Turn your Mac into a live rig. Transform your keyboard, guitar, or vocal performance with an enormous collection of plug-ins and sounds.
And give your audience a show they’ll never forget.
Take your performance beyond what you can actually perform. The Arpeggiator features note-based remote controls and flexible latch modes. And Chord Trigger allows you to press a single note and have it trigger an entire complex chord. Use Retro Synth to re-create your favorite electronic sounds from the ’70s and ’80s with an intuitive set of controls. Or bring the authentic sounds of a Hammond B3 organ, Hohner Clavinet D6, or Fender Rhodes or Wurlitzer electric pianos on stage.
MainStage is not only an amazing host for software instruments and effects, it’s also packed with innovations that let you shine on stage. For starters, there’s the Floating Split Point. It intelligently moves the split point on a split keyboard to respond to what you’re playing. Start walking a bass line up the keyboard, and the split point moves up so the bass doesn’t suddenly become some other sound when you get into the higher notes.
With Multimapping, you can map multiple parameters to a single control, so you can smoothly manipulate your sound without trying to turn several knobs at once. And seamless switching lets you hold a chord in one sound while moving to a new .
Alchemy brings epic sound that rivals the best hardware keyboards to the stage — with a massive collection of presets and real-time morphing controls at your fingertips. Whether you need to play re-creations of vintage analog synths or ultramodern sampled instruments, you’ll find inspiring sounds no matter what kind of music you perform.
Thanks to MainStage, you can play live with all the great tones from Amp Designer, Bass Amp Designer, and Pedalboard, along with any of your favorite Audio Units guitar effects. You also get a full-screen tuner, foot-controlled tap tempo, and stompbox graphics that change with each to represent the different Pedalboard stompboxes you’re using. Seamless switching lets notes and chords trail off naturally when you switch es. And MainStage supports a wide range of popular MIDI foot controllers, which lets you operate the Pedalboard, wah, rotary speaker effects, or any other effect plug-ins — hands-free.
MainStage lets you stay focused on your performance. Keep your hands free by using foot pedals to control the effects you add to your voice. And display large, high-contrast notes such as lyrics and chord changes on your screen. So all you have to think about is singing.
The MainStage and Smart Controls interface is designed especially for live performance. You get a full-screen, high-contrast, and high-resolution (Retina display–supported) view of your controls, so they stand out from across the stage. And you can set things up so each control is linked to a different parameter in each . With just the controls you need onscreen for your song, you'll never have to hunt for the right knob.
With MainStage, setting up your stage rig is faster than ever. Start by choosing from a complete range of performance templates, many of them preloaded with great-sounding es. Or look to the Library to find a or sound ready to be tweaked to perfection. The Library also gives you access to all your es from Logic Pro. And if you ever need to perform with a different Mac, you don’t have to rebuild everything. Just save your live set as a project and MainStage puts all the necessary files into a single folder you can take with you anywhere.
MainStage supports your addiction to knobs, buttons, and faders. It can connect with just about any external MIDI device on the planet. And the interface is simplicity itself. Just assign a physical control to an onscreen control, and it’s connected forever (or until you change your mind). No more assigning knobs over and over for each preset. And down the road, if your hardware fails when you’re about to go on stage, it’s quick and easy to swap it out.
MainStage also features pickup modes that make fixed controller knobs behave more like the endless encoder knobs found on high-end gear. If your control surface can receive status information from software, MainStage will send MIDI messages to keep your control displays in perfect sync.
MainStage lets you record any audio signal passing through. Just route all of your audio to a designated stereo output and choose your file format — standard AIFF, WAV, or even Apple CAF for recording performances of almost any length.
Creating sounds with your Mac is so much simpler than relying on all kinds of external gear. Instead of squinting at tiny hardware displays, you get a bright, full-screen view that makes everything easy to tweak. You can also combine any sounds you like — even software and hardware sounds — in one .
When it’s time to put those sounds to work, MainStage gives you tons of options. Multimapping allows one knob to control multiple plug-in parameters, so you can dramatically change your sound with the turn of a single knob. And the List editor gives you the flexibility to rearrange or skip es as your set list evolves.
The Assignments & Mappings view shows all your hardware and screen control connections at a glance. And features in the Mixer make it easier to open, close, bypass, or reorder plug-ins. No need to reach for a modifier key.
Auto Sampler quickly and easily transforms your hardware synths into sampled instruments that you can play from your Mac. Your keyboard rig just got a whole lot simpler to set up and manage.
We redesigned and improved our most popular plug-in — the EXS24 Sampler — and renamed it Sampler. The single-window design is backward compatible with all EXS24 files, making it easier than ever to perform with sampler instruments. An expanded synthesis section with sound-shaping controls brings more depth and dynamics to your instruments, while the reimagined mapping editor adds powerful, time-saving features. Use the zone waveform editor for precise editing of sample start/end, loop ranges, and crossfades. And instantly build sophisticated instruments using new drag-and-drop hot zones.
Grouped Controls let you drag and drop entire sets of knobs, buttons, faders, meters, and more into your layout. From there, you can easily customize the number, type, size, and color of all your controls. You can even decide what each control does for each . Alignment guides snap everything into place. And Lift and Stamp features let you quickly copy characteristics from one layout and apply them to another. You can save parts of your layouts as Grouped Controls and reuse them in other layouts. And put your es in any order and change them on a whim. With support for Smart Controls, your layout will adapt to the that’s loaded. Synths look like synths and Vintage B3 es bring up organ drawbars.
MainStage features MIDI-out support. That means everything you need perform is right on your Mac, giving you total control. Each works as a self-contained audio mixer and router, so you can have total control over each sound. One minute you can be playing heavily distorted guitar with a full backing band. And the next you can be creating bass loops with an external synth against an Ultrabeat drum pattern.
macOS 10.15.5 or higher
6GB available storage space for minimum install / 72GB storage space for full Sound Library installation