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.
MainStage has something for every kind of performer. You can use all your favourite instrument and effect plug-ins from Logic Pro. Simplify setup and teardown. Sound as big as you want with backing tracks. And use all your favourite hardware controllers.
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 recreate your favourite 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 Patch 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 Patch switching lets you hold a chord in one sound while moving to a new Patch.
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 recreations of vintage analog synths or ultra‑modern 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 favourite Audio Units guitar effects. You also get a full-screen tuner, foot-controlled tap tempo and stompbox graphics that change with each Patch to represent the different Pedalboard stompboxes you’re using. Seamless Patch switching lets notes and chords trail off naturally when you switch Patches. 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.
Love the sound you got on your recording? MainStage makes it easy to bring all the same instruments and effects to the stage. Everything from the Sound Library and Smart Controls you’re familiar with from Logic Pro is integrated into MainStage. You can even expand your show with pre-recorded backing tracks. You’ll also find setup is easy with a powerful mixer and easy-to-use channel strips. With Mac as the core of your live rig, setup is faster, teardown is faster and everything in between is more reliable. And you can easily use your favourite hardware to control every nuance of your performance.
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 Patch. 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 Patches. Or look to the Patch Library to find a Patch or sound ready to be tweaked to perfection. The Patch Library also gives you access to all your Patches 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.
MainStage turns your Mac into a musical instrument, voice processor or guitar rig so you can get studio-level sound on stage — without all the extra equipment. MainStage gives you an easy-to-understand view of your sounds with a customisable layout that displays exactly what you need for your live performance, minus the clutter of dozens of plug-ins and small mouse-operated controls. You can use the knobs on your keyboard to remote control the sounds in MainStage — so your performances can be faster, smoother and easier.
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 Patch.
When it’s time to put those sounds to work, MainStage gives you lots 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 Patch List editor gives you the flexibility to rearrange or skip Patches 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 backwards-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 customise the number, type, size and colour of all your controls. You can even decide what each control does for each Patch. 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 Patches in any order and change them on a whim. With support for Smart Controls, your layout will adapt to the Patch that’s loaded. Synths look like synths and Vintage B3 Patches bring up organ drawbars.
MainStage features MIDI-out support. That means everything you need to perform is on your Mac, giving you total control. Each Patch 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 12.3 or later
6GB available storage space for minimum installation or 72GB storage space for full Sound Library installation