How do you use your mastermind?

tandrewnichols

tandrewnichols

Well-Known Member
I browsed a bit to see if there was an existing thread for something like this. I'm looking for feedback from other members on how you use your mastermind because I'm in the process of changing some things and kind of . . . uncertain on some approaches. I'll try to summarize what I have now and what I'm going for, but I really want to hear what other cool things people are doing with their pages and presets.

So first, I play at church and at home (and do a bit of recording). Currently, I have Presets on page 1 and Loops on page 2, followed by roughly individual pages for each MIDI device (some are combined because there aren't that many MIDI things to do with that pedal). Pros: organized and relatively easy to find stuff. Cons: similar functions (like device presets) aren't grouped together, so I spend a lot of time moving between pages.

I'm thinking about moving to something more like:

Page 1: Presets
Page 2: Loops
Page 3/4/5: Device preset +/- (plus other common and related actions like engage/bypass and for certain devices "save current preset"). I think this might make exploring combinations of sounds easier.
Pages 6 etc.: Other midi stuff, but not grouped by pedal, but rather by use. So a couple pages that could be used as landing pages for presets, so I can, for example, toggle the A and B sides of the Synesthesia, or maybe increase the Golden Boy gain cycle. And then other pages more for sound exploration during non-live settings, like cycling Iridium amps and cabs. Two possible downsides: 1) maybe too many "live change" buttons to go on one page, so then I have to think about how to group them and maybe end up in a situation where a single preset can easily toggle Synesthesia, but not drive. 2) I'm a little nervous about using alternate pages for presets because it doesn't seem obvious what buttons to replace. Like what if the preset you're customizing is preset 3 on one song but preset 4 on another? You might replace a button you need on one song because of the way the presets are organized. So I considered just using Preset Previous, Preset +, and Preset - on these pages, but then I'm worried I'll forget that I'm on a special page and I'll forget to go back to the main presets page or I'll hit the wrong button and throw on some massive drive in a really quiet section.

Things I'm going for:
1. Flexibility with presets. The Synesthesia only has 32 presets, but it has like 35 engines, so if you use different combinations of effects you run out of real estate quickly. Like right now I have an octave up preset and a separate octave down, because I don't have an easy way to kick them on and off. Also sometimes, I've got Golden Boy gain cycle at 1 and suddenly it doesn't seem like enough (or at 2 and it seems like too much), so I'd like to be able to toggle those on the fly.
2. Ease of experimentation and discovering new sounds. I think the device preset pages probably accomplishes this.

Questions for others:
1. Does anyone use the "Show Page" feature on presets to load an alternate page when presets are engaged? If so, how do you use those pages and do you like this approach? Do you ever forget and then hit a very wrong button?
2. How do you organize buttons for midi devices?
3. What's the coolest thing you've done with your setup? For me, I set up an IA Cycle button for the Golden Boy Gain Cycle stages, so I can change the gain stage quickly (except as mentioned before, those buttons aren't currently easily accessible).
 
I was thinking of posting something similar along the lines of "how do you use yours?". I think I have a number of personal answers to this, but my new board is only in prototype status (although all programming is pretty much finished). I'm awaiting the actual board/case arriving some point this week. When it's done and built I'll probably do a YouTube video on how I use it. So probably makes a lot more sense I can "show you" then. So I'll pin this post as I'm interested in what others do, and at some point in future I'll post a vid.

It'll probably be like a simplified version of what I was doing on my old non-RJM controllers, with less things to control and less buttons available. So if you're aching for something inspirational using midi pedals, but with the wrong controllers in the meantime, then have a look on my Piplodocus Youtube channel. But there'll be a far better PBC one in time.
 
I'm relatively new to using a PBC/6X, but so far I'm primarily using it in two ways - in its "default" mode that's setup in a similar way to yours with presets on the first page, then loops in the 2nd and 3rd. I mainly use this when composing or in a jam scenario so I can sculpt sounds easily using only a few presets as a starting point then living mostly in loop pages to fine tune. Otherwise I'll use it in setlist mode where all the presets are already decided for songs I'm playing through with a band.

I only have one midi device on my board at the moment, a Strymon El Capistan. I'm still tinkering a bit with how I want to control it with the PBC/6X but hopefully this somewhat answers questions 1 and 2: On one of my loop pages I have a button that does not enable a loop but rather uses "Show Page" to take me to a dedicated page for the Capistan where I can turn it on/off as well as choose specific presets or tap tempo. The downside of it is it'll take a few more button presses to get to just enabling/disabling the Capistan. I've tried getting it to work such that when I hit "Show Page" function it also enables/disables the capistan but it hasn't quite worked that out yet.
 
I have something close to your setup, and have similar goals with my configuration, but a couple of differences.

I typically keep my PBC in setlist mode, because when I play it’s almost always to a planned setlist. My next pages are loops and switches, then I have a page for my drives and POG (MIDI enabled). After that I have a page for my Bloom compressor, a page for my Timeline, a page for my BigSky, then a page for my multiFX (was H9, recently replaced by an HX Stomp). But after that, I have some pages that give me some flexibility:

- Quick Presets - each button is an IA cycle button for a pedal, letting me cycle through my top 4 presets for each pedal or combo of pedals (e.g., one for gain stages, one for delays, etc.)
- Configuration - buttons that let me toggle signal path options, like stereo or mono summing, amp sims on/off, dry kill)
- Favorites - most used PBC presets

One key difference is that I don’t have reusable presets. I create PBC presets per song and include the song title in the preset name (using the | character trick to hide the song title). I probably have a lot of duplicate presets, but once I committed to that in my workflow, I no longer had to worry about modifying multiple songs when I change a single preset. A workaround would be to have some base presets saved, but then copy them to another preset for use in a song, that would give the consistency in a shared preset without the risk of inadvertently overwriting a preset in multiple songs.

My workflow for designing sounds/tones is to use mostly desktop apps and tweaking knobs with everything in reach, so that aspect isn’t an issue for me on the PBC itself - I just make my updates in the editor. I am interested in ways to simplify this on the PBC itself though, as it has occasionally been inconvenient to have to pull out a laptop to make what should be a simple change.
 
Yeah, I was kind of ignoring Setlist Mode since doesn't appreciably change the layouts of buttons - it just fills the first page with song presets instead of all presets.

Part of me wants to do the "song title in preset thing" but I worry about having WAY too many presets then. I have 154 songs, and I don't even have my whole church library in there (there's probably 200 to 300 that we do at least occasionally), so that's already less than 5 presets per song. Some don't have that many of course, but a few have more. I also don't want the duplication cause then if you tweak a setting for preset 1, and it's used by 10 songs, you've gotta change it everywhere rather than just one place (assuming it's a change you want in all the duplicates).
 
Yeah that’s the trade off. For me, I never played that many songs for church and never neared the preset limit. And I found myself wanting to customize presets for a song way more than I ever needed to standardize a sound across many songs.

One possibility is to make a page or two for your reusable presets, but save them as IA buttons. Then editing a reusable preset would just be modifying that IA button. Calling that preset in a song would be just toggling the IA, and modifying a single preset would just be one-off changes to the IA. I’m not sure that would all pan out in practice with potentially conflicting midi messages, but in theory it’s a good classification strategy.
 
One solution to the issue of over-making similar-sounding presets is to make a small library of "generic" tones, designed to fit a full page/song in Setlist mode.

I have Clean, Dirty, Ambient, Chorusy, etc. as presets, and simply populate songs with those tones if I can get away with just them. And in cases where all I'm missing is one signature sound for a certain song, I just have to make one new preset and can re-use most of my "generics."

Settings attached if you want an example. I annotate my songs with the Preset Number they start with for ease of organization. Songs with the "manual" annotation use generic presets.

Also, if you want some examples controlling MIDI devices in real time, peep pages 3-8. I use the Button Group feature and IA Cycle feature in conjunction to create buttons that can pull up presets via MIDI in real time, and whose state can be saved as part of that preset without needing to fix it in the Editor.
 

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I'm okay with the approach I have for now, and maybe there will be updates to make this kind of preset sharing easier in the future. There are a number of requests for that kind of thing.

My naming strategy right now is something along the lines of "<drive tone> <delay> <reverb>." Like "KoT 1 .8" means the Golden Boy on the King of Tone setting with gain cycle level 1 and a dotted 1/8th delay (no reverb listed just means it's like a standard "room" reverb). I've gotten pretty used to scanning that list and finding what I need pretty quickly.
 
Two replies: one how I use the PBC 10 now, and one idea I still have to experiment with.

I’m on a worship team and have very similar issues with a large song list. Right now I have 14 generic sound presets, like clean, distortion, clean-chorus, lead distortion, etc. I use songs, and copy the generic presets as new presets per song in the other preset slots. (Right click, copy from preset #), so there are 14 presets per song. I keep the presets in the same button order per song, so I switch based on the sound I want, not verse, chorus, etc. I use all local button pages for each preset. I use four midi devices: a Meris LVX, a Meris Mercury X, a Boss DD-200, and a Source Audio EQ 2. I set my song presets to have a PC per song preset per device, that way I can get different reverb, delay etc. per song preset (and with the Meris pedals, the sound options are incredible). I set the midi device for each PBC preset per song because I generally know in advance which presets I’ll use for different parts of the song, and can dial in the right sound for that part (the midi devices each having 100 or more device presets). That includes some differences per song preset on running parallel v. series on one or more pedals. I use seven buttons on the first page of the PBC that recall presets on both tap and hold, so I can get to all 14 presets on the first page with seven buttons. I use an external pedal (Boss FS-6) to bank up and down to change songs and control tap tempo. On that first page of the PBC I have three buttons dedicated to each midi device (not the EQ2). Each of those three buttons are programmed the same, but each controls a different pedal. The specific pedal turns off and on with the hold function. With tap, it is set to go to a different page dedicated to that midi device. On that device-specific page I have my top 12 Device-presets (accessed through both tap and hold on six buttons) so that I can change the sound through PC even on the same song preset. On the exact same button that was dedicated to the midi device on the first page, I have it set on that specific midi-device page to still turn the device off and on with hold, but go back to the first page with tap. I do the same with the other two device buttons. Those same three midi-device buttons are dedicated on the same buttons on every page so that I can always turn each device on/off from every page, can always access each device on every page, and can always get back to the first page with a single tap. I also use red button colors for the presets on the first page, and different colors on the device pages, to help me see/remember which page I am on. With this set up, I am at most two taps away from a song preset change or a midi device preset change. Another tip: if you don’t want to start with a device on for a preset but you want to have a device-preset ready, have that PC set for the PBC-preset, but have the device loop off for that PBC-preset. You can use the hold on-off button for that device from the first page to get the effect since the device-preset is already there on the device. I also have a button for page up/down if needed. I’ve never had a situation where I needed more device-presets on a song than the PBC-preset PC (which can be any of the device-presets) combined with the top 12 device-presets. If I ever did, I’d probably just add a new PBC page to get another 12 or so device presets.

There are some drawbacks. You need the generic presets to be exactly right for copying or you have to go back and edit each song or copy the presets again. That happened at first, but I got everything right after just a few experiments (and one or two performances), so it wasn’t a large amount of songs. It also does take a lot of time for each song setup. But once it is done, it is done for the future. Setlists are all you need at that point. Another time saver, if two songs use the same sounds, you can just copy the presets from that song without further editing (or even use the same presets). I’ve found the overall effort was worth it because everything is so tailored, letting me play and worship instead of trying to remember what to do or what presets I need on each song.

But then there also is the issue of running out of PBC preset slots. I’m getting very close, but I haven’t gotten there yet because I’ve only had this approach for a few months. I am hoping that I can export and save my song presets and load them back in as needed. I’d have about 50 on the PBC, so that would typically work for a while since I know the Sunday set lists pretty far in advance (usually 4 to 6 weeks). I ought to be able to load in the song presets for songs coming up, removing (after saving) those songs that are not on the schedule in the near future. I haven’t done this yet, though, so can’t yet verify that it works like I hope it will.

Another drawback I can think of is on the fly calling out of songs. It doesn’t happen to me often, but if it does and it is not one of the 50, I’m not going to have the exact right sounds. I do have a page that has the generic presets available, which I typically do not use, but is there if needed using page up/down. You don’t have immediate PC changes for the song though, so there are less options and more taps. Perhaps you can convince the leader to only call out one of the 50!

Hope this gives some useable ideas. I’m always open to other ways to tweak it further and better, so thanks for the thread.
 
That sounds way too complicated lol. Also I have well over 100 songs, so I could never create enough presets for them to be specific to songs. I considered the "save song presets and load them back in as needed" but as far as I can tell, there's no easy way to do that with specific presets. You could save different configs with different sets of presets . . . no idea how you'd move them around though. Also if you ever changed anything else about your setup, you'd have to do it in multiple configs, which would be tedious and error prone.
 
Explanation is more complicated than the execution. Seeing it would show you some simplicity. I hear you on change to set up. That’s a risk for any programming on the PBC, but each person will have their own way to make it less a problem for them, which it sounds like you did. For me, I’m only dealing with five or six songs a week, so if I need to change something up I can do it a little at a time, which isn’t too time intensive when broke up that way.

If I have any success with exporting, I’ll post it. The PBC Mac Editor manual describes how to export/import presets only, but I don’t know yet if there is a relatively easy way to remove a particular song’s presets and replace it with another song’s presets. Hopefully I’ll find it. Best of luck to you.
 
tandrewnichols said:
That sounds way too complicated lol. Also I have well over 100 songs, so I could never create enough presets for them to be specific to songs. I considered the "save song presets and load them back in as needed" but as far as I can tell, there's no easy way to do that with specific presets. You could save different configs with different sets of presets . . . no idea how you'd move them around though. Also if you ever changed anything else about your setup, you'd have to do it in multiple configs, which would be tedious and error prone.
Click to expand...

Maybe you can clarify why sharing presets across songs is more complicated than your approach of not using songs/setlists at all? My songs use a combination of generic tone presets and "song-specific" presets and I'm nowhere near the limit, plus I get the benefit of song tempos, choosing amp presets per-song, etc.
 
I am using songs and setlists. I just don't name presets by song, like "Song Name | Verse."

The PBC Mac Editor manual describes how to export/import presets only
Click to expand...

If this is a real thing, please share. I've never seen this, but I haven't read the documentation in depth either.
 
tandrewnichols said:
Yeah, I was kind of ignoring Setlist Mode since doesn't appreciably change the layouts of buttons - it just fills the first page with song presets instead of all presets.
Click to expand...
tandrewnichols said:
I am using songs and setlists. I just don't name presets by song, like "Song Name | Verse."
Click to expand...

Gotcha, this is why I got confused. Sounded like you weren't using songs at all, which would certainly be a suboptimal way to use the Mastermind.
 
Oh I see the confusion. I just meant I didn't include any information about how I used mastermind in setlist mode because it's essentially the same - your preset buttons just get filled with song presets instead of all presets.
 
tandrewnichols said:
I am using songs and setlists. I just don't name presets by song, like "Song Name | Verse."



If this is a real thing, please share. I've never seen this, but I haven't read the documentation in depth either.
Click to expand...
Look at page 23 for exporting settings. You can choose only a portion of the settings to download, like presets.
 

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I know I'm tardy to the party but wanted to weigh in... I spent a good amount of time working through my setup and how I wanted the pages to work. Rather than re-writing the current pages I created my "Control Center" on page 4 and use a macro to load page 4 on start up. from here I can access the loops, presets, setlist mode, system functions, etc... in the loops section I added hold functions to my midi pedals that load "settings" pages for each pedal so I can send different PCs on the fly. I use the loops section as more of a traditional pedalboard if I'm working on new material. But once everything is solidified I create presets and assign them to a song/setlist. I shared my setup in a similar post several months back if you'd like to take a look.

https://www.rjmmusic.com/forum/index.php?threads/page-4-stompbox-mode.2037/#post-31509
 
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