Protools - Bandstand

I'm thinking of buying BandStand as a compositional tool within ProTools and possibly as a stand alone instrument too. How does it sound? Is it stable? Is the support good? Is it completely compatible with ProTools/RTAS?

Thanks

Haiku

 

Hi Haiku,

as far as I can tell there are not ProTools specific issues with Bandstand.

as for the rest, others have to chime in ;-)


Best,
Markus

 

thanks for the reply

 

I use Bandstand with PT 6.9 and have had no problems at all. I haven't used it with PT 7.1 as I was waiting for all the other manufactures to catch up. Markus is Bandstand PT 7 compliant?

 

Hi Psychoth,

Bandstand is performance optimized for ProTools 6.9 but not yet for ProTools 7.x. however, there should be no major problems.

it's more once we optimize for PT 7.x, you cannot go back ;-)


Best,
Markus

 

I have trouble selecting instruments in Pro Tools LE 7.3 on a Mac dual G5 with 2.5 G RAM, OS X 10.4.9. Most instruments work, but some, like the Ah Choir change immediately to a flute once I start playing, and a Baritone changes to a piano as soon as i start playing the track. A couple of times in the few hours since I bought Bandstand, Pro Tools crashed while assigning a Bandstand instrument to an instrument track. As a Pro Tools plugin, I find Bandstand flakey and fragile, and as a standalone MIDI player it doesn't function at all. I'm very disappointed in Bandstand.

 

After trying MIDI regions played in Pro Tools LE 7.3 instrument tracks, and using auxiliary tracks with MIDI tracks, I still cannot get certain instruments to work. I CAN preview them in Bandstand, so the sound samples are indeed there. For example, say I have a simple one-track tune I want to play as an accordion. I pick an accordion in channel 1 and it changes to a piano as soon as I start to play. I put the accordion in channel 3, and the same thing happens. I pick the accordion in the Mix window, and the same thing happens. If I change instruments in the Mix window WHILE the session is playing, the instrument will stick, but only as long as the session continues playing. As soon as I start playing it again, it immediately changes back to a piano so there's no hope of even exporting it to an audio file. Other instruments, such as guitars, bass guitar, drums, etc., do work as expected. Many others don't.

 

Native Instruments' technical support never responded to my problem, so I continued to experiment, and found what's probably at least a partial solution to instruments not sticking in Pro Tools. In Bandstand, one needs to disable Program Changes by clicking the PC icon. I thought that was only for MIDI playback when using Bandstand as a standalone app, but apparently it seems to help as a Pro Tools plugin, too. Also, the instrument usually has to be in channel 1, except or drums, which needs to be in channel 10. It also seems to help to go through the entire Inserts menu hierarchy to assign instruments in Bandstand. Maybe there are better, simpler methods, but these steps seem to do the job. I hope others find this helpful.

 

Hi Elwood54,

thanks for sharing the PT tips!

yes, you need to disable program changes via the PC button or via the PC filter in the second Options tab or via the automatic setting in the first Options tab.

we implemented this so that you can keep your own instrument arrangements and not the ones programmed in the MIDI file. alternatively change the PC command in the track in your host!


best,
Markus