For live use it's important that the presets you'll use during the set work well together. Even if all presets sound great by themselves, they can still be problematic when used together because of
When you put together different presets I suggest you rewrite them from scratch, in order to get the basic programming (routings, levels, etc) as standardized as possible. Trying to re-adjust existing presets (that may have been programmed in improvised ways) can be very frustrating.
Unsuitable Mute modes can be a source of level jumps when bypassing effects.
It's a good idea to turn down the Input block say 5 dB already when beginning a patch, so that some extra headroom is available just in case. Otherwise there's a chance that the max level of one patch ends up lower than the others, which in worst case will force you to turn down the levels of all the others. Especially Tremolo and Drive effects easily result in lower levels. There are a few ways to increase the level more (but watch out for internal overload):
How to make different patches match each other sonically is very much a subjective issue, just like tweaking the general sound. But keep in mind that sounds can be very different in different rooms depending on room acoustics, if a room is empty or full of people and through different guitar speakers and/or PA systems. Often a sound will appear different if you play it alone or together with a band. To me it often sounds like if a bit of the guitar's midrange disappears when it's played together with bass and drums. Your guitar may also sound different to you if you hear someone else play on it compared to when you play it yourself (usually it sounds better).
See also the page about seamless preset changes
Some planning might be necessary to make seamless preset changes without sound artifacts. Take notes of the presets you are going to use in a song, as well as when in the song you can change preset without having to play during the preset change. Rewrite problematic patches if necessary.
Most likely you'll reuse some stock presets in many songs. Consider changing some of these, so that they'll work well both with previous and following presets. For example, if patch A is used together with Patch B in one song and with patch C in another, why not turn A into two different ones, one tailored to fit patch B and the other to patch C?
Over time presets may become scattered across the G-Force User bank, with plenty of presets that you never use in between. Trying to locate and access the important ones from a MIDI board can be tedious and confusing. To make things neater, consider copying important presets to a dedicated memory card bank where you can easily find them. If you have no memory card it's possible to assign part of the User bank for this purpose (see the Utility section in the G-Force). That part of the User bank can then be write-protected.
Depending on how your MIDI board can be programmed it might be a good idea to save multiple preset copies of identical patches, one for each song perhaps, so that for each new song you can recall a fresh set of presets, one for each footswitch. For example, if the MIDI board is organized into different preset banks you can let the same G-Force patch reappear in many banks, instead of returning to the same preset location.
You can also make a long line of presets where each step on the MIDI board's Up/Next switch will take you to the next preset (even if this means that the same preset will be recalled many times along the way). This allows the rest of the MIDI board switches to be used for effect bypassing.
Copyright © 1999-2016 Christian Jacobsson.