Sunday Keys for MainStage at a glance
Here's a quick tour of Sunday Keys and the words we use in our other videos.
MainStage's three modes
- Layout: connect your keyboard and controllers to the onscreen controls.
- Edit: choose and build your sounds. You'll spend most of your prep time here.
- Perform: a full-screen view for playing live.
Edit mode
- Patch List (left): your Patches. Each Patch is made of one or more channel strips.
- Channel strips (right): these make the sounds. We've programmed them for you, so you only need them for advanced tweaks. Show or hide them with the button above them.
- Inspector (bottom): shows details for whatever you last clicked. With a Patch selected, the Patch Library tab is where you browse every Sunday Keys sound. Show or hide it with the i button next to Perform.
The Sunday Keys workspace
Help button (bottom right): click your concert's name next to the orange folder at the top of the Patch List, then click Help to browse help topics. Each link opens its video in your browser.
Four color-coded sections (top): every Patch has room for up to four main sounds: orange (1), green (2), blue (3) and purple (4). Each section shows the sound's name and level, and has the same set of controls we call modifiers, like reverb, delay, tone, chorus or octave. The left fader in each section is always volume. Our ready-to-play Patches come with the modifiers already set, so you can just play. Click any label to read what it does.
Tonic Pad Player (middle left): plays an ambient pad in your chosen key to glue your band together and smooth transitions. Press On to start and stop it. See Tonic Pad Player.
Performance Patch List: mirrors your Patch List and shows what's playing and what's next.
Previous and Next buttons: mapped to the Korg nanoKontrol2 by default. See Map knobs, faders and buttons to use another controller.
Extra section: a fifth, simpler sound with just a label, level meter and volume fader. Song Patches use it for extra features.
Output section:
- Master volume for all of Sunday Keys. Don't let the meter above it hit red.
- Panic resets all audio and MIDI if something goes wrong mid-song.
- Tap tempo: tap quarter notes a few times to set the tempo. To save a tempo with a Patch, select the Patch, open the Inspector's Attributes tab, check Change Tempo To, and type the BPM.
- Mono: turn this on if you send one cable to the soundboard or the board isn't stereo, so you don't lose part of the sound.