Acoustic Play Editor

Performing Live with Perform

Perform is the on-stage view of the editor. It shows your lyrics, the FX / HIT automation laid out on a timeline beside them, and the buttons you need during a song — and it drives your TC Helicon Play Acoustic / Electric so the right preset loads when each song starts and your HIT / FX fire on cue.

This post walks you through the full setup: building the setlist in the editor's Live tab, opening Perform on your performance device, wiring it to Stage Traxx, and the few Stage Traxx-side settings that make the whole thing work hands-free.

Perform on stage — lyrics, FX timeline and buttons

What You Need

Step 1: Build the Setlist in the Editor

1a — Export a Database backup from Stage Traxx

Open Stage Traxx, then go to Settings → Backups → Create Database Backup (or the equivalent path in your Stage Traxx version — wording shifts between releases). Database backup is the smaller of the two options: it carries the songs, playlists, lyric markers, MIDI tags and timings — everything the editor reads — without the audio tracks. A Full backup also works but it's much larger and the editor ignores the audio portion anyway.

Save the resulting .st4b somewhere you can pick it up from the editor — iCloud Drive / Files / Downloads, AirDrop to your computer, whatever's convenient. Keep this file: it's also your insurance policy for Stage Traxx itself, since Stage Traxx can restore the same backup on a fresh device.

1b — Import the backup into the editor

Open the editor (oddeyez.se/app/) and switch to the Live tab.

In the toolbar, click Import… under the Stage Traxx group. Pick the .st4b you just exported, then choose the playlist you want to perform. Each Stage Traxx song becomes a row in the setlist below — title, artist, BPM, key, PC trigger, lyrics and FX events are all carried over.

For each song, click the preset name to assign which TC Helicon preset should load when the song starts. If a song has key / scale / BPM overrides you want, set them in that row too — they override the preset's stored values at send time.

Save the setlist with a name you'll recognise (Save dropdown → Save as…). The saved bundle carries everything — preset assignments, lyrics, FX timeline, your FX preset bindings, HIT mapping. It's the source of truth for your show.

Step 2: Open Perform

In the Live tab's toolbar, click the orange 🎤 Perform button on the right. Perform opens in a new tab.

If you've used the editor already, Perform may already show the last-loaded setlist. If not — or if you want to be sure you're running the latest version of your show file — load it explicitly via the drawer (next step).

Best practice: always load your setlist file at the start of the gig

Perform remembers your last playlist in browser storage (localStorage), so opening it next time you're at the same machine usually shows the right songs. That's convenient day-to-day. For a live gig, always load your setlist file fresh: it's the only way to guarantee you have the latest version of your show, you haven't drifted into stale config, and you're not depending on browser quirks that might purge storage.

Five extra seconds at the start of soundcheck saves you trying to debug an empty Perform page two minutes before downbeat.

Anatomy of the Perform View

Before configuring the rest, take a moment to learn what each part of the screen does. The two annotated screenshots below label every region you'll interact with — the first walks the main viewer (lyrics, FX timeline, sidebar buttons) and the second covers the framing chrome (top bar, transport, status, drawer toggle).

Annotated Perform viewer with current preset name, lyric column, FX timeline column, HIT and FX buttons, MIDI activity row labels

Annotated top bar and transport: song info, MIDI clock LED, internal clock controls, next song panel, settings drawer button

Step 3: Configure MIDI Ports in Perform

Tap the ⚙ button at the top-right of Perform. The settings drawer slides in from the right.

Under Setlist, pick your saved file from Bundled sample (if it's a sample) or click Load .json… to pick your own. The page reloads with the new playlist + FX layout.

Under MIDI ports, there are three selectors:

Each selector's status pill below shows Connected / Listening in green when wired up, Disconnected in red if the saved port isn't available, or — when nothing is picked.

Step 4: Wire the Transport Buttons in Stage Traxx

In Perform's drawer, scroll to Stage Traxx MIDI-learn. You'll see four rows — Play / Stop, Rewind, Previous song, Next song — each with a Send button.

For each row:

  1. In Stage Traxx, open Settings → Remote Control → Assign Actions (their docs walk through the exact taps).
  2. Pick the action you want to bind — e.g. Play / Pause.
  3. Stage Traxx waits for a MIDI message. Click Send next to the matching row in Perform's drawer.
  4. Stage Traxx learns that CC. Repeat for the remaining three actions.

Once learned, the buttons in Perform's left sidebar (▶ / ■, ⏪ Rew, ⏮ Prev, ⏭ Next) drive Stage Traxx directly. Useful if your iPad is just out of reach mid-song.

Step 5: Pick a Clock Source

Perform's lyric playhead and HIT/FX cueing need something to drive time. You've got two options — pick whichever fits your rig.

Option A: Stage Traxx drives the clock (most common)

In Stage Traxx, enable MIDI Clock and MIDI Program Change output. Per song, set the song's Load Trigger to a Program Change number. Perform's setlist maps each PC to one of your songs — when Stage Traxx switches songs, it fires the matching PC, Perform sees it, and pushes the right preset to the device. Stage Traxx then streams MIDI Clock (and optionally MTC) as it plays, and Perform's playhead follows.

This is the right choice if you also use Stage Traxx for backing tracks — one timeline, one tempo, no drift between Stage Traxx's audio and Perform's HIT cues.

Keep Stage Traxx alive in the background

By default Stage Traxx goes to sleep when it's not the foreground app — which stops MIDI output the moment you switch to Perform. Find the Auto sleep / Background audio / Always on toggle in Stage Traxx → Settings → Audio (the wording varies by version) and turn it ON / disable auto-sleep. Stage Traxx keeps its audio engine running while backgrounded, MIDI keeps flowing, and Perform stays clocked.

On iPad you can also run both apps in Split View or Stage Manager — both stay foreground, no sleep concern.

Option B: Perform's internal clock (no Stage Traxx needed)

Each song in the lyric viewer has its own ▶ Play button. Tap it and Perform advances its own playhead at real-time, firing HIT and FX cues as the lyrics scroll. No external MIDI source needed — handy if you're running Perform stand-alone for a coffee-shop solo set, or rehearsing without the rest of your rig.

You can switch back and forth: hit ▶ to drive locally, then start Stage Traxx and Perform's clock takes over the next time a MIDI tick arrives. The internal timer politely stops itself when external clock shows up.

Step 6: Tune the Perform Layout

Perform's drawer (⚙) has a Layout section with seven independent toggles so you can show exactly the parts of the view you need — nothing more. Every toggle persists per browser and recalls on the next launch, so you set this once per device.

The seven view parts

Perform's screen has three rows (top bar, lyrics-and-FX viewer, MIDI activity footer) plus a buttons column on the left. Each is independently hideable:

Common layouts

A few combinations that work well in practice:

Viewport choices are independent of clock source — pair any layout with either Stage Traxx-driven or internal clock. The buttons row stays operative either way.

The Lyrics and Chord sections below let you tune font sizes and colours. Like the layout toggles, they persist per browser — they're not stored in the setlist file, so each performer can have their own readability preferences without forking the show file.

Working Offline at the Venue

Perform is a PWA with a service worker that caches the app shell. Once installed and visited once online, it runs without internet — useful for venues with flaky wifi or air-gapped stages.

Before you leave home

At the venue

What still wants a network

Cache-sanity checks

Step 7: Install Perform as a PWA (optional but recommended)

Perform has its own webmanifest — Chrome / Edge / Android Chrome will offer to install it as a separate app. On iPad, open Perform in Web MIDI Browser, then add the URL to your home screen — the icon launches Perform in standalone mode, which iOS preserves much better through lock cycles than a regular browser tab.

What Happens During a Song

Once everything is wired up, a typical song run goes like this:

  1. Stage Traxx switches to song N — fires Program Change N.
  2. Perform receives the PC, looks up song N in the setlist, builds the preset SysEx (with your key / scale / BPM overrides applied), and sends it to the TC Helicon's live slot.
  3. Stage Traxx starts playback — sends MIDI Clock + MTC. Perform's lyric playhead follows.
  4. At each FX cue point in the timeline, Perform reads the device's current setup over SysEx, overlays the FX preset's parameter changes onto it (e.g. Verse turns guitar delay off, guitar reverb off), and writes the modified setup back — all in one round-trip. The matching off-event later in the song restores the setup values that were live before the overlay.
  5. HIT events take the same path: Perform reads setup, flips the HIT byte (packet 3 byte 41), writes setup back. The device engages HIT live.
  6. End of song — Stage Traxx advances to the next, fires the next PC, Perform loads the next preset. Repeat.

(If you're using Perform's internal clock instead, swap steps 1–3 for "tap ▶ on the song's Play button" — everything else is identical.)

You read lyrics, the device follows the song. No tap dancing on a footboard.

A note on timing & latency

Stage Traxx → Perform → device is a real-time chain but it's not zero-latency. Each HIT or FX event triggers a setup-blob round-trip with the TC Helicon: read seven SysEx packets back from the device, modify the relevant bytes, write seven packets back, wait for the device's ACK. End-to-end that's typically ~200–700 ms per event, occasionally longer over USB hubs / shared MIDI bridges. Preset changes (song change) are a single write rather than a round-trip and are noticeably faster, but still take ~150 ms.

Practical implications when authoring your .st4b:

The same caveat applies to manual button taps in Perform's sidebar (HIT / FX). Each tap fires the same round-trip, so a rapid double-tap will serialise.

Here's the whole flow end-to-end on a real rig:

Troubleshooting

Device pill says "Not connected"
The Device port in the drawer is empty. Pick your TC Helicon manually if the auto-pick didn't catch it (the auto-pick only matches "Play Acoustic" / "Play Electric" in the port name).
Stage Traxx stops sending MIDI when I switch apps
Open Stage Traxx settings and disable Auto sleep / enable background audio. Or run Stage Traxx and Perform side-by-side in Split View / Stage Manager.
The chip in the FX timeline says "CC34" instead of a friendly name
The setlist file doesn't have an FX preset mapped to that CC. Go to the editor's Live tab → Live Controls card → add an FX preset binding CC34 (with the parameter overlay it should apply when active), save the setlist, reload Perform.
The chip lights up in Perform but nothing happens on the device
Most likely the FX preset has no parameter overlay configured — there's nothing for Perform to write to the device's setup. Open the editor's Live tab, edit the FX preset, tick the params it should change (gtr-delay / gtr-reverb / etc.), save the setlist, reload Perform. The Perform footer's "Sent:" indicator should then show "Verse on ✓" etc. on each cue.
Switching browser tabs and back loses the editor
Web MIDI Browser caches the original tab URL. Bookmark /app/perform.html directly (or set it as the browser's home page) instead of going through the marketing site.