Import stems or backing tracks and fire them from a song, an incoming MIDI message, or by hand. Combined with the Show Mode conductor, RigWork can run a click, stream MIDI clock, and play backing audio together - the "play along, hit play, drive the show" piece.
Open the Tracks tab and click + Import Audio, or drag audio files onto the drop zone. Supported formats follow your browser - mp3, wav, ogg, m4a, aac, and flac all work in Chrome and Edge. You can import several files at once.
Each track has a trigger that decides when it plays:
| Mode | Fires when… |
|---|---|
| Song | Its assigned song is activated in Show Mode. The track starts when you enter the song and stops when you leave it (or hit Stop / Panic). Pick the song from the dropdown. |
| Section | A specific song section is activated. The track starts on that section and stops when you move to another section. Pick "Song › Section" from the dropdown. Use this to swap stems part-by-part within a song. |
| MIDI Note | A matching Note-On arrives on your MIDI input. Enter the note number (0-127). Great for one-shot stingers fired from a pad or a sequencer. |
| MIDI PC | A matching Program Change arrives. Enter the PC number (0-127). The same PC can also fire a preset, so one message can switch your tone and launch audio at once. |
| Manual | Only the play button on the track row. Useful for ad-hoc cues. |
Set the loop checkbox to repeat a track until stopped, and use the per-track volume slider plus the master volume at the top of the tab to balance levels. Volume changes apply live to anything already playing.
When you press ▶ Play on the conductor, the current song's Song-mode tracks start together with the click and MIDI clock - audio and click launch in sync. Pressing ⏹ Stop (or Space) stops the click, clock, and the song's backing tracks together. Note- and PC-triggered one-shots play out on their own.
Changing songs in Show Mode swaps backing tracks automatically: the old song's backing stops, the new song's starts.
The first time a track plays, the browser decodes it, which can add a brief delay. Hit Preload on the Tracks tab to decode every track up front so playback is instant. RigWork also background-decodes a song's assigned tracks automatically when you open Show Mode, so they're warm before the downbeat. Each row draws a waveform once decoded.
Stop all on the Tracks tab kills every playing track immediately. The Show Mode Panic button also stops all audio (in addition to sending All Notes Off on every MIDI channel) - reach for it if anything gets stuck on stage.
By default audio is per-device. To sync stems across your devices, cloud audio uploads each imported file to a private per-user storage bucket and downloads it where it's missing. It requires a one-time backend setup (a storage bucket + a small table, both locked to your account). Once enabled and you're signed in, it's automatic - synced tracks are marked. Until then the app simply stays local-only; nothing breaks.