Programming Light Shows... I'm so lost.

[kevinmcdonough]

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.

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.

[Otacon]

Get a DMX board and some lights and just practice. Always think about what you want the final outcome to be before you go buying lights too, think 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.

[sobi]

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 forum 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.

[pomL]

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.

[VanGogo]

Check out this thread at DJF for lights with Live http://www.djforums.com/forums/showt...senting-liiveX