Acoustic Play Editor

Stage Traxx MIDI Syntax — A Quick Reference

Stage Traxx 4 lets you embed MIDI commands directly inside your song lyrics. When playback reaches one of these tags, the corresponding MIDI message is sent out — to the Acoustic Play Editor, to your TC Helicon Play Acoustic/Electric, or to any other MIDI-aware app. This post is a cheat sheet for the syntax, plus a copy-paste example you can drop straight into a Stage Traxx song.

The official documentation is at stagetraxx.com/docs/v4/midi — Sending MIDI commands. The notes below are a practical summary aimed at editor users.

The two shapes you'll use

Every MIDI command in Stage Traxx lives inside square brackets and starts with the word midi. There are two variants:

So the general shape is:

[midi: <event>]              ← fires immediately on song load
[midi@<mm:ss.ms>: <event>]    ← fires at the given time offset

Rule of thumb: every MIDI tag must either be at the very top of the lyrics (no timestamp = immediate) or carry a timestamp like @00:05.00. Without one of those, Stage Traxx won't fire it.

Event types

Two event types cover almost every use case for the editor:

Program Change — PC<n>@<channel>

Tells the editor (or any synth) to switch to a specific preset / patch / program.

PC has no value byte — just the program number and the channel.

Control Change — CC<num>.<value>@<channel>

Sends a controller value. You need both the CC number (0–127) and the value (0–127), and then the channel.

In the editor, CC numbers are how you turn effect blocks and FX presets on and off. For example:

The same CC + value-0/127 convention works for both HIT and FX preset mappings. Value 127 = on / activate, value 0 = off / revert.

Don't type these by hand — use MIDI Learn

You almost never need to write a tag manually. Stage Traxx's MIDI Learn function inserts the correct tag for you, including the channel:

  1. Position the cursor in the lyrics where you want the trigger to fire.
  2. Tap MIDI Learn in Stage Traxx.
  3. Switch to the editor and click the right Send button:
    • Setlist row — click Send on the song's row in the setlist. Sends that song's PC (e.g. PC0).
    • HIT (device panel → Edit → HIT) — Send On emits CCN.127, Send Off emits CCN.0.
    • FX preset (device panel → Edit → FX preset card) — same idea: Send On emits CCN.127, Send Off emits CCN.0.
  4. Stage Traxx receives the MIDI message and pastes the matching tag ([midi: PC1@1], [midi: CC34.127@1], [midi: CC34.0@1], etc.) at the cursor — with the correct CC/PC number, value, and channel already filled in.
  5. If you want the tag to fire later in the song instead of immediately, edit it to add a timestamp — change [midi: …] to [midi@00:18.00: …].

That's the whole flow: cursor → Learn → click Send On / Send Off in the editor → Stop. The channel will match whatever MIDI port and channel the editor is using, so you don't have to remember or type @1 yourself.

How songs map to presets

Pick a unique PC number per song in your setlist:

In the editor's Live tab, each row in the setlist already declares which PC triggers it. When Stage Traxx reaches a song and fires [midi: PC1@1], the editor sees PC 1, looks up the matching row, and sends the corresponding preset to your device. No further configuration needed.

Copy-paste example

Here's a full song body you can paste into Stage Traxx and adapt. It loads the ROBOTIC preset on song start (PC 1 from the bundled Sample Setlist), switches HIT on right before each chorus, and switches it off after.

What you need to set up in the editor first

For the tags in this example to do anything, the editor needs two mappings configured:

  1. Setlist song → PC 1. Open the editor's Live tab. In the Setlist card click Load → Sample Setlist — it ships with five rows mapped to PC 0..4 (HIGH&LOW CHORUS / ROBOTIC / SHORT ECHO / DBL LOW CHORUS / CLEAN). The example below uses PC 1 (ROBOTIC). You can verify by clicking Send on the ROBOTIC row — the device should jump to that preset.

    Editor Setlist card with the Sample Setlist loaded — five rows mapped to PC 0..4 (HIGH&LOW CHORUS, ROBOTIC, SHORT ECHO, DBL LOW CHORUS, CLEAN).

  2. HIT → CC 34. Above the setlist, in the Live Controls card, click Load → Sample Config. That ships HIT pre-mapped to CC 34. Or in the device panel click Edit, open the HIT card, and set it to CC 34 by hand (or Learn from Stage Traxx). Either way, once mapped, Send On emits CC34.127 and Send Off emits CC34.0.

    Editor device-panel HIT card in edit mode, MIDI mapping set to CC 34 with Learn / Send On / Send Off buttons.

Loading the two samples (Sample Setlist + Sample Config) gives you both mappings in two clicks. After that the song body below works as-is.

[midi: PC1@1]

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
Woke up to the light through the curtain
Coffee's getting cold but I don't mind
Your voice still hums the tune from last night

[midi@00:18.00: CC34.127@1]
[Chorus]
Sunday morning sun won't let me go
Sunday morning sun is all I know
Singing to the sky, just letting go

[midi@00:34.00: CC34.0@1]
[Verse 2]
Sun on my face and a song on my lips
Hands in your hair while the morning slips
Coffee gone cold but we don't mind

[midi@00:52.00: CC34.127@1]
[Chorus]
Sunday morning sun won't let me go
Sunday morning sun is all I know
Singing to the sky, just letting go

[midi@01:08.00: CC34.0@1]
[Outro]

What this does:

The next song in your setlist would start with [midi: PC2@1] (or whatever PC you've assigned to it in the editor), and so on. Stage Traxx fires the song's own MIDI tags as you cross into it.

Tips

Where to learn more

The full Stage Traxx 4 manual covers more event types (MIDI Note, MIDI Start/Stop, SysEx, etc.) and the full editor (visualisation, looping triggers, sustained CCs, and so on). It's worth a read once you've got the basics down:

And if you're new to all this, start with the Getting Started post — it walks through the full editor + Stage Traxx setup with screenshots and a sample setlist.

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