Muti-fx/ footswitch organisation

[Basket Case]

For those of you who use some sort of programmable multi-fx, midi foot switch etc in a live in situation what's your approach to ordering your patches on your footswitch?

I use a FCB1010 and have fx in the top row and patches on the bottom. From left to right with the rigs I try to order them in the same sequence they appear in the song, for example, switch 1 would be the intro patch, switch 2 would be the verse and so on. I always put my solo rig as the 5th switch (furtherest to the right) so it's always in the same place and I'm less likely to stuff up my solo by standing on the wrong switch.

The trouble with this approach, or any I can think of is that it can get really difficult to remember where each patch is, especially when different songs require different numbers of patches and parts repeat throughout the song.

In the past (with other gear) I've gone from least gain on the left to highest gain on the right, but this always has its complications too. Other times I've tried to minimise the number of patches I use by switching the individual effects in and out- but that can be a recipe for disaster in a live situation, especially when multiple changes are needed.

What system do you find works best?

[HackSaw]

What system do you find works best?

Only play AC/DC covers.

[jeremyb]

What I used to do was have my patches across the bottom as well, effects across the top, the patches were simple:

1 - Clean
2 - Clean with delay and reverb
3 - Dirt
4 - Dirt with delay and reverb

And within each I had some additional effects that could be turned on and off as well as the delay and reverb if needs be.

[sirvill]

Depends, do you have a few "sounds" which you use in different places, or is each patch for each part of each song completely custom?

For bass I've got clean, overdrive, distorted, a patch with flanger delay and reverb, envelope filter, octave, and another ambient patch.

On the MS-3 banking up and down requires a double-footswitch press which is a bit too uncertain for me, so I prefer not to change banks mid-song. So I made a matrix of which sounds I need for each track we're doing.

I then arranged the sounds in banks so the sounds I need for each song are in the same bank - and a number of songs can share a bank if it works out that way. I don't need a heap of sounds so I kept clean and OD as patch 1 and patch 2 on every bank so that makes things easier to remember.

[kwhelan]

if your actually loading different patches for each part of a song rather than just enabling/disabling certain effects you really should be running midi, program all the patch changes in to each song, in order and maybe even to a click track if your doing exact covers then just choose song patch and go/stop on the midi controller
could use an ipad or laptop to control it even

[Cdog]

Gone back to individual pedulz, but I used to have the same pattern each bank on the Line 6 Multishizzle
1 - Clean
2- Dirt
3- Lead
4 - Special... normally a song specific effect etc
Never had the 5th switch! These days I pretty much use 2-3 pedals a set

[Lawrence]

Ive always kept the number of song specific patches to an absolute minimum. basically only when there is such a major effect in the song that is unusual. For 95% of songs I use MY sounds...which have always been based on:
1. Clean Rhythm
2. Drive rhythm
3. Clean solo
4. Drive solo.

I typically had 4 banks with

a)vintage - no mod fx on, mild drives...a bit of reverb
b) classic - maybe phaser on clean ryhthym, tape echoes
c) modern - chorus on clean rhythm
d) custom - sort of mesa stayed with long delays etc

On the helix I have defined the switches as snap shots along the from in the format 1-4 above, and patches along the back as per a -d above.

The extra mojo I have with helix is that Ive denied the patches to recall different snapshots so:
vintage patch recalls clean rhythm snap
classic patch recalls drive rhythm
Modern patch recalls clean solo
Custom patch recalls drive solo.

This means I can go easily across all 4 snaps and all 4 patchers in one song without any stress. 16 tones all mine!