Best Reaper approach for live keys?

[vdubreeze]

In an attempt to cut down on the weight of the shlep I've tried Reaper as a VSTi host a few times at rehearsals with assorted degrees of success. Using a variety of small Focusrite interfaces, 2nd and 3rd Gen. What I'm aiming for is about as simple as it gets Just one acoustic or electric piano or organ at a time, and only a handful of VST3s from each to fill those. Never combining or layering.

What I've been doing is putting each on its own track, arming a track and option clicking the arm button to change patches. Works ok, not great. Too much need to use the trackpad, which I'd like to mostly avoid once it's set up. Ideally I want to move the laptop out of the way and use a controller on the keyboard to move the patch (track select) up and down, or however else works better than reaching for the trackpad.

What's the actual best way to use Reaper as a live keyboard host, especially considering it's jumping between only a handful of already set up instruments and not diving any deeper? Is it an entirely different approach?

Is there anything about MainStage that's makes it better suited? Getting the whole library of instruments is a nice incentive, but I don't really need them. Does MainStage not really do much more than a well laid out Reaper template would?

Thanks for any wisdom