Mainstage Mondays: Working with Smart Controls

One of the most frequent questions I get about Mainstage 3 is how to map your physical midi control knobs, sliders, and buttons to Mainstage 3’s new Smart Controls. Here’s how to do it quickly: 

1. Open Mainstage 3. Select a template that uses Smart Controls (most of the stock presets in Mainstage now use Smart Control)

2. Click on the control you want to assign, then select “Assign and Map” in the RH corner of the screen. The control you selected should have a red ring around it now.

3. Move the knob, fader, or button that you want to assign to that smart control. It should now control the parameter. Repeat with all other controls.

A few notes- one of the things I don’t like about Mainstage’s Smart Controls is that you have to do this process for every single Smart Control template for it to work across the entire project. I find this to be a bit time consuming, but worth it considering the flexibility it allows to map specific controls for specific instruments.