MainStage 3.2 introduced a new file hierarchy, and there is no longer a Nodes folder containing your patches. Instead, there is a new file called Concert.patch, which contains all of your sets and patches.

To access the Concert.patch file, right click on your MainStage concert and click on Show Package Contents.

mainstage-3-2-file-hierarchy

The two files that are important to us are Concert.patch and workspace.layout. As I mentioned earlier, Concert.patch contains all your patches and sets. Workspace.layout is your concert’s layout template.

The idea here is to import Concert.patch into MainStage just like how you would import any other .patch file. However, you shouldn’t import Concert.patch as whole. More often than that, that’ll cause MainStage to hang. Instead, right click on Concert.patch, and click on Show Package Contents to access the next hierarchical layer.

Check out this screenshot of my MainStage concert.

mainstage-3-2-corrupt-concert

As you can see, my sets and patches are laid out like this…

  • Classics
  • Eighties Poly Synth
  • Square Bells
  • Bright Synth Bass
  • Glass Bells
  • Starlight Vox
  • Delicate Bells
  • Leads
  • Ambient Lead
  • Classic House Organ
  • Percussive Square Lead
  • Electric Buzz
  • Saturn Lead
  • Festival Lead

…and so on.

When I right right click on Concert.patch and click on Show Package Contents, this is what I see.

mainstage-3-2-concert-patch

So, it turns out a .patch file is just a folder in disguise. In this folder, you can see all the patches and channel strips used in the concert. The first two sets of my concert are Classics and Leads, and they are represented in this folder by Classics.patch and Leads.patch.

At this point, you should create a folder, and drag any actual patches to that folder. By actual patches, I mean “MainStage patches”, and not “MainStage sets” which also use .patch for the file extension. Since all of my .patch files are actually sets, I have to go one layer further. Right clicking on Classics.patch and clicking on Show Package Contents brings up this folder.

mainstage-3-2-set

These .patch files are the actual patches in my Classics set, so these are the ones to copy over. Do this for every set in your concert. You can use new folders in Finder to temporarily organize the patches into sets.

Next, just import the patches into a new MainStage concert one by one, either by pressing ⌘I in Edit Mode, or by dragging the patch into your patch list. Whatever you do, just make sure you import by one by one. If MainStage freezes while importing a patch, start over and skip that patch.

After you’re finished, import workspace.layout if you don’t feel like recreating your template. Keep in mind you’ll have to redo your aux channel strips and buses, but that’s not a big deal. When you’re all done, save the file. Try to open it again, and hope it doesn’t corrupt once again.

P.S. this doesn’t seem to work for aliased patches…