I posted a comment earlier, but I'll repeat it here: Write down all the stuff you need to control. Most of that will be simple on/off for various effects, or for your channel switching amp, if you have one, (both of which are controlled with Continuous Controller messages or "CC" messages), and the patch changes for your rack gear, known as PROGRAM CHANGE or "PC" commands in midi-speak.
The CC messages you want to send to turn effects off and on, are your IA slots. IA stands for instant access. So, you can program a bunch of things you want to turn on and off - distortion, chorus, delay, reverb, amp channel switching, as an IA slot, and then you assign a button on the foot controller to instantly turn that effect on or off. But wait, there's more.....
You sometimes need to turn many effects from off or on, or on to off all at the same instant, but you only have 1 foot. For this, you need a Liquid Foot PRESET. With a preset, you can instantly dictate 60 IA slots, and 20 lines of other types of midi messages, in a split second. hence, a "liquid foot". You would need 60-80 feet with the changes/control that one liquid foot preset provides to you with the push of one button.
Songs: Is a group of liquid foot presets. So, if I have programmed 20 IA slots to turn effects off and on, and I know a song has a verse, chorus, bridge, and solo, I can create 4 liquid foot presets, specifically designed to turn the right effects off and on for each passage of the song, so I'm only pushing one button, but I'm channel switching my amp, or changing presets on a piece of rack gear (by entering a PC command in one of the 20 lines of programming a preset can also trigger), or turning on 15 effects, and turning off 5 ----in the blink of an eye. So I make my 4 presets, and a make a song file. I give the song a name. I then click in the song preset slots and drop my 4 presets into the song, in the correct order.
PAGE: My pedal board configuration...."what buttons do I want to have at my disposal?" I want a couple of liquid foot presets, I want a couple of Instant access to common stuff, like Distortion, or delay, or boost. And I want special function buttons - song up/song down, page jump. (page jump - I only own an 8 button or 12 button device, but I imagine in my mind I own a 48 button device....I can create multiple pages, and jump, jump, jump to pretend I have a huge pedal board at my feet, each page having unique properties, that would have been impossible to fit on my first page, if that was all I had to work with, then I can jump back to reality, to my first page, to do basic stuff)
Set list: I've built song specific presets, and I created song files, and dropped those presets into the right songs. Now I have 40 songs. We are playing a gig this weekend and only have 45 minutes, so we're playing only 10 songs - I can create a set list with those 10. One of the songs has a high part, and on gig day, if my singer is not feeling it, he boots that song out of the set list, and inserts one of his favorites at the last minute. So I can create an alternate set list, in anticipation of him being lame. I can switch between the primary and alternate set lists, on gig day sound check, in 20 seconds, without using a computer - I can just scroll through the sets I've made and pick one.
NOTE: You dictate which performance mode your pedal is operating in. Which ever mode you pick, is the mode it will remain in, every time you turn it on, unless you pick another mode. If you create songs, and setlists, but you keep running your pedal in PRESET mode, you'll NEVER EVER EVER EVER see your songs, or set lists. It took me awhile to realize why you can program function buttons called "preset up/preset down", "song up/song down" or "context up/context down". I always used set list mode. So I choose a set, and song 1 in that set loads. My page has a song up/song down button on button 9. One day I was messing around and put my pedal into preset mode, just to see what it would do. I stepped on button 9, expecting it to cycle to the next preset bank. but it didn't do anything. I wasn't in a song, and I was asking it to take me to the next song...it just sat there saying "WTF, dude?" LOL, not really, but if I would have used "context up/context down" in my page programming, that button would do the expected thing of "banking up/banking down" regardless of whether I was in PRESET MODE or SONG MODE. Just a little heads up.
