack on stage, what’s the best way of quickly switching between voices? Also on one song I have to very quickly switch to a Master patch from Voice, and then back again. Is that possible?

2. Would MIDI pedalboards be helpful? For example, one of the other members in the band has a Digitech Control 8. Could that be used to allocate voices to individual pedals, or would the ES Rack just see it as an up/down patch control?

Any advice gratefully received, the quicker the better! We’re planning a foreign trip in about a month and need to get it sorted by then :-)

Thanks!

I use both an FCB1010 Foot Controller and a M-Audio KSP88 Keyboard with LOTS of controllers (Faders, Pots, Buttons...) They both work quite well.

About the only thing they WON’T do is send any SysEx strings of any useful length…

A foot controller might be your best bet since you’re looking for compact solutions.

My “rig” now consists of a Motif-Rack ES, exclusively.

I change patches quickly using a Digitech PMC-10. Probably any similar type of pedal board will do. The nice feature about the PMC-10 is that I can use 12-character alpha-numeric strings to name the patches with names that make sense.
I did run into trouble switching between Performance patches to Voice patches and back again. If you are in Voice mode and stay in Voice mode, things work pretty seemlessly. If you then try to go to Performance mode, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I found that it takes a little time for the Motif-Rack ES to process switching to Performance mode before it can process a Program Change command. I got around this problem by adding a bunch of dummy Note Off commands before sending the Program Change command. Now everything works fine.