Programming Light Shows... I'm so lost.
Programming Light Shows... I'm so lost. Posted on: 02.06.2012 by Jeraldine Raterink Hey all,I'm just starting to put together my first big stage. Currently I have some pretty outdated lights and such that I just control manually, no dmx or anything. So, i was looking around at intelligent lighting, dmx controlled lights, etc. Now i'm looking for software to program the light shows, I would never just put my lights on auto or sound active. My problem is, I can't find software that will let me create light shows that sync to the beat of the music and all. Basically... I have no idea how to program a light show. In short, you know how if you see a deadmau5 concert or whatever, all the lights go perfectly with the beat and melodies? Or Ultra Music Festival? EDC? That's what I want to know how to do, on a smaller scale obviously. I have no idea where to start or what to use, so any advice is appreciated. | |
| Classie Alvizo 05.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by deevey
Yeah exactly, people arent going to notice or care if each individual chase is perfectly timed to the music and every light flashes with the beat. That doesn't even happen at real shows. All you need is to change scenes in time with the music and with the different sections of the song (drops, chorus etc): big change of colours, or suddenly go pretty dark, or pretty light, or kick in a strobe etc etc. Program a pile of patches and some sort of 4 button footswitch that can do patch up, patch down, blackout and strobe. and you can stomp it with the beat. If your patches are good and you spend a few buchs on some decent lights you could easily get something that would look pretty damn close to a pro show. |
| Darren Teboe 04.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by deevey
Showxpress has an iphone/ipad app that gives you the same control environment as you get in the software. Also, it allows you to trigger scenes via a midi controller if you wish, though you have to learn what is connected to which scene in that scenario, where the iphone/ipad app shows you exactly what's on your computer screen. |
| Darren Teboe 04.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by djfunke
The lighting industry makes a fortune of guys who load up on horrible effect lights. With the popularity of uplighting, your better off just uplighting an entire room and running it on sound active, auto, and/or slave instead of half assing everything. In the end, you only look like an amateur who can't run with the pros. Also, you run the risk of losing present clients/followers who might not be into the low end feel of your event. Also, you can turn off future clientele too. |
| Lela Umanskaya 03.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by Endure
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| Lela Umanskaya 03.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by sobi
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| Darren Teboe 03.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by rotebass
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| Darren Teboe 03.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by hola amigos
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| Charline Dye 15.06.2012 | Check out this thread at DJF for lights with Live http://www.djcommunity s.com/community s/showt...senting-liiveX |
| Yulanda Gomon 15.06.2012 | Hey guys, I'm kinda in the same situation as you but I'm not planning to play on a stage but in a Bar. This bar has a lot of lazer/strobe/stuff but they are always doing the same fucking boring patern. I wonder if I could, using Live, assign my audio clip to midi and then trigger the lights so when I change clip, lighting could be synced without having to trigger it manually I have all my song slipped into differents clips (Intro,Breakdown,Drop etc..) so it would be easy I assume that the bar has their owns DMX interface, so I could made a bunch of preset here with a DMX software and match em after (I wonder how it works, never did that before!) The only thing that I don't understand is what's going to happen when I transition between song? (ex between an Outro and an Intro, which both has midi) Are lights going to explode or what? Thank you for your helps and sorry for english mistakes, been on searching on this topic since a long time and I'm happy to see a topic which doesn't date from 2002. |
| Darren Teboe 05.06.2012 | I'm going to say you should stay away from boards, and go with software. Bang for your buck, software is going to win unless you can afford something along the lines of a Hog, and if you can afford that, you'd be looking at a different caliber of lighting, and probably would be asking about this stuff on a community
that is much more in tune with pro lighting. Back to my point though, the lower end of the spectrum offers pretty basic control options on hardware. Going the software route gives you a LOT more options, and for not much more money. |
| Erich Vallabhaneni 05.06.2012 | Get a DMX board and some lights and just practice. Always believe about what you want the final outcome to be before you go buying lights too, believe of the moods you wanna set. And just listen to your fav tracks and try and put stuff with it and eventually you'll get better. |
| Classie Alvizo 05.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by deevey
Yeah exactly, people arent going to notice or care if each individual chase is perfectly timed to the music and every light flashes with the beat. That doesn't even happen at real shows. All you need is to change scenes in time with the music and with the different sections of the song (drops, chorus etc): big change of colours, or suddenly go pretty dark, or pretty light, or kick in a strobe etc etc. Program a pile of patches and some sort of 4 button footswitch that can do patch up, patch down, blackout and strobe. and you can stomp it with the beat. If your patches are good and you spend a few buchs on some decent lights you could easily get something that would look pretty damn close to a pro show. |
| Darren Teboe 04.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by deevey
Showxpress has an iphone/ipad app that gives you the same control environment as you get in the software. Also, it allows you to trigger scenes via a midi controller if you wish, though you have to learn what is connected to which scene in that scenario, where the iphone/ipad app shows you exactly what's on your computer screen. |
| Rolanda Clodfelder 04.06.2012 |
i know there's really no plug and play, other than sound. And we really don't have anybody that would want to run a DMX controller for 4 hours during a show...
If you really want to DIY it, spend time programming the lights into a desk beforehand into scenes/chases and be prepared to hit them in time with the breaks and builds, footswitch for strobe - I wouldn't even bother going down the software route having a few big buttons you can bang on for lights is easier - I'd just set up slow/med/fast scenes and chases with contrasting colors easily changeable for mood swings. Fuck all people are going to care if the lights are chasing at 88 BPM and your music is at 95BPM so long as the breaks/builds and drops happen in sync and you aren't strobing at a quiet part. I used to LJ/VJ and DJ but wouldn't consider doing them all at the same time, I always brought along someone who's judgement I trusted to run the lights - or else either your lights or mixes are going to suffer. |
| Darren Teboe 04.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by djfunke
The lighting industry makes a fortune of guys who load up on horrible effect lights. With the popularity of uplighting, your better off just uplighting an entire room and running it on sound active, auto, and/or slave instead of half assing everything. In the end, you only look like an amateur who can't run with the pros. Also, you run the risk of losing present clients/followers who might not be into the low end feel of your event. Also, you can turn off future clientele too. |
| Ninfa Mazariegos 03.06.2012 | I have two ADJ LED par 64's that operate in master and slave via XLR. I usually just set them to change to music or fade through colors. They are fairly bright and perfect for a small mobile rig without looking cheezey. They can be programmed to change via controller and I always thought it would be cool to have a foot pedal switch to switch between the two settings I mentioned. I really wouldnt want anything more than that. Except maybe another switch to briefly kill those lights and flash a strobe. Best to just stick with simple wash lighting though. Too many cheap lights just scream amateur. |
| Lela Umanskaya 03.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by Endure
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| Jeraldine Raterink 03.06.2012 | Alright guys, thanks for all the advice and information but i still have some questions. i know there's really no plug and play, other than sound. And we really don't have anybody that would want to run a DMX controller for 4 hours during a show... What i really want is a software that I can plug the music into and then manually make the show in the same software. I've only ever found software that lets you design shows, but not reeeeally to the music. But now that i believe about it, i'm not really sure how that would work. Obviously i'd be following a setlist but the transitional time/effects and such WON'T be planned out, so the lights wouldn't match. And if i miss one beat, i'm screwed for the rest of the evening . I wish i could manually make separate light effects for each song and tie it in with traktor. then as i do effects and such or select my songs, the lights could automatically go with the effects and transition time between songs. but that's crazy... ideas? |
| Darren Teboe 03.06.2012 | lol... programming does take a while, but man is it worth it in the end. |
| Lela Umanskaya 03.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by sobi
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| Darren Teboe 03.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by rotebass
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| Darren Teboe 03.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by hola amigos
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| Lela Umanskaya 03.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by hola amigos
I've also programmed lights for a few evening clubs, it's not a lot of fun (especially using MyDMX, horrible software) but the results can work out semi good. My best advice, try to find some software that has good implementation of submasters, that will allow you some flexibility in shows. Also, find someone who has good timing to run the show for you. Disclaimer: Not a professional lighting tech, just an audio tech that gets lot of odd jobs thrown at him. |
| Jolynn Schroyer 03.06.2012 | So whats the best way to get a decent light show set up? Is it best to go buy the lights and software and just experiment with it? Was wondering how people time the light shows with the music and whats the best way to go about it. |
| Rolanda Clodfelder 03.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by jimbly1990
I did it as proof of concept mostly when I was working as a LJ / VJ where I was syncing the visual computers to the Lighting Desk, but just ended up more hassle than it would ever be worth - midi cable unplugged from lighting desk VERY soon after. The big name jocks/shows travel with their own Lighting Designers / Visual Guys for a reason, very VERY few bother with syncing their own visuals (which is easier) - never mind the lights as well. |
| Kindra Brawand 03.06.2012 | Right I am professional lighting designer, and what most people here have said is entirely right. You can run MIDI to DMX and get an attempt to duplicate your tempo or beat, but even at its absolute best it will become repetitive and samey. There is no plug and play, to b really effective it has to be done manually |
| Brunilda Kora 03.06.2012 | You CAN get midi to DMX converters. So in theory, you could use dummy clips in Ableton to program a whole light show. As long as ableton is sync'd to the music (if you're not USING ableton for the music, that is...) the dummy clips will play in time with the music. You could even have a series of dummy clips that you can trigger off by midi whenever you want. Also: http://resolume.com/features/midi-dmx.php |
| Classie Alvizo 03.06.2012 | just like everyone says, there is no reliable way of making the lights change with the music automatically. At big shows etc it is done by someone just pressing the buttons at the right time. It is possible to replicate this somewhat but your basically left with programming and saving a pile of chases/sequences and then using either a small controller or midi commands sent to a controller to trigger and change these. k |
| Rolanda Clodfelder 03.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by sobi
Sound to light when in comes to lighting is a joke 95% of the time - only time I ever saw it even partially work was on a Masterpiece desk which had triggers for low/mid/high - even that sucked mostly though. If you want to down the software route for lighting, there was some awesome free software mentioned here a few months ago (BPM I believe). |
| Darren Teboe 02.06.2012 |
Originally Posted by Endure
To start, you have to understand how DMX programming works. for every scene you make, you have to program all the steps within that program. How I try to get my scenes to sync to music is first knowing what you are programming for. If it's EDM, I'll assume it's roughly 125 BPMs. In the program, you have to give each step a duration time. Since we know the BPM (roughly), we can put an approximate time to program each step. IE - Dance music runs with a little more than 2 beats every second, so I try and make most of my steps in 2, and 4 second intervals. This gives it a rough timing that mostly lines up with most dance music. As for really making things line up with the music, you have to be on top of the board/computer to make sure things are good. In the example of strobes you used before... I have 5 or 6 different types of DMX programs running strobe scenes. One way I use them effectively is using 3 sets of chases. I have slow, medium, and fast. All the lights run in a circle, stobing only once, and I manually change the speed according to what the breakdown is doing. Once the drop comes, I move to another strobe where all my lights pan around slowly, and they all cycle through different colors and stobe constantly at random speeds and bursts. |
| Anja Ursprung 02.06.2012 | HI, Not an expert. But normally you can sent a line from the mixer to the DMX controller (PC/or stand alone) or you tap the tempo yourself. Its very hard to do some amazing stuff with a small setup. Try to get nice colors to work with. Its looks bad, I believe, if you have to many different at the same time. Other wise light shows is like making music. You have to put every beat down one by one. The light jockeys I worked with even did the strobe effect manually do make it synk perfect with the music. |
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