basic band lighting guide v1.2

Basic Band Lighting 1

Steven Kosiba

BASIC BAND

LIGHTING GUIDE

ALSO ENTITLED: DMX? WHAT’S THAT?

STEVEN KOSIBA NEVETSHKdesigndesigndesigndesign


Steven Kosiba


Steven Kosiba

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ALLALLALLALL of the product product product product photographsphotographsphotographsphotographs in this document are © the original manufacturers, be that

Alesis, American DJ, Chauvet, Elation, ETC, Global Truss, Irradiant, Le Maitre, Martin, Neo-

Neon, NSI, VEI, or any other manufacturer.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people who have made this work possible,

mainly the members of the Harmony Central Lighting Forum whose questions inspired me

to write this guide. I would also like to thank my parents for actually thinking this a

worthwhile endeavor! Many thanks also go out to the proofreaders and readers of the initial

releases, as well as people who posed questions that prompted additions and sometimes even

full sections of discussion in this work.


Steven Kosiba

Introduction

This guide was written due to the increasing baseline knowledge required to set up and run and run a basic band lighting system. It used to be all simple and easy – an analog control board plugged in to a dimmer pack which controlled some parcans and other lights. There wasn’t much to it. Now, you need to know control protocols such as DMX and MIDI, and the selection of lighting gear is mind boggling. Along with the increase in technology comes a decrease in quality to keep it at the same price point. So that means more plastic, more 8-bit control, and more things that break. That also means more manuals about more features that you really don’t understand, and are often misleading and sometimes impossible to untangle due to translation. There are so many different features that are included now that sometimes you just need to sit down and get back to basics. There is also a massive influx of fixtures. As I always say, nothing is ever state of the art, something new comes out the next day—and that is most definitely true here. There is so much gear coming out all the time that you never really know where to start. I have tried to break down the different types of fixtures and levels of quality among the different varieties. In short, I’ve tried to steer you through the pile of, well, low-quality Chinese-manufactured bits of plastic and metal that we have come to call band lighting. Who am I, you might ask? I’m a college student (Theatre Design & Tech major, go figure), entertainment electrician, employee of an event lighting and sound production company, and band lighting guy who knows far too much about this sort of thing. This guide exists because of (and for) the folks over at the Harmony Central Lighting forum, which can be found here: http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=34. If it were not for them I would have even known where to start in creating this guide. This forum is a good place to ask questions about getting your rig going, and is a wide knowledge and a user base that (including myself) are able to help out a lot in answering your questions. I will admit to spending far too much of my spare time here helping people out. If you have specific questions, don’t hesitate to email me at [email protected]. Keep in mind that I get a lot of questions and also have to keep a real life in check (occasionally), and I do give priority to bands and individuals who I work for. That being said, I love helping people out.


Steven Kosiba

Part 1: Why Buy? Why, might you ask, should I be buying a lighting system? Lighting is an important aspect of any live show. There is a big difference between LED parcans chasing through a color sequence with scanner beams moving around and shooting through haze and just some white light on your faces. The first thing that lighting does is get you seen how you want to be seen. If you want to have white lights on your faces and soft color washes from the sides and/or back, you will need different lights than a band that wants a lot of moving beams and little to no white frontlight. This shows you how you want to be seen. If your music fits best with scanners and LED chases but you’re playing in white parcans, it just doesn’t look good, and the audience won’t be as in to the show. Even acoustic acts can benefit from some soft-colored sidelight and some small amber parcans as frontlight. Just having frontlight gives you a very flat look, so adding sidelight and backlight will carve you out of your performance space and add a lot to the look of your band. Lighting can draw your audience in to your show a lot more. Lighting can lead the rollercoaster of your show to a whole new level—bringing them up and jumping for powerful, upbeat song, and then down, attentive and quiet for a slow song or ballad. Lighting can invite the audience to participate at just the right moments, and it can bring the focus instantly to any point on stage with the push of a button.

Part 2: What to buy: Fixtures Now that I’ve surely convinced you that you need an awesome lighting system, let’s get down to what that consists of. There are several major types of lights that I’ll discuss here: Parcans, LED Parcans, LED Panel Lights, LED Strip Lights, Punch/Audience lighting, Strobe Lights, Effects lighting, and Moving Lights. Everything that you should have in your rig that isn’t a light is covered in the following sections, from controllers to foggers to trussing. PARCANS Let’s start with Parcans, the most basic of fixtures: a metal housing with a lamp socket in it, a plug on the back of it, and color frame in the front. These take up a lot of power fast, with decent ones for small stages being between 75 and 200 watts, and more powerful ones going to 500W or even 1000W. Needless to say, you don’t always have that much power available to you in a venue. However, regular parcans still have their place. Some PAR38 cans with amber or light pink gels in them and 75 to 120 watt (depending on throw distance and power available) spot lamps in them make great frontlight spots for picking out performers on stage. For instance, you can have two frontlight trees that have parcans on them and can focus one from each side on to each band member. Unless they are a lead singer as well, the drummer is usually lit more from the back and sides than the front, and often does not get pars from the front. Instead some special lighting of the kit is in order. You could also mount these PAR38s on a horizontal pole attached to the top of your main speakers in order to not have to carry another set of stands around with you.

The number in the name of any parcan is the diameter in eighths of an inch. For example, a PAR16 (also known as a Birdie light) is only two inches across. The opening of a PAR64 is a full eight inches across. When using parcans, you often use gels. The best gels are from companies such as Rosco, Apollo, GAM, or Lee Filters, and are purchased in 20”x24” sheets. The gel frame is a bit larger than the actual opening of the fixture. For instance a PAR38 (4.75” opening) actually uses a 6” color frame, so

you need to make sure to purchase the appropriate amount of gel for your fixtures. I’ll get to color selection in the “designing the show” section.

Black PAR38 Can

Black & Silver PAR16 Cans

Silver PAR56 Can


Steven Kosiba

Parcan lamps come in a variety of beam spreads, denoted as follows from narrow to wide: VNSP=Very Narrow SPot, NSP=Narrow SPot, MFL=Medium FLood, and WFL=Wide FLood. PAR38 lamps are sometimes simply noted as SP (SPot) and FL (FLood). PAR46 lamps are only available in NSP and MFL, but PAR56 and PAR64 lamps are available in VNSP, NSP, MFL, and WFL in a variety of wattages. PAR38s are generally 50 to 150 watts with a few lamps over 150W,

PAR46s are 200W, PAR56s are either 300W or 500W, and PAR64s are either 500W or 1000W (1kW). DIMMERS With parcans, you need a dimmer to control them. You can get satellite dimmer packs with anywhere from one to six channels that hang on the t-bar or truss next to your lights, and then you plug your lights in to the dimmer pack, set the DMX address, and run the cable to your DMX controller. Some dimmer packs have built in programs and chases, some have microphones for audio input, and some use proprietary multiplex protocols such as NSI, Lightronics and Leprecon. My favorite low cost compact DMX dimmer is the Chauvet DMX-4 dimmer pack. It can also be used as a relay pack if you are going to use Pinspots (see the “Punch & Audience” lighting section for Pinspots). You DO NOT use dimmer packs to power LED lighting, moving lights, or effects lights. These are powered straight from a wall outlet. General rule: if it has a motor or a transformer in it, it should NOT be plugged in to a dimmer pack. You can plug Pinspots in to a dimmer pack that has a switched mode, such as the DMX-4, or a professional dimmer that is rated for inductive loads (a transformer is an inductive load). For a standard four channel dimmer pack, each channel may be rated for 600 watts, but in reality the wiring and connector for the dimmer pack only rated at 1800 watts total. You should pay attention to this and never load any dimmer pack plugged in to one standard wall outlet with more than 1800 watts of lighting instruments. PUNCH & AUDIENCE LIGHTING The next type of lighting is Punch & Audience lighting. This mainly consists of “blinders” and “pinspots”. These are used sparingly to get the crowd pumped up in a hurry, and to get the audience to sing along (especially blinders for the latter).

“Blinders” come in many forms. They can be as simple as a parcan with no gel in it pointed at your audience that you bring up during choruses, or as complex as a pair of Colorpalettes pointing at the audience that you use to shine crazy patterns out at them. However, the most popular blinders are halogen worklights. Yup, those 150 to 1000 watt T3 Halogen Worklights that you can pick up at Lowes or Home Depot. I prefer 250 watters with a black housing, because they don’t use up as much power as their bigger brothers, and the black housing makes them blend in to the stage better and not stick out like a sore thumb like the yellow and orange ones do. I like to use

blinders on the front of the drum riser shooting through the band at the audience, angled slightly up, or from the upstage stands or truss shooting out through the band. They are also cool if you have columns of them that you can trigger individually. For smaller venues, I actually prefer a fixture from Cooper that is a 150W outdoor floodlight that you can adapt (if you know electrical codes and wiring well enough) to be a plug-in fixture that has a clamp or zip-tie point(s) on it. I like to use four of these on a truss, in groups of two that are plugged in to a dimmer pack. The 150W fixtures are not so bright as to blind the audience, but bright enough to get the point across and look awesome. “Pinspots” are an effect that only works if you have haze or fog in the air. The standard pinspot is a PAR36 light with a six volt transformer in the back that takes a 30W 4515 lamp. This lamp produces a parallel, pencil-thin beam that lights up the haze or fog in criss-crossing beams. These fixtures are normally used with a DMX relay/switch pack, but can be used with a dimmer pack if it is in switched/relay mode. This is because most dimmers do not do well with inductive loads, and the transformer

PAR38 Flood Lamp PAR56 MFL Lamp

Chauvet DMX-4 Dimmer/Relay Pack

Halogen Work Light

Standard Pinspot


Steven Kosiba

in a Pinspot is an inductive load. There are also LED pinspots. The LED Rain 38 from Chauvet can almost be considered a pinspot, because it is a small fixture with a very narrow beam angle. There are other companies that have LED pinspots, both in just white and in RGB mixing types. However, the LED pinspots that I’ve seen have the LED response curve, which is ON-OFF instantly. I much prefer the filament cool down time of standard pinspots; it looks really good and has less of a mechanical, cut and dry look to it. Pinspots are best used in groups. I like to use groups of two to four lights shining out from above the drummer on the upstage truss, or on the ends of the truss shining in a fan across the stage. You can put groups of pinspots on the same channel to save channels on your relay pack using cubetaps and power strips. STROBE LIGHTS

Strobe lights can be an interesting addition to your show if you want to crank up the energy. There are many different wattages of strobe lights, and some have more control than others. They range from the 25 watt mini strobes all the way up to the Martin Atomic 3000 strobes, and beyond to things like “Lighting Strikes” strobes, but those are far out of your budget. The biggest strobe that you should consider purchasing is a 750W model like the Elation Proton Star or the Chauvet DMX Mega Strobe II. The mini box strobes (25 to 35 watts) are great in mass. If you can get ten to twenty of them and place them all over the stage, and set the rates slightly off,

you can have an amazing effect. It will look like there are a bunch of flashbulbs going off behind you. If you have non-DMX controlled strobes, but you want to use a DMX controller to control them, you can either find a strobe controller for them that adapts DMX control to the control protocol of the strobes (usually a ¼” phono plug), or you can use a dimmer/relay pack like the Chauvet DMX-4 in relay to control the power to them for on/off control. The relay pack option is the best if you’re using a bunch of mini strobes. One thing to consider when deciding whether or not to purchase strobe lights is the effectiveness of other fixtures in your rig as strobes. Most LED parcans and moving lights have strobe functions, so these may suffice for your strobing needs. But if you want that actual stroboscope look and feel, actual strobe lights are what you want to go for. One of my favorite effects with strobes is to use a dozen or so 25W mini strobes placed on the truss to produce a crazy flashing effect which looks really cool. It makes the whole truss explode with light, but the strobes themselves are not bright enough to make anyone’s eyes really unhappy like larger strobes. LED FIXTURES: INTRODUCTION LEDs in general: There are several things that I should cover before we jump in to the LED section. LEDs have a distinct look. The light produced by them is almost never just one color due to the RGB mixing system that uses different red, green, and blue LEDs to mix the colors; it’s usually something of a blend. For instance, you can see red and green when you mix yellow. LED fixtures use Light Emitting Diodes, usually in red, green, and blue, colors to mix any color you want. Red and Green makes Yellow, Red and Blue makes Magenta, and Green and Blue makes Cyan. As you can see from the RGB Spectrum picture on the right, it is harder to mix yellow and pink with LEDs because the spectrum does not extend to those corners of the full color spectrum. This gives you a wide palette of colors that you can mix with an RGB LED fixture. Some fixtures add white or amber or both in order to get closer to the warmer end of the spectrum. There are generally two types of LEDs: the small diodes found in lower-priced fixtures, and the high-end one-watt or three-watt LEDs found in the more powerful and expensive fixtures. The fixtures that use one-watt and three-watt LEDs are much brighter using far fewer LEDs. For instance, the Elation Opti 30 RGB, a fixture with 12 one-watt LEDs, can outclass a PAR64 LED can with over 150 of the smaller LEDs. However, the PAR64 with over 150 smaller LEDs is still cheaper than the Opti 30 RGB. The smaller LEDs come in two main types – 5mm and 10mm. The 5mm diodes are sometimes called “1/4 watt diodes”, but consume much less power. Same thing for 10mm diodes being called “1/2 watt diodes”, they don’t actually use a half watt of power, it’s far less than that. These are terms that have been injected in to the buzz about LED fixtures and are very misleading. Just understand that the 10mm diodes are

The Colors Produced by RGB Mixing

Elation Proton Star

Chauvet Mini Strobe


Steven Kosiba

generally much brighter than the 5mm diodes. LED fixtures come in many sizes and shapes, including parcan fixtures, panel fixtures, and striplight fixtures. Another important thing to realize with RGB LED fixtures is that it is harder to get certain colors. For instance, it’s very hard to mix a good white or a good neutral amber using LEDs due to the amount of the spectrum RGB LEDs cover. LED PARCANS If you like the look of parcans but don’t like the power consumption and the fact that you can only have one color, look no further than LED parcans. These require no dimmer packs and hook directly up to your DMX controller, and best of all, they draw very little power compared to parcans that use filament lamps. LED Parcans come in many sizes, from the small Chauvet Colorsplash/LEDsplash Jr all the way up to a wide variety of LED PAR64 cans, in short and long varieties. You have models with the small LEDs, and models with the one-watt and three-watt LEDs. In general, LED parcans have RGB mixing, but some are just white or white/amber to have a wide range of mixable white tones (cool to warm). There are also some LED parcans that have UV (Ultraviolet) LEDs. These can be used in place of lower-wattage blacklights for a UV effect. You’ll never have to deal with finding UV lamps again if you go the UV LED fixture route.

One main thing to look for when choosing an LED parcan is the beam angle. Is it a narrow fixture or a wide-angle fixture? This is usually determined by the internal lensing of the LEDs, but sometimes (especially in higher end fixtures with the one-watt and three-watt LEDs) determined by additional reflectors in the fixture that can sometimes be swapped out to change the beam angle. Any fixture from the LED Rain series by Chauvet will have a narrow beam, because that is how the internal lensing of the LEDs is designed. Chauvet lists all of the beam spreads on the spec sheets of the fixtures, which is nice, as many companies do not do this. If you want a tight

concentrated beam of light, get a fixture that has a narrow beam angle. A beam angle of 10 to 15 is considered quite narrow, and an angle from 30 to 45 is considered a wide or wash angle. The Chauvet Colorsplash/LEDsplash 200B is a good example of a wash LED parcan because it has a 49 degree field angle, and thus can cover more of the stage. You can put a diffuser (like that off of a drop-ceiling fluorescent tube fixture) in the front of an LED parcan to spread the beam out, or use a pre-made diffusion media from a gel manufacturer, such as Rosco 132, 119, or 114.

One of the useful features included on many LED Parcans is a double-yoke, which allows you to set the fixture up on the floor without a floor stand. This speeds up setup time and reduces cost – you don’t have to buy/make a floor base. The American DJ 46HP LED Pro (pictured at left) features the double-yoke assembly, allowing it to be set up on the floor, on top of amplifiers on stage, or on any other sturdy surface. It has 18 one-watt Luxeon LEDs, making it a very powerful fixture for its size. It is a fairly narrow-beam LED fixture, so it can be used to project narrow beams through haze or to spotlight performers. It can also be used to create columns of light on walls or backdrops. Also, many LED Parcans shipping now, especially from Chauvet, have “linkable power”. This either uses an IEC Type 1

connector (international computer power cable, also used a lot in fog machine remotes) or a special three pin input/output connector that has a molded fitting that locks together. Outdoor-rated fixtures (Chauvet Colorado series is an example) have unique locking molded 3-prong connectors with locking connectors. Here’s a good sampling of what to pick from for RGB LED Parcans right now: Chauvet makes the Colorsplash (now LEDsplash) series, with the 200B and 152B (wide angle), Jr (tiny fixture, not much output, narrow beam angle), LEDsplash 2 (high output, one-watt LEDs), and the 196 (don’t buy it, it’s harder to control, get a 200B or 152B instead). The Rain series is all narrow-beam fixtures, with the Rain 38, 56, and 64. These are decent narrow-beam fixtures, good for narrow beams through haze or spotlighting performers, and have a better LED arrangement than the Irradiant LED Pars. Chauvet also

Chauvet LED Rain 64

Elation Opti 30 RGB

Chauvet Colorsplash 200B

American DJ 46HP LED Pro


Steven Kosiba

Chauvet LED Shadow

has a “4BAR” pack that has four flat-panel LED Parcans that come pre-rigged on a power and data distribution bar with a tripod and foot controller in a separate pack. This system is completely DMX controllable, so two of these would be decent for a band wanting a get-out-and-go solution for back lighting from the two upstage corners. Chauvet also makes the Colordash Par, which is a small LED Parcan with 18 one-watt LEDs. Chauvet also offers a high-output series of fixtures called the Colorado fixtures including the Colorado 1 and Colorado 3, two popular high-output, weatherized fixtures. On the American DJ side, I don’t recommend much, but they have the LED64 and the LED64 PRO. The 64 LED (B – Black or P – Polish) is a wider beam spread fixture and thus less output per area, and the 64 LED PRO (Black or Polish) is a narrower beam fixture, so thus brighter per area. American DJ also makes a PAR36 LED fixture that’s a small, basic RGB mixing fixture. It’s not that powerful, and not worth it considering Irradiant’s offerings for the same price. American DJ also sells a P38 LED PRO that is a brighter PAR38 LED fixture that uses 10mm LEDs. American DJ also sells the P56P LED, which is a basic PAR56 LED wash fixture that is decent for the price. The 46HP LED PRO described previously is a decent high-output fixture with one-watt LEDs. Keep in mind that Irradiant makes a lot of LED cans for other companies, including Chauvet, so you’re getting the same product quality from Irradiant. Irradiant offers a black 200B-style casing fixture that is their low-output PAR56 LED fixture. Then there are the two nice little PAR38 LED and PAR46 LED Fixtures, and then there are the standard PAR56 and 64 fixtures with 5mm diodes, the mid-range 56 and 64s with 10mm diodes, and the Pro range 56 and 64 LED fixtures with the one-watt high-power Diodes. My main issue with the Irradiant cans is that they use rings of LEDs, which looks a lot less distributed than the Chauvet Rain fixtures or even the Chauvet 200B and 152B fixtures. Elation also makes some higher power LED fixtures, such as the Opti 30 RGB and Opti RGB. These use the one-watt Diodes and are more expensive, but quite worth it. Elation also now sells the Opti TRI 30, Opti TRI PAR, and a few other TRI series fixtures that have tricolor LEDs (three watt diode module, with a red one-watt diode, green one-watt diode, and blue one-watt diode all in one small package). These give a much more uniform light output and don’t have the tricolor shadows commonly associated with LED fixtures. Elation also sells the Opti 16-4 CW and WW (cool white and warm white) fixtures that have four one-watt LEDs in a compact package. These are probably about equal to a 90W PAR38 fixture tops. However, two per side per performer could provide a decent frontlight system. The Colorkey/Solaris/Stage Outlet LED Pars are quickly becoming popular. Their standard LED PAR64 is very popular, and their one-watt LED PAR64 is gaining popularity fast as a good, high-power LED can. These are the LED cans that many mid-level lighting rental companies buy to supply LEDs at a lower cost than the one-watt or three-watt fixtures. The regular PAR64LED is about equal to a 300W PAR56 lamp with a saturated gel, and the high-power can about equal to a 500W PAR56 lamp with saturated gel. There are other LED Parcans floating around out there, but with the smaller fixtures (especially the ones with plastic cases), you have to consider build quality as a major factor in your purchasing decision. LED PANEL FIXTURES Another type of LED fixture is an LED panel fixture. This is a fixture like the Chauvet Colorpalette, or the American DJ Mega Panel. These fixtures have a panel of LEDs that can often be divided up in to different sections (both the Colorpalette and Mega Panel are eight section fixtures). Each of these sections can have its own RGB mixing control, or the fixture can be controlled as a whole. This preference is set in the mode of the fixture or by a control channel. The more areas of an LED panel fixture, the more control channels it requires. These lights are good for backlighting and sidelighting where a broad wash of color is needed. They an also

produce some really cool effects when you use the internal patterns or mix the 8 individual squares to different colors in a chase. These fixtures can use up a lot of channels (the Colorpalette uses 27 channels in full control mode of all 8 squares on the face of the fixture). There are also UV versions of some of these panel fixtures, such as the Chauvet LED Shadow, which is a high-output UV LED panel fixture. It’s worth noting that American DJ uses the higher-power 10mm diodes in their panel fixtures (currently just the Mega Panel), which is why they are considerably more powerful (and expensive).

Chauvet Colorpalette


Steven Kosiba

Chauvet Colorstrip

LED STRIPLIGHTS The final type of LED lighting is LED striplights. Popular fixtures are the Chauvet Colorstrip and American DJ Mega Bar. These fixtures are long strips of LEDs, and often have many built in patterns. The Chauvet Colorstrip has blocks of red, green, and blue LEDs next to each other, while the Mega Bar has all of the colors of LEDs mixed together on the surface so that the colors mix better. The Chauvet Colorstrip uses a bunch of 5mm diodes, while the ADJ Mega Bar uses the 10mm diodes. Also, the Mega Bar can be divided up in to sections much like the LED panel lights described above, but there are only 3 sections in the Mega Bar. There are also UV/Blacklight LED striplights, such as the American DJ Mega Bar UV50 and UV100. Elation also offers LED strips as well as “bricks”, which are basically short LED strips. These are available in regular, one-watt, or one-watt TRI varieties of various models that are quite powerful. Another fixture that might fall in to this category or the general LED wash category is the Irradiant Vivid II fixture. It has thirty-six one-watt

diodes, in red, green, and blue. It is something of a rectangular form factor fixture, and is a punchy little light that’s great if you want to have a fixture per side for high-power sidelighting on the far ends of your truss, especially in a venue with higher ceilings.

EFFECTS LIGHTING Effects lighting covers a broad range of lights. Pinspots are sometimes in the “punch” lighting category and sometimes here in the “effects” category. Also in the effects category are moonflowers, oil wheel projectors, and some LED fixtures. Also, many LED panel lights and striplights have built in effects which put them in this category as well. Some of my favorite effects for band lighting are the small LED moonflowers that have rotating mirror dishes, like the American DJ Pearl LED fixtures (White and Colored). These fixtures have a single LED chip and a rotating mirror dish inside, producing a rotating moonflower type of effect. The white version has all clear mirrors, and the colored version has various colors over the mirror glass. The colored version has been discontinued but is still available used. The most recent addition to the Pearl series, the Tri-LED Pearl, has red green and blue LEDs in it, so you can get a variety of different colors from the effect via the color channel, which scrolls through several different colors. It has channels for Color, Intensity, Strobe, and Rotation. This allows you to create a good variety of colors and movements from one fixture. Another very good effect is the American DJ Saturn TRI-LED System. This system consists of four fixtures that have a set of lenses that creates a fan of seven beams, all the same color. The RGB mixing properties of this fixture allow you to actually use three different DMX channels to control the intensities of the red, green, and blue LEDs. The lenses on the fixture, combined with the three different LED diodes put this fixture in a different class than the “lite-brite” fixtures. It’s a great

fixture to use in groups of two or four as a punch effect. These fixtures are also sold individually through American DJ Dealers. Effectively, it can replace a cluster of seven pinspots and it has RGB mixing. Pinspots do have a distinct look and a place in rigs, but in some cases this may be the fixture you are looking for. It can also be a good effect from behind the drum kit. If you do get a whole package of four for your rig, think about putting two behind the drummer and two on the ends of your truss, shining across the stage.

There is yet another good fixture in the American DJ TRI series, and it’s quite unique. The TRI Phase is a very interesting effect that produces a “gyrating moonflower” type pattern. The color is controllable like the color of the TRI Pearl, with one color channel that scrolls through various combinations of the three LEDs (red, green, and blue), but the fixture has six different lenses and a rotating pattern assembly inside, making for a very interesting and quite active color-controllable moonflower effect. This effect certainly isn’t for every band, but if you’ve been looking for a super-charged energetic moonflower effect, this just might be it.

American DJ Mega Bar LED

American DJ Pearl LED White

American DJ Saturn TRI-LED System


Steven Kosiba

The ADJ Revo, Quad Gem, Reflex LED, Vision LED, Electra LED, Spectrum LED and Mystic LED fixtures and the Chauvet Vue, DerbyX, J-Five, LX-5, LX-10 and Elan fixtures are certainly interesting effects, but I really think that these fixtures should be reserved for mobile DJs. These “lite-brite” style effects produce a cheesy-looking LED pattern on the ceiling, and really don’t have a place in band lighting, in my opinion. The style of chasing and flashing red, green, and blue beams just seems far too cheesy and DJ-like for most bands. These are excellent DJ effects, don’t get me wrong; but I just think that they have no place in the lighting rigs of bands. If you’re dead set on one of these lights, the Quad Gem DMX is known as one of the punchiest of them, and is DMX controllable. You have control over the different colored clusters in each of the individual lens assemblies. The ADJ LED Vision is also a nice little fixture, and it has very powerful control over the different LEDs. In the 12 channel mode, it allows you to control four sections of each color of LED. This could be used to create some very nice effects. MOVING LIGHTS The most advanced lights that I will cover are Moving Lights. This includes Moving Head lights and Scanners/Moving Mirror lights. Moving heads generally cost more, but have a wider range of motion. Scanners cost less and are much faster, because only the mirror moves, not the head. One important

distinction to make with moving lights is the types of light sources available. Halogen light sources are standard filament lamps, and can be electronically dimmed. 250W halogen sources are common in scanners, usually with the ELC lamp. There are also some moving heads that use ELC or similar halogen lamps. Most halogen lamps used in moving lights have built in reflectors, but in some cases the reflectors are inside the lights. Discharge sources are much more efficient in terms of wattage, and give off a much “whiter” white, that even sometimes verges on a bluish shade of white. A 150W discharge

source (for example, the common HTI-150) can easily keep up with a 250W Halogen lamp. However, discharge sources are not dimmable, so you have to have a mechanical dimmer in the fixture that is basically a metal “flag” that moves in to the path of the light in order to dim it. Also, discharge sources must be “struck” when you power up your rig. This turns on the lamp, and then the lamp does not get turned off until you shut down the rig, which means that the dimming flag or shutter must be in the path in order to black the light out when it is not in use. Terminology: Gobo—a metal or glass pattern that is projected using a moving light or gobo projector Wheel—a circular piece of metal with holes cut around the edge to put gobos or color filters in, this rotates to put the right filter or gobo in the path of the light beam when you change the value of the channel. Shutter—used to strobe a moving light, this is a metal flag that moves in and out of the beam of light at a high rate of speed. Sometimes two flags that meet in the middle are used in order to be able to run faster strobe effects. Pan—left/right movement of the fixture/mirror Tilt—up/down movement of the fixture/mirror.

Scanners are the most basic of moving lights. They have a mirror that has pan and tilt, and has color and/or gobo wheels along with a halogen or discharge light source. A basic scanner has a channel for pan, a channel for tilt, a channel for color on the color wheel, and a channel for gobo on the gobo wheel. It may also have an intensity channel, a strobe channel, or even a channel for rotation of the gobos. Scanners are much faster than moving heads because the only have to move the lightweight mirror and not the whole head assembly, so they can be used for quick movements. The VEI Novascan V-250-1 is a very popular DMX controllable halogen scanner that has pan and tilt along with color and gobo wheels, a strobing shutter, and a dimmer. The Chauvet Intimidator 2.0 is

another popular scanner with similar controls and capabilities. The Intimidator 2.0 also has an alternate model with an HTI-150 discharge lamp, which produces the “whiter white” described in the discharge lamps section. Martin also makes a high-quality line of mid-range scanners that come in several models. The martin SCX 500 is a 150W halogen source, the SCX 600 is a 250W halogen source

VEI Novascan V-250-1

A 250 watt ELC Lamp

A Gobo Wheel


Steven Kosiba

and has rotating gobos, and the SCX 700 is very similar to the SCX 600 in terms of features and uses a 150W discharge source. These fixtures are a bit more expensive, but well worth it in terms of quality. The SCX500 is a smart choice for the budget-minded band, and is powerful for its size and wattage. The SCX 500 is a great choice if you have the money, and two to four fixtures is a decent moving light package for club/bar bands. It is a very feature-packed light for being under $400 (you can get it for around $320 + shipping new), and it has a number of great built-in features and quality far beyond any of the others. The SCX fixtures also have built-in movement macros, making the programming of movements in your show exponentially easier. These are really good choices if you have the money, and you will not be disappointed with your purchases. The quality is far above any of the other scanners mentioned due to the Martin build quality and optics.

There is also another type of scanners called “Rolling Mirror” scanners. These have a cylindrical mirror drum that can spin and pan. These fixtures can produce a fan of color and gobo along just about any axis, but are really not that great in some situations. There are several decent rolling mirror scanners on the market, including the Chauvet Insignia 2.0, the VEI V-250-2, and the Martin SCX 800. The Martin SCX800 is much more expensive than the others because of the high output discharge lamp and Martin optics.

Moving heads are usually a bit more advanced, with the most basic of moving heads almost always including a rotating gobo wheel, and many of them including a prism or rotating prism as well, and also possibly multiple gobo wheels, multi-step or continuous zoom, remote lens focusing, and other effects. If you’re buying moving heads I sure hope you know what you’re doing, because they’re not cheap and certainly not simple. The Chauvet Intimidator 2.0 Spot is a very basic moving head, with a Color wheel and a single rotating gobo wheel. It is fairly compact for a moving head, and comes with a Halogen or Discharge (HTI) lamp, so you can pick which is best for you. Chauvet has also recently come out with a new moving head, the Intimidator Spot 150, which is basically the same as the Intimidator 2.0 Spot HTI but has an updated case design. The Elation Design Spot 250 is a powerful moving head with an MSD-250 lamp. It costs more than your whole truss system but is well worth the price if you are really making a big leap in to larger venues and taking a larger scale lighting system with you. You also should look at the Intimidator Spot 250 from Chauvet, which is a nice 250W discharge moving head. However, at that point, you should strongly consider getting a lighting director on board who will be able to take care of all of the issues with lighting – fixtures, power, running lights during shows, and making your show look the best that it can. These fixtures are also very hard to operate to their full effect using the basic DJ controllers that many bands use, so it is recommended that you use something such as the Magic 260 or MLC128R with these fixtures. At the very top end of the lighting market for most of the folks reading this book are the smaller Martin fixtures in the MAC line. The Martin smartMAC, MAC250 Krypton, MAC250 Entour, and MAC250 Wash are all professional level moving heads. Part 2: What to buy: Lasers Unless you’re a Pink Floyd tribute act or another band that necessitates lasers, don’t get them. You can get a lot more out of other effects. When I see a band that uses lasers, there had better be a pretty darn good reason for it other than the fact that “the guitarist wanted kool lazerz behind him for this one awesome song…I mean a bunch of awesome songs…I mean…I mean…LAZERZ!” They just really don’t read well unless you have programmed them well and are using them on particular songs where they seem appropriate. I personally would only ever want a nice DMX-controlled laser with liquid sky capabilities. I prefer a liquid sky effect to just about anything else, and one that has good DMX control should be able to serve you well. I’ve heard that Chauvet and Omnisistem make good lasers, as well as a company called X-Laser. The ADJ Galaxian series are reportedly decent, and their Galaxian Sky would probably be a nice first laser. The little lasers at Guitar Center really won’t do much for you. Lasers by a company called Shinp are also reportedly rather good, and are nice and powerful for the money. I will readily admit that lasers are my area of least expertise.

Martin SCX 600

Chauvet Insignia 2.0

Elation Design Spot 250


Steven Kosiba

Part 2: What to buy: Controllers

The controller that you purchase will greatly influence how easy it is for you to program and operate your lighting rig. There are a few different basic types of controllers. The basic DJ controllers, which are the most common, are rather simplistic in their capabilities. You need to get a controller that can control the number of fixtures in your rig as well as have enough channels

per fixture to control the fixture in your rig with the most channels. As you will probably expand, I would recommend getting a controller that can support up to 32 channels per fixture, such as the Chauvet DMX-70 or Obey 70. These controllers are very easy to operate, and can be controlled via a MIDI pedalboard. Having up to 32 channels per fixture will allow you to do things like control a Chauvet Colorpalette in full split 27 channel mode once you learn what that means, and will be able to control more moving lights if you get them. However, beyond a few simple scenes, they absolutely suck, as many people have figured out through experience. If you’ll be using scanners or other moving lights, skip these controllers and get a Magic 260 or a software package. If you are using no moving lights or effect lights and just Parcans and a few LED Parcans, the Chauvet Stage Designer or ADJ Stage Setter series may be what you are looking for, as they allow you to have “scenes” in the bottom row of faders. This is very useful if you are running the show on the fly and want to mix it up every night. The Stage Designer will allow you to quickly program a few LED parcans and get your show up and running with faders in no time.

If you are going to be using a lot of moving lights, especially moving heads, you’ll want to strongly consider a controller such as the Elation/American DJ Magic 260 or the NSI MLC128R. These controllers are much more advanced and will give you more flexible control over your lights, as well as running your show live. You will be able to access a whole movement and color sequence with one button press, and there is also a good tap/sync button as well as an audio input so that

you can actually sync the chase to a beat. You can run this, for instance, as a gated output of the kick drum or snare drum, or if you use a click track, you can just run a split of the click track to the controller. These controllers have some great advanced features like a “Default” button that puts the fixtures back at their defaults specified by the fixture personality and a “GO” button for manually stepping through chases. The other wonderful thing about these controllers is that they do not require you to zero out all of the faders before programming the next fixture. You just hit the fixture button for the next fixture, and the current values for the channels come up on the LCD above/below the encoder wheels that are used to enter the channel data. This method of data entry – using encoder wheels instead of an LCD – means that there is no absolute levels on the encoders, just relative levels. To put that in simpler terms, there is no pointer on the dial. Wherever the encoder is positionally when you select a new fixture becomes whatever value the fixture is currently at, so that you don’t have to zero out all of the controls and bring things up one by one like you have to do on the lower end DJ controllers. The Elation Show Designer series is the next level above these, and is even more advanced, and allows you a lot more control over your fixtures when running them live. These controllers, especially the Show Designer 2 and Show Designer 3, have

a much steeper learning curve than the Magic 260 or MLC128R, and really should not be considered unless you will have a dedicated lighting operator running your show. In the same price range as the higher end Show Designers is the Electronic Theater Controls’ Smartfade ML. The Smartfade ML is a very unique lighting console in that it provides a lot of the pro level features at a pricepoint that

some bands and smaller acts can afford. It allows you to build your show in unique ways that are not possible with any of the other controllers listed. It has a very easy-to-use interface and allows you to really operate your show on the fly, which cannot be said for many of the other controllers that I have listed so far. It has 24 faders that allow you to bring up memories, which can include positions, colors, effects, and chases all in the same memory. The Smartfade ML is a console to seriously consider if you

Chauvet Obey 70

Chauvet Stage Designer 50

American DJ Magic 260

NSI MLC128R

ETC Smartfade ML


Steven Kosiba

have 6 or more moving lights with LED fixtures and effects operating along side the movers. This console has the power of console costing much more, but allows you to access them at a price that puts this technology much closer to your budget than ever before. It is really a unique console. It will allow you to program faster and easier than with any of the previously mentioned consoles, and give you far fewer frustrations during live show playback. It will allow you to treat movers using techniques for an analog board – bump buttons, faders, etc, except that each of those faders that you used to have for a single light or a chase or a submaster now contains a whole look pre-made that can include chases, moving light movements, color fades, and preset positions that are easy to set up from gig to gig. It is really the top-of-the-line console for the smaller band market. You also have several software options to consider. One of the most popular (and inexpensive) is Freestyler, which can be used with an Enttec USB-DMX interface. It allows you to do more complex scenes and makes your work with MIDI much easier. Freestyler actually uses the Sunlite/Nicolaudie software platform for visualization. American DJ’s myDMX is not even as good as Freestyler, so don’t even consider it. The next step up is Daslight or Sunlite. Both are based of the Nicolaudie style interface, and are similar, but they have their differences. From what I’ve seen, Sunlite is a bit better due to a few button functions and scene functions. The next step up from Sunlite is Martin LightJockey, which is the truly professional DMX control software package. If you are a bit more tech savvy, the Chamsys MagicQ PC software might be for you. You can easily hook it up with an Enttec interface, and you can also use one of the many available programming wings if you want to have the power of a professional console but don’t want to pay for the full deal – this means that you can use your computer and the custom programming wing to make a very powerful combination. With Sunlite, you might want to consider an Xkeys programmable USB keypad for accessing scenes on the fly, as well as a Behringer BCF fader module to control select intensity channels or submasters. When picking a controller, you may want to consider what MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) capabilities you are interested in having for your show. MIDI pedalboards such as the Behringer FCB1010 can be used to recall scenes in your controller. More on this in “Basic Programming II” section. You also use a MIDI drum pad to control scenes, which is quite useful if the drummer will be running the show from their throne. Most basic controllers offer MIDI scene recall in “auto” mode, and the more advanced controllers (such as the NSI MLC series) offer more direct selection of any scene or pattern via MIDI. Most software controllers also offer MIDI interfacing, including rather direct selection of a lot of different playback functions. However, some software controllers require that you use their proprietary MIDI interface, but not many. (As a note, you may want to also use a USB Keypad like X-Keys if you want to have hands-on access to playback in software – not MIDI, but just a programmable USB keypad that gives you key access to playback and sometimes programming in software controllers.) If you use a MIDI sequencing program in your show for backing tracks, patch changes, or anything else, this may be a very easy way to automate your lighting changes and not have to be on top of a MIDI pedalboard or drum pad or have to hire a lighting guy. If you use MIDI with a software solution, and the MIDI controller doesn’t have a built in USB>MIDI interface, you will have to purchase one of these as well. But that’s not my department of expertise. You should definitely research this part of things quite a bit, because there are some MIDI>USB interfaces that work well, and some that have known issues. You will want to figure this out before making your purchase. I’d trust product from E-MU, M-Audio, and MOTU, but definitely make sure to do your homework here! Part 2: What to buy: Stands/Trussing So you’ve picked out the fixtures you want. Cool! How are you going to keep them in the air? You’ve got a variety of options, from a piece of pipe on top of your main speakers to a full truss system with crank-up stands and box truss. Basic lighting t-stands (I won’t specify brand here, because there are so many sources of decent, low-priced T-stands) vary in height from seven feet to twelve or thirteen feet. If you can put the lights higher in the air you should do so, in order to get a better angle that’s not right in your face or the audiences’ faces. You can start out with a pair of rear T-stands and a pair of

Alesis ControlPad Drum Pad


Steven Kosiba

front T-stands or t-bars mounted to the tops of your front speakers. This way you can have backlight from the two rear stands and frontlight from the two front stands/bars. Once your rig becomes more advanced, you might upgrade to a trussing system. The standard ten foot trussing systems with the T-stands on either end are fairly weak, but can support just a few parcans and scanners, but not much else. The big guns are Global Truss ST-132 stands and twelve inch box truss. This allows you to span long distances (a pair of six foot or a pair of eight foot lengths is usually good for many smaller stages, or even three five-foot lengths). The ST-132s are very strong and can crank up to thirteen feet. The twelve inch truss can support weight over longer spans and have a lot of lights

hanging from it without bending at all. This is great for putting upstage, with the stands on either side of the drummer, and the trussing going over the drum set, but as far back as possible, allowing you to light the drummer with your backlight fixtures. For vertical trusses, Global Truss sells baseplates in two by two and three by three foot sizes that accommodate both their square and triangular twelve inch truss. The two by two foot plates should really only be used for six feet or less of vertical truss, and the three foot plates for anything larger. You will want to consult a professional when you decide to use vertical trusses, because if you do not weight things properly, you can have a whole tower fall over, which ruins your gear and possibly injures a band member and sends them to the hospital. You also have to consider what kind of look you want, as truss design really defines your stage a lot, especially when you start to put more of it up there. One of the big decisions is black or silver truss – black truss gives a much more subdued presence, even with a lot of lights on it. If you have a big bare metal truss, you will have a very different look to your rig. You can have a single truss on crank-up stands, a series of vertical trusses that form vertical bars upstage with pipe between them to hold banners, etc. You can also use small LED fixtures for “truss warmers” or “truss toners” which are used to light up your truss various colors. This can be interesting if used with “truss socks”, which are sleeves of white stretch fabric that you pull over vertical trusses so when you uplight the truss from inside with a truss warmer fixture, the fabric lights up.

Part 2: What to buy: Atmospheric Effects Atmospheric effects are important to making many lights stand out. Pinspots are useless without them, as are most effect lighting fixtures, and to a large extent moving lights. Without atmosphere, you don’t see the beams of light, just where they land. There are two main types of atmospheric effects: Fog and Haze. Fog is a much thicker, opaque effect that is almost always white in color. Haze is a very thin type of atmospheric effect that you can barely see without beams of light shining through it, but picks up beams of light really well. From lowest to highest price, some hazers include the Chauvet HZ-1000, the American DJ Haze Generator/Star Light and Magic Hazer/Optima HZ-100 (all the same thing, just under different names), the Martin Magnum 2500 Hz, and the Le Maitre Radiance. The Radiance is a very high-output, high-performance machine that produces an excellent water-based haze, and the fluid lasts forever. The particulate matter is very fine, and the machine is very well built and hardly ever needs maintenance. For everyone that I know who has purchased it, it has been well worth the investment in low fluid consumption, high output, and long hang time. A true haze machine also distributes the haze much better and doesn’t leave floating layers of fog hanging at head-height, which is one of the annoying side effects of foggers. While many people are partial to hazers at this point, there are some people who still want to use regular ol’ fog machines. The Martin Magnum series of foggers is a great line of products, and the Magnum 650 and Magnum 850 are good small-stage foggers. The Antari and Chauvet product ranges are also decent – but a machine of at around 600 watts minimum is desirable to produce a decent amount of smoke. “Fazers” are foggers parading as hazers. They basically have a built-in fan system that makes it look more like a haze machine, but still dissipates like a fog machine. The main difference between a fazer and a real haze machine is that the “faze” from a fazer will have a very short hang time in the space. The haze from a true hazer will hang in the room for a very long time, giving you maximum beamage for longer.

Global Truss ST-132 13’ Crank-Up Stand

Le Maitre Radiance Hazer


Steven Kosiba

There are also “low fog” or “low smoke” generators that have a chiller module that chills the fog in order to keep it close to the ground. The American DJ Mr. Cool fogger/chiller setup is one of the cheaper ones, and the Antari ICE-101 is another low-priced chiller/fogger system. For low-lying fog, the Antari DNG-200 is the best lower-end machine. You should really only consider a low-lying fog machine after you get a nice hazer or fogger for the main beam highlights in your show. There are also options using CO2 (carbon dioxide), but you have to take in to consideration health risks when using CO2.

Part 2: What to buy: Cables

Cables are an incredibly important part of your investment. Properly rated power cables are a must, as well as actual DMX cables. DMX cables are different from microphone cables in a few ways. The two main differences are shielding and resistance. DMX cables are properly shielded data cables, and are rated at 110 to 120 ohms. Microphone cables do not have a good

shield, and are rated at 80 ohms. Make sure to buy good power cables as well. Never buy anything other than black power cables, and make sure to buy twelve gauge if you are going to be running above fifteen amps. Also make sure that the wall circuit that you are connecting to can handle fifteen amps or more if that is how much you are pulling. Good power cables are not cheap, but buy the right stuff and you’ll only have to buy it once. NSI DMX cable is good quality stuff at a decent price, and ADJ Accu

Cable DMX cable and extension cords are both a good value. There are several other companies that make decent DMX and black twelve gauge Power cables. Orange or green extension cords make your rig look exceedingly amateur, so just don’t do it. If you’re using T-bars, you can use quad split assemblies to make your setup look very clean. These are basically one-in-to-four cable assemblies that split in to four little cables with an edison plug on the end of each. The one shown is from Cables To Go and is a very good splitter for T-bars.

The other thing that you can do for cabling is to get a custom cable snake made. If you have gone with a larger setup, perhaps with two ST-132s and fifteen feet of truss, you may want to go this route. You will need to have a standard setup for your fixtures, because a cable snake relies on the fixtures being at the same place every time you set things up. This custom cable snake/wiring harness will have two or three inputs – one DMX input, and one or two power inputs – on the end that hangs off of the truss down to the floor. When you stretch it out along the length of the truss, you will have DMX in/out and power connections for each fixture right where they need to be. Another thing to consider is making your own cables – if you are good with a soldering iron, you can buy bulk DMX cable (such as a spool of ADJ Accu Cable DMX cable), and some Neutrik or Amphenol XLR connectors (do yourself a favor and get one of these brands, the others are not nearly as well-built and easy to install) and solder up custom lengths so that you can use as little cable as needed. If you’re making a lot of cables you’ll want to invest in a good soldering station, I find the basic temperature-controlled TENMA station found on the MCM Electronics website to be perfectly good for this purpose, and just as good as the standard red Weller stations. And once you get really good, you can build your own cable snake from twelve gauge black power cable and bulk DMX cable.

Part 2: What to buy: Clamps

Clamps are very important. They keep your fixtures in the air! You’re trusting a ten to twenty dollar piece of plastic or metal to hold fixtures over your head and your gear on stage. If you have a defined system that you use for trussing or stands, and can purchase O-clamps (clamps that form a tight wrap around the truss and use a wingnut to tighten) for your truss, these are usually a good option. They’re faster to set up than many other kinds of clamps. Make sure that you don’t overload these clamps, especially if they’re of the plastic variety. The metal ones are much

NSI three-pin DMX Cable

Accu Cable 10’ Black Extension Cord

Plastic O-Clamp

1-to-4 Power Split


Steven Kosiba

stronger, and are also sometimes called “half-boros” or “half-burgers” in the pro lighting world due to the name of a double-clamp pipe-connection fixture called the “cheeseboro”, which has gained the affectionate nickname “cheeseburger” in the industry. A Cheeseburger is basically two half-burgers put together to allow you to attach two pieces of pipe together. C-clamps are one of the most common kinds of clamps, and come in many varieties, all the way from the small bent steel clamps to the full-size cast C-clamps for professional lighting instruments. There are also some clamps called “J-clamps” or “hook clamps” that are something along the lines of a reverse C-clamp in design, and are usually made of bent strip metal. They’re not very strong, but great for quick setup when using lightweight LED parcans, pinspots, PAR38 cans and lightweight effects lights. You want to look at your trussing system or T-stands to see what size clamps you will need if you’re getting O clamps or half burgers. For expensive moving lights hung on truss, you may want to consider Omega Claws or Baby Omegas from The Light Source, Inc. Part 2: What to buy: Cases You need something to store your lights, cables, and controllers in while going from gig to gig. For cables, the choice is obvious – milk crates or Rubbermaid totes, if you’re not storing the cables with the fixtures or with the truss or T-bars. You can also use milk crates for smaller fixtures if you put foam in the milk crates to protect the fixtures from shock – or just put a small blanket in there. For fixtures, you can get special cases or bags for them. Many case companies sell cases for PARcans that fit many models of LED parcans. For Colorpalettes, protect them with foam padded laptop sleeves if you’re putting them in a bigger box. For Colorstrips, a longer keyboard case, gun case, or rectangular guitar case should hold them well. You can also get something like big Rubbermaid totes and put them in there with blankets or towels. For scanners, the appropriate cases are really a good thing. If you don’t want to shell out the money, you can go for something like a Rubbermaid tote with a big block of foam in it that you cut out to make inserts for the scanners. Put your controller in a padded utility case or slant top rack case, or pack it carefully in a cable box. If you buy more expensive moving lights, you may very well want to purchase custom fitted cases for them. There are many inexpensive case companies, but make sure to buy something that doesn’t look like it’s going to fall apart. If you purchase Martin SCX series scanners, there are very good single and dual unit cases out there that will protect your several hundred dollar investment from getting harmed during load in, load out and transport. For moving heads, there are cases made specifically for them which you will want to invest in. If you want to look at some nice cases for transporting all of your lights, look at Hybrid Cases (www.hybridcases.com). They have a nice selection of affordable cases, including the (in)famous “Tuffboxes” that regularly hinder eBay product searches. Their lighting cases are reasonably priced for the materials used to build them, and some have ATA hardware. You have to realize that the cases are really the first insurance policy on your lights, and will take the brunt of the damage from most drops. Part 2: What to buy: Optosplitters If you have a larger lighting rig and you want to be able to “split” your DMX signal, look in to an Optosplitter. This is a device that takes the DMX signal and optically isolates it and then provides a certain number of identical signals. The one Optosplitter in the lower price range that I recommend is the Elation Opto Branch 4. There are cheaper models made by American DJ and by Chauvet, but I have heard of people having issues with them. So the best thing is probably just to run one long chain of DMX, but if you have a larger rig you may very well want to split your DMX signal to send it to different positions. You can put a maximum of thirty-two DMX devices on a single chain, so if you have more than that, you really need to consider an Opto-Splitter in order to keep your signal from decaying. An optosplitter also isolates your board from your fixtures through optical isolation and thus keeps the fixtures from firing harmful voltage back in to your lighting controller. Now a bit about DMX Y-cables. It won’t work. You’re trying to split a digital multiplexed signal, which is basically walking up to failure and asking it to join you for the gig. You cannot use y-cables to split DMX signals, plain and simple.

C-Clamp


Steven Kosiba

Part 2: What to buy: Backdrops If you want a backdrop, there are a few options. But before we go anywhere, I need to stress fire retardancy as a main necessity of any backdrop. You need (need, need, need) to have any and all backdrops certified fire retardant. This is very (very, very, very) important. A quick bit of research in to nightclub fires should leave you with no doubt about making your backdrop fire retardant. If you want a black backdrop, a flat black theatrical drop should suffice, and you want to spend a bit of money up front for a drop of the right size that is certified fire retardant and is durable enough to gig with. If you want a white backdrop, a spandex or tricot fabric that is fire retardant should work perfectly. Get one that will fit well to your trussing system and stands for the height that you need. Part 2: What to buy: Other Stuff There are a few other things that you’ll need for your lighting rig. You’ll want some gaffers’ tape for taping down cables that go across the floor and taping them off to stands or trussing if necessary, zip ties for semi-permanently attaching cables to T-bars or trussing, and probably some velcro ties for your cables. For Gaffers’ Tape, don’t skimp on price. Get actual gaffers’ tape, not stuff advertised as “black duct tape”, “stage tape”, or anything else that isn’t actually gaffers’ tape or gaff tape. I get my gaffers’ tape from The Tape Works (www.thetapeworks.com), and I also get velcro cable ties/wraps from that site. They provide a good variety of stage expendables at decent prices. If you are using a backdrop/banner with grommets, you might want to consider purchasing a short spool of black tie line to tie it off to different stands, truss, or hooks that a venue may have. It’s also useful for tying off bundles of cable to stands and truss in temporary situations. For zip ties, go to your local hardware store and pick up an assortment. They’re good to have on hand for tying off cables that you’ve basically permanently installed in your rig. Another good thing to have around is electrical tape, or e-tape as it’s often called. E-tape is useful for tying off cables to truss like zip ties, and it’s also good for quick fixes on cables that get nicked by a sharp piece of metal, the edge of a road case, or a wheel from something. Something else to consider if you’ll be running a lot of cables in areas where there will be some foot traffic (but not a lot) is strips of carpeting to carry with you. About a foot wide by however long you need, these can protect the cables from the people as well as vice versa. You can try getting scrap carpeting from a carpet store or large hardware store, or simply go buy a long strip of carpeting. Part 2: What to buy: Picking From the List Now that I’ve presented a big list of fixtures to choose from, let’s look at what you’ll want to include. You’ll need to define a few variables here – how big is the smallest venue you plan to use the rig in, and how big is the biggest venue you plan to use the rig in? Do you have a computer to use for DMX control software, or would you prefer a hardware controller? Do you want to use a trussing system, or just T-bars? Or do you want to use just a system of vertical trusses? Do you want to see faces, or are you more concerned with side and back lighting? Do you want subtle color fades or fast movements? If you want to see faces, you’ll need to decide what colors you want your faces to be. If it’s just white, some PAR38 fixtures with spot lamps gelled light amber coupled with a Chauvet DMX-4 dimmer/relay pack on a t-bar out front on each side is a great idea. If you want your faces to be different colors, LED parcans are a good choice – I recommend Chauvet 200B or 152B cans for a stage wash, or Irradiant LED Pars if you want to pick out individual performers. If you want a grab-and-go backlight solution, think about getting a Chauvet 4-BAR or two for your backlighting. These DMX controllable systems are great because they pack down very small and come with their own stands. The LED parcans use 10mm diodes and are flat squares rather than full-size cans, and they are semi-permanently mounted to a T-bar, which houses the control electronics as well as all of the main connections and the addressing display.


Steven Kosiba

For back lighting, you’ll probably want LED fixtures. Chauvet Colorstrips are a popular choice, along with Irradiant LEDSP56 LED Parcans, Chauvet Colorpalettes, and other LED wash lights. For side lighting, a single Colorpalette per side on the top of a lightweight tripod speaker stand pointing down on to the band is a great idea because of the wide angle that the Colorpalettes cover. Another option is some Irradiant LED parcans, two or three per stand, pointed across the stage. Either option works well. Sidelighting adds depth to your stage that isn’t achievable in other ways. It adds another dimension of color that allows you to carve performers out of the stage, as the phrase often goes. If you are using a nice blue-green color for backlight, a saturated blue sidelight can look interesting and add another dimension to the space. For moving lights, you really want to consider what features you need for the show you want to put on. For scanners, the Martin SCX600s and SCX700s can’t be beat, but some other popular models include the VEI Novascan V-250-1 and the Chauvet Intimidator 2.0 HTI. The SCX500s are great units if you can afford them, and they are very bright for a 150W scanner. They’ll punch through like many 250W units do, and the build quality is far superior to a Novascan or Intimidator – plus the gobo selection is better, there are built in macros, and there is a color wheel with split color capabilities (half of one color, half of another). If you want rotating gobos, you’ll need an SCX600 or SCX700 or moving up to the moving heads, an Inimidator 2.0 Spot, an Intimidator 2.0 Spot HTI, or an Intimidator 150. For other effects, some White LED Pearls or TRI LED Pearls might be a good idea for rotation effects. You may also want uplighting for the back wall or your backdrop. This can be accomplished with LED parcans or with LED panel lights or strip lights. If you want narrow beams of light uplighting the back wall, use Chauvet Rain fixtures or Irradiant LED parcans, or the Colorkey/Solaris/Stageoutlet PAR64LED cans. If you want to use striplights to uplight the back wall, two or three colorstrips is probably a good idea, or some ADJ Mega Bars. This can be a great way to add movement, color, and another dimension to your show if you are limited in height, fixture placement, or use of fog at a venue. Speaking of backdrops, what kind of backdrop, if you want one? You have two main options if you want a plain backdrop – you can have a black backdrop or a white backdrop. White backdrops are great if you want to have a really well lit backdrop with your uplighting. Black backdrops are great if you’re going for more of a dead wall behind you, but definitely still pick up light. It is not the same vivid color range as with a white backdrop, but maybe you don’t want the contrast that a white backdrop provides. If you get any backdrop, make sure it is flame retardant. If it does not come with flame retardant certification, you need to get it coated with a flame retardant. This is a severe reliability issue. The theatre industry is known for workarounds and working on the edges of how little can be used, but I have seen no curtains in any theatre yet without proper Fire Retardant certification. This is because the liability if a curtain burns and causes a fire is massive. And as the curtain is generally the closest thing to your lights (even if it’s a few feet away), you really want to have it treated for fire retardancy. If you aren’t convinced of this from doing some elementary research regarding nightclub fires, there may be a Darwin Award set aside for you. Even without pyro or the curtain being close to the lights, it can catch fire in a number of ways. You do not want this to happen. Some other ideas for your rig – mini strobes in large quantities work well. If you put basically one every foot and a half or so on the truss, you’ll be good to go – bumping these strobes is a great way to crank up the show but not really offend your audience since they’re only 25 watts a piece. Pinspots are also a cool idea – in groups of three or four, they make a great effect. I like to put four in the center of the truss and three on each end of the truss, and put these on a DMX-4 dimmer/switch pack in switch mode. You can mount these to pieces of 1” or 1.5” EMT conduit and attach clamps to that in order to speed up the process of load-in. I put the center pinspots on one channel, the outer pinspots on another channel, all of the strobes together on the third channel (as long as they don’t exceed 500 watts total), and leave the last channel open for pinspots on the floor (in pairs or groups of three bolted to plywood floor bases). It is important to note that without haze or fog or a very smoky room, you will not see the beams of Pearls, scanners, or other pattern effects lights. The Radiance Hazer is the preferred unit for the


Steven Kosiba

midrange market, and is a very efficient unit that just sips fluid so one jug lasts forever. If you can’t toss out that much cash, look at the Martin Magnum 2500Hz. If that’s still to expensive, go with the Star Light & Magic/ADJ/MBT/so many other companies’ HZ100/Haze Generator machine. You also really need to define the space that the rig will need to fit in to. If you only have space for 5’ pieces of truss, but you want 8’ vertical truss stands on stage, you may need to get 5’ sections and 3’ sections – which can get rather expensive. Also, Global Truss measures their truss in metric, so you’re only going to get close to footmarkings, not exact – so for 5’, you’ll probably have to settle for the 4.92’ section (1.5 meters), and for 8’ you’ll get the 8.20’ (2.5 meter) section. Part 2: What to buy: Price Ranges I HAVE $1000 WHAT DO I BUY 2x Chauvet 4-bar or 4x LEDsplash 200B + 2 stands 1x DMX controller 2x DMX cables Tip: email DJS Pro Sales and Entertainment Systems Corp (see dealers list in back) for quotes. I HAVE $2000 WHAT DO I BUY 2x Chauvet 4-bar or 4x LEDsplash 200B + 2 stands 1x DMX controller 1x El Cheapo Rear Truss (10’ truss system, Crank2 system by ADJ is a good one) 3x Colorstrip or 4 to 6 Irradiant LED SP56 Cables to suit system. Tip: email DJS Pro Sales and Entertainment Systems Corp (see dealers list in back) for quotes. I HAVE $3000 WHAT DO I BUY What’s your application? Depends on the band. Email me: [email protected] A typical package will include 4x Chauvet 200B for frontlight, and 4x Irradiant LEDSP56 for backlight, T-stands with a Magic 260 Controller or DMX Software Control Package along with a rear truss, a hazer and instructions to save up and purchase SCX500s if they don’t immediately fit in the budget. Probably also some Tri-Pearls if they fit in the budget to start with. I HAVE $5000 WHAT DO I BUY What’s your application? Depends on the band. Email me: [email protected] Part 2: What to buy: Disclaimer As I always say, nothing is state of the art: something new comes out the next day. This is the way it is with lighting products – I’ll never be able to keep this guide up to date. Probably a year or two after I release this, half of the fixtures that I’ve listed will be discontinued. You have to take the recommendations of features and interpolate them to new products. Or you can just jump over to the HC Lighting Forum and ask for an opinion on the current offerings! Part 2.5: LIGHTBLUB! Your Sources of Light – Moving Lights & LED fixtures One thing that many people don’t realize is the different features that just their lamps (tech jargon for lightbulbs) can have. This section will cover the different types of lamps for moving lights as well as the different types/sizes of LEDs. There are several types of light sources used for moving lights. These mainly consist of halogen lamps, arc lamps, and high-power LEDs. There is new technology coming quickly that is called “LIFI” or “Plasma Lamp” technology that will probably make its way in to the lower end market over time.


Steven Kosiba

Here's the technology - a halogen lamp causes a filament to heat up. Halogen refers to the gas that is inside the glass envelope. A discharge or arc-source lamp actually generates a continuous electric arc across two points inside the glass envelope, which is why the lamp on this type of fixture cannot be dimmed, and thus you must have a dimming flag in the optical train inside the fixture. This is also why if you power down an arc-source/discharge fixture it can sometimes be a while before you can power it back on. Halogen lamps in scanners and moving heads, most commonly of the ELC variety or similar small reflector halogens, are just what they say they are - halogens. Just like overhead projector lamps, just like halogen floodlight lamps, whatever. Same old technology – filament glows to produce light. Halogens can be controlled by an electronic dimming circuit, and thus moving lights with halogen lamps in them do not need dimming flags – they can use an internal electronic dimming circuit. The HTI-150 is a common lamp in low-wattage discharge movers. It is a bit brighter than a 250W ELC. It is definitely perceived to be much brighter due to the higher color temperature. Other types you may see are CDM-150s, MSD-250s (in the higher-end 250W scanners and moving heads), and there is also an MSD-150, which is used in the Martin smartMAC luminaire. Discharge lamps also cover everything with an MSR, MSD, HSR, HSD, HMI, CDM, or HTI prefix. These three-letter codes refer to the particular style of discharge/arc source lamp, and range from 150 to 1200 watts in the standard ranges, and higher for some specialty searchlight fixtures. Pro level moving lights, save a few specialty tungsten fixtures (mostly for theatre use), use discharge lamps. The smallest lamp in a pro-grade fixture is the MSD-150, which is the 150W lamp for the Martin smartMAC luminaire. Generally they start with the MSD-250, a 250W discharge lamp that is the standard for 250 watt pro level movers. It has approximately two to three times the output of a 250W halogen lamp, if not more. The light from discharge lamps is also a lot higher color temperature, so it appears even brighter. The MSD-250 is used in the ADJ Accu Scan 250, Accu Spot 250 II, Accu Spot 300, Accu Wash 250, and Accu Color 250; Elation Focus Spot 250, Power Spot 250, Power Wash 250, Design Wash 250, and Design Spot 250; the Chauvet Intimidator 250, Q-spot 200, 250, and 300; the Martin MAC250 series; and many other pro level 250W moving lights. The "Color Temperature" (measured in Kelvins, or K) is the perceived "shade" of white that the lamp emits. Lower color temperatures are warmer sources, higher color temperatures are harsher, bluer sources. Discharge lamps often have a much higher color temperature than halogens (on the order of 6000K to 8500K), so they appear brighter to the human eye. The lamp will have several specs - the output (luminous flux or luminous emittance) in lumens or lux, the color temperature in Kelvins, the lamp life in hours, and the CRI (number, no units), along with the wattage (usually in the name). It will also describe the “lamp base” (aka socket) that the lamp fits. Mover lamps should be replaced before they die, because the output will decrease noticeably and the color temperature will also decrease with age - about 750 hours is the standard "lifetime" that I'd leave a 2000hr rated discharge lamp in a fixture for. ALL LAMPS should be wiped down with an alcohol swab before being installed in a moving light. This is to prevent oils from your fingers or any oils that got on the lamp during the packing process (although they are usually clean out of the box, I usually wipe them down) from causing a catastrophic failure. When heated, the oil from your fingers causes the glass envelope of the lamp to become weak and bulge out, and possibly break and spread hot, sharp glass all over the inside of your moving light. Not an often occurrence but enough of a danger to wipe down all of your lamps before putting them in, halogens and discharge lamps alike. High power LEDs fall in to a different category – these are basically a super-bright LED or LED module (multiple diodes close together on a single chip) that is about the same color temperature, CRI, and brightness as an equivalent discharge source. A 100w LED source has been said to be equivalent to a


Steven Kosiba

250W discharge lamp. A 20W LED is probably about equal to a 150W halogen lamp by my best estimations and comparisons of specifications. There are some good things about LEDs in general – LED movers and LED pars. There are no filaments to break, no lamps to replace, and much less heat than many equivalent fixtures. You should realize however, that LEDs really don’t have Color Temperature or CRI. This is because they do not produce full spectrum white light. I’ve described this further on in detail. LED Pars have several different types/sizes of LEDs. By far the most common ones are the 5mm and 10mm diodes. These are sometimes called “1/4 watt” and “1/2 watt” diodes, but draw far from that much power – this is a term introduced by a manufacturer or dealer that has propagated itself through the industry and is complete nonsense. These diodes are the small diodes found in most lower-end LED pars, striplights, panel lights, and the lite-brite effects lights. The 10mm ones are significantly brighter than the 5mm ones. Lensing is internal to the diode package through the material that covers the diode. High power LEDs, such as the one-watt and three-watt models, are significantly brighter. They are extremely high output, and often have external lens systems that allow you to swap out lenses on the LEDs. There are many different fixtures that use these LEDs. In general, you only need 24 to 36 or so one-watt LEDs to compete with somewhere close to 150 to 200 5mm LEDs. You definitely may want to consider the Elation “bricks” for high power fixtures because of their compact size and narrow form factor – they have the power of fixtures twice their size, and are a great alternative to high-power LED pars in many situations. There are also the new “TRI-LEDs”. These are actually three diodes in one chip that allow you to have three one-watt or three-watt diodes very close to each other, which makes the color mixing much smoother and uniform, and you hardly ever get the three color shadows with these fixtures. This is due to the fact that all three of the diodes are contained in the same lensing system. Effects lights that use TRI-LEDs often have noticeable separation of the red, green, and blue beams, but the colors are still much more uniform than the lite-brite fixtures and definitely much more controllable. There is one thing that most people don’t realize about LEDs: they’re single-wavelength or set-spectrum emitters. That is, for the red, green, and blue LEDs, you don’t have a nice wide spectrum where it also emits some in the blue range, some in the red range, and some in the green range to get an overall nice color like a regular lamp does with a gel in it, but you get a very set wavelength of red, a very set wavelength of green, and a very set wavelength of blue. White LEDs are multiband emitters, in that they emit a series of wavelengths of light in order to make your eye think that they are white. The other main way of making white light is to use phosphor-coated LEDs, which basically converts another emission peak in to multiple peaks for white light. This method produces a somewhat less spiky emission spectrum, but nonetheless is not a true full-spectrum white source. This is why, if you try to put an amber gel over a white LED parcan, you’ll basically get no difference in the light – because the light doesn’t have the full spectrum emission required for the gel to apply its emission curve to a full visible spectrum. To make that simple and non-technical, many white LEDs simply produce red, green, and blue at the same time in order to make your eye think it’s seeing white.

Part 3: DMX in Your Context: Introduction DMX is the control protocol that you will use to control your lights. DMX is a universal protocol for lighting instruments. This means that you can plug a Chauvet controller in to some Irradiant LED pars then daisy chain that to some American DJ effects lights and then that to a Chauvet dimmer pack and out of that in to some Colorpalettes, and they will all be controlled. The order that you plug them in doesn’t matter, but they just must all be connected. You take the output from your board, and run it to the DMX input of the closes fixture, then out of that fixture or dimmer pack in to the next closest DMX device, and just daisy chain your whole rig in to one big long chain. Not that you’ll ever get there, but DMX is rated for a maximum of thirty-two consecutive devices in a chain. DMX uses three wires, a data +, a data -, and a ground. Don’t worry if you don’t understand that bit, it’s really not


Steven Kosiba

necessary. Professional DMX cable comes in five-pin and three-pin varieties, so make sure to get the three-pin stuff for your rig if that’s what all of your lights and control stuff use. The five-pin cable is used on a lot of higher end moving lights and professional lighting desks and dimmer racks, and just doesn’t use two of the pins. It’s just a different connector from when they had different ideas about the protocol when it was written, so they wanted to have two extra pins to use later.

Part 3: DMX in Your Context: Context So you just got your lighting system—some LED lights such as Colorstrips, Colorpalettes, Colorsplash 200Bs, or LED PAR 64s. Maybe you got a dimmer pack and some PAR38s for your frontlight, and maybe some Pinspots on a switch pack. If you went all out crazy on the start, or you just upgraded your system, maybe you got some effects lights like the TRI-Pearl LED. You also got a DMX controller, and three-pin DMX cables to link everything together. You unpack everything, and all of your LED lights have connections that look like they take mic cables on the back, as does your dimmer pack—one male and one female. Your controller has only one of these connections on the back, a female three-pin XLR connection. All of these three-pin XLR connections are used to connect the controller to the fixtures and the fixtures to each other, as described in the “introduction” part of this section. You will need three-pin DMX cables (such as American DJ’s Accu Cable series, or my favorite – good, genuine NSI DMX cable) to link the fixtures together. This will be discussed in the “Putting it Together” section.

Part 3: DMX in Your Context: Dipswitches, Displays, and Channels You’ll also notice dipswitches or a digital display on the back of each fixture. These are used to set the fixture’s DMX address. The DMX signal coming out of the back of your lighting controller can control up to 512 “channels”, or fewer, if your console doesn’t support that many. For instance, the Chauvet Obey 70 only supports 384 channels. Each “channel” corresponds to a parameter on your fixture. For instance, you could have an LED parcan that has an Intensity channel, a Strobe channel, a Red channel, a Green channel, and a Blue channel. This fixture requires five channels to operate, so the first fader of the fixture will control the overall intensity, the second fader the strobe rate, the third fader the intensity of all of the red LEDs, the fourth fader the green LEDs, and the fifth fader the blue LEDs. Depending on the model and make of the fixture, the order of channels will be different. With me so far? I hope so. If you have a dimmer pack, let’s say it’s a four channel dimmer pack, each of the four channels of the dimmer pack corresponds to an intensity level of a channel, 1-4. It’s pretty easy to figure out on a dimmer pack. So here’s how you need to set those dipswitches and displays—you will need to read the manual to figure out how to set the fixture to the right mode and then set the actual numbers (most fixtures with dipswitches actually have a dipswitch chart in the manual). If your controller has numbered “fixture buttons” (a la Chauvet DMX series, ADJ Operator series, Chauvet Obey series and many other basic DMX controllers), those buttons will be at an interval of channels. Usually the manual will tell you the interval at which these fixtures have to be addressed. For example, on the Chauvet DMX-70, there are 32 channels allotted for each fixture. So for your first fixture, you need to set the address to 1. The second fixture needs to be addressed at 33 (1+32), and your third fixture at 65 (33+32). Your fourth fixture will be at 97 (65+32), and so forth. Higher end consoles do not have fixture intervals like these, and have very different concepts of control and recall. You can apply this for any fixture interval. If your controller has each fixture taking up twelve channels, then your first three would be 1, 13, and 25. If your controller has sixteen channels per fixture, your first three fixtures are 1, 17, and 33. Continue adding the “fixture interval” to the address for more fixtures. So, you set the dipswitches or digital addressing display on your fixture to the proper address and mode. You have to decide what fixture number each fixture is going to be, and then figure out what address it needs to be.


Steven Kosiba

For example, in a rig with four Chauvet Colorsplash 200Bs for frontlight and three Colorstrips for backlight and controlled by a DMX-70, you would set the first 200B to address 1 to correspond to fixture button 1, the second 200B to address 33 to correspond to fixture button 2, the third 200B to address 65 to correspond to fixture button 3, and the fourth 200B to address 97 to correspond to fixture button 4, and so forth. Now since you can link the Colorstrips all together to make them act like one really long Colorstrip (it’s on a later page!), you only need one address for the master and you just set the others to slave. So you set your master Colorstrip to address 129 to make your Colorstrips correspond to fixture button 5. Or, if you also want all of your 200Bs to be the same and you really don’t need to control them separately, you can set all of their addresses to 1, and they will respond in unison to fixture button 1. Higher end controllers, such as the NSI MLC16D, NSI MLC128R, Elation Magic 260, Elation Show Designer Series, ETC Smartfade ML and any higher end console allow you to address fixtures sequentially based on the number of channels. You don’t have a set interval. For instance, if you have two four-channel dimmer packs, four Novascans (five channels each), and eight LED Parcans (five channels each), you can address the first dimmer pack as 1, the second dimmer pack as 5, the first Novascan as 9, the second Novascan as 14, the third Novascan as 19, the fourth Novascan as 24, and the LED pars as 29, 34, 39, 44, 49, 54, 59, and 64. You then have to tell the console what addresses each fixture starts with and what kind of fixture it is (with a fixture personality or fixture profile) in order to tell the console how many channels the fixture has and what each of them does. A fixture personality is a file that has all of the information on channels for a specific fixture, including how many channels the fixture has and what each of them does. You will notice that each of the consoles that I mentioned has a set of encoder wheels that are used for entering the channel values. These rotary encoders are basically dials or knobs that you use to set the values of your channels. You will also notice that each of these controllers has an LCD display above or below these encoder wheels. This LCD display shows the name of each channel, such as “Dimmer”, “Strobe”, “Color”, and “Gobo” for a scanner or “Dimmer”, “Red”, “Green”, and “Blue” for an LED fixture. Each of these things (Color, Gobo, Strobe, Red, Green, etc) is called an attribute, trait, or parameter. Also, if there is a channel such as a color wheel that has values for the positions around the wheel defined in the personality, it will tell you what color the fixture should be at on the wheel. This works for any channel with values that are defined in the personality. Also, most (but not all) of these controllers have joysticks for positional control (which is why “Pan” and “Tilt or “X” and “Y” are not listed for the scanner attributes above), and these joysticks are generally of much better quality than the almost unusable ones on the lower end controllers (DMX, Obey, and Operator series). Each lighting console has a different format for their fixture personalities, and some of them are impossibly hard to make from scratch. Here is a sample fixture personality written for the Elation Opti 30 RGB to be used on the MLC16D: Device Opti 30 RGB Trait Dimmer Type Continuous Channel 6 Size 8Bit Invert No XAxis No YAxis No Black Yes BoValue 0 Master Yes Default 0 Maximum 255 Minimum 0 Trait Red Type Continuous

Channel 1 Size 8Bit Invert No XAxis No YAxis No Black No BoValue 0 Master No Default 0 Maximum 255 Minimum 0 Trait Green Type Continuous Channel 2 Size 8Bit Invert No XAxis No

YAxis No Black No BoValue 0 Master No Default 0 Maximum 255 Minimum 0 Trait Blue Type Continuous Channel 3 Size 8Bit Invert No XAxis No YAxis No Black No BoValue 0 Master No

Default 0 Maximum 255 Minimum 0 Trait Strobe Type Continuous Channel 5 Size 8Bit Invert No XAxis No YAxis No Black No BoValue 0 Master No Default 0 Maximum 255 Minimum 0

Trait Macro Type Continuous Channel 4 Size 8Bit Invert No XAxis No YAxis No Black No BoValue 0 Master No Default 0 Maximum 255 Minimum 0 End


Steven Kosiba

Part 3: DMX in Your Context: Introduction to Binary For many of your fixtures, you will need to set dipswitches. These dipswitches are used to set a binary address for the fixture. I’m going to skip the technicalities of what the binary number system is, because it’s true that there are ten types of people in this world – those who know binary and those who don’t. What you do need to know is how the dipswitches work. The first 9 dipswitches generally represent the following values: Dip1: 1, Dip2: 2, Dip3: 4, Dip4: 8, Dip5: 16, Dip6: 32, Dip7: 64, Dip8: 128, Dip9: 256. These are additive values. So, if you wanted an address of three, you’d put Dip1 and Dip2 in the on position. If you wanted an address of nine, you’d turn on Dip4 and Dip1. Address of fourteen would require Dip4, Dip3, and Dip2. There’s an easy way to think about this that I call the hi/lo method. You take the number that you want to address the light to, and find the largest number that is equal to or lower than it (hi/lo = highest number that’s still lower or equal to). So with an example address of 166, that’s 128, or Dip8. Turn this on. For the next switch, you subtract 128 from 166 (166-128=38). So now hi/lo 38 to find the largest number dipswitch less than or equal to 38, which happens to be 32 or Dip6. Turn that on. Next, subtract 32 from 38 (38-32=6). I hope you’re getting the idea now. So now hi/lo 6, giving you 4 (Dip3). Turn that on. That leaves 6-4=2, and that’s equal to Dip2 so turn on Dip2 and you’re done. As a general rule, you’re done when you get a dipswitch exactly equal to your remainder. As a note, if you use Excel to make an addressing sheet for your rig, you can install a binary conversion plug-in from the Excel disk that will allow you to output binary. You just have to remember to reverse all the numbers to put them in to dipswitches, because binary reads high to low from left to right, but the dipswitches read low to high from left to right. So if the output from Excel is 001011101, you’d enter 101110100 in to the dipswitches (1 representing on and 0 representing off, of course). I’ve set up a table in the back of what fixtures are for sample controllers available from different manufacturers in order to help you get hooked up.

Part 3: DMX in Your Context: Postal System Metaphor It is important to realize what addressing of fixtures does. Think of a DMX system like a Postal System. Your DMX controller is the Post Office, and the DMX cable is the mail carrier’s route. So just like the mail carrier’s route, it does not matter which order you plug the fixtures in as long as they are all connected together, because they will always know what mail to get. Each fixture will get some packages, each with a number on it. Each package contains a value of data with a resolution of 256 (which is why the value 256 is “full” for DMX channels on intelligent lighting controllers). So for instance, an LED Rain 64 gets seven packages from the mail carrier. The first package tells the fixture what the intensity of the Red LEDs is, the second what the intensity of the Blue LEDs is, and the third is the intensity of the Green LEDs. The fourth package that it gets defines a color preset or “macro” (more discussed in “the channel”). The fifth package controls the strobe speed of the fixture, the sixth package controls the built-in programs, and the seventh and final package controls the overall intensity of the fixture (dimmer channel). The starting address of the fixture defines the first package that the fixture gets, and [start channel] + [number of channels the fixture has] defines the last package that the fixture gets. The only difference with this postal system is that you can send a package to two places. So for instance, if you have a bunch of LED pars that you want to always be doing the same thing (same color, strobe, intensity, etc), then you can simply set them to the same address and they’ll all get the right packages. This is the beauty of DMX – order doesn’t matter, and you can have as many devices on the same address as you want to. However, you have to make very sure that you don’t overlap addresses, or else one fixture may think that it is opening up a package designated for its intensity value, while that package is actually designated for another fixture’s pan value or green value. This is usually not an issue for the low-budget controllers because you address the fixtures in increments.


Steven Kosiba

Part 3: DMX in Your Context: Terminators A common solution that is suggested for issues with DMX is that you put something called a “DMX terminator” at the end of the signal chain. This is simply a three or five pin DMX connector (probably three pin for most of your rigs) with a 120 ohm resistor across pins two and three. This serves the purpose of keeping the data from reflecting back down the signal chain. The resistor dissipates the signal instead of allowing the fixture to accidentally bounce back down the line. Not using a terminator, especially in conjunction with using microphone cable instead of true DMX cable, can cause your fixtures to have DMX twitches, and cause mirrors to twitch on your scanners and LEDs to flicker on your LED fixtures. This can really screw up your show. You can either purchase pre-made terminators or just get a three-pin XLR connector and solder a 120 ohm resistor across pins two and three, but either way, they can really take the jitter out of your fixtures. It is important to know that lower-end fixtures, such as the majority of fixtures that you’ll be using, are much more susceptible to DMX issues because they are eight-bit fixtures, which means that there are only 256 steps in each of their parameters. This is why your scanners are shaky sometimes, especially on slow movements.

Part 4: Putting it All Together So you’ve got your lights. The first thing you’ll need to consider is what goes where. If you have a rear truss, how are your lights going to be distributed? If you have only T-stands, where will you be putting them on stage? For your backlight, if you have truss, you want to put it as far upstage as possible with the stands on either side of the back of the drum riser, as far offstage as you can get them. If you’re just using frontlight, you can mount t-bars or pieces of EMT conduit to the top of your speakers and hang lights off of those, or you can use light trees/t-stands to hang your lights from. You’ll need to figure out the flow of DMX and how you’re going to hook up power. You’ll need the primary run of DMX from your controller to the first light in the chain, then you’ll daisy chain DMX to all of the other fixtures on that position (truss, light tree, t-bar, etc), then run DMX to the next lighting position and daisy chain all of those. Unless you buy an Optosplitter, you’ll need to hook all of your DMX fixtures up in one long daisy chain. You’ll want to put your lighting stands and trusses as high as they will go in the room you are in so that you get the best angle possible. If you are using T-bars and have the proper cases, consider leaving them pre-wired with all of the fixtures clamped to them and the proper DMX and power cables velcro-tied to them so that you just have to drop the cables when you get to the gig and everything’s ready to go. If you’re using truss, put pieces of tape at each fixture location with the corresponding fixture number (noted on fixture tape, described below) so that setup is as painless as possible as to remembering where each fixture goes. If you have fixtures to put on the floor (for instance, pinspots shining through the band, PAR38 LED fixtures uplighting the drum kit or amps, or any other lighting on the floor), mark their location (“Drum Kit”, “Stage Left”, “Stage Right”) on the floor base for the fixture, along with the fixture number. It’s best to leave fixtures attached to floor bases if possible while moving your rig, one less thing to set up. When you address your fixtures, you probably want to group them by type – so if you have four Colorsplash 200Bs, two Colorstrips, and two Pearl White LEDs, you would most likely put the four colorsplashes on the first four fixture buttons of your controller (or all addressed the same if you are not planning on ever doing anything different with them), then the Colorstrips next, but probably only one address for those – because it’s best to put them in master/slave and run DMX to only one of them. Then use the slave output at the end of the Colorstrip to run to the next Colorstrip, and the DMX OUT signal next to the DMX IN signal to run to the next fixture, in this situation a Pearl on the same truss. You’ll the address your pearls to their own fixture buttons (or the same if you want to be nice and simplistic). So on the DMX-70, you’d address the 200Bs to 1, 33, 65, and 97. Or just one if you don’t want to have them addressed individually, but why do that when you have the capabilities available! You’ll easily be able to select multiple fixtures with any of the basic controllers buy just pushing all of the buttons for the fixtures you want to control. The linked Colorstrips would be DMX address 129 if you are giving everything its own fixture button on the DMX-70, or 33 if you’re addressing all like fixtures the same. The Pearls would be either 161 and 193 or just both at 65 if you’re addressing things in groups (again, I don’t recommend this, but a lot of people like to do it for ease of use).


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Now you’ve got things addressed. Take some white Gaffers Tape and put a small piece on each fixture, and write the fixture number, the address of the fixture, and the dipswitch settings if it has a dipswitch, and the fixture mode settings if they’re complicated on the tape in black pen or extra fine point sharpie marker. This way if anything on the fixture gets un-addressed or reset, you can go back and set the fixture up without any major hassle by just looking at the tape. Later, once you have put some programming time in to your show and know that you won’t be changing the address any time soon, put a piece of packaging tape just larger than the piece of gaff tape over it so that it can’t get rubbed off and the ink won’t run if the tape gets wet for any reason. You can also use a Labelmaker and then use the packaging tape over that if you want to. It produces a cleaner finished product, and if you have a Labelmaker, this is a great idea. Once you address and tape all of your fixtures (don’t put on the packaging tape until you’re sure that everything works perfectly and everything is responding to the right address), hook up the fixtures, power all of them up, power up the controller, and just try to get control over all of your fixtures. One by one select the fixtures and experiment with the faders or encoders. Look at the table of DMX values in your fixture’s manual to determine which fader does what. Many controllers show you the numerical value of the channel as you are moving the fader, so you can see what you are doing to the channel in reference to numerical values in the DMX channel value table in a fixture’s manual. If anything doesn’t work, visit the Harmony Central Lighting Forum and ask a question – someone will probably get back to you quickly. In fact, someone else has probably had the same issue. With the Chauvet controllers that have a polarity switch on the back (to switch the polarity of the DMX output), make sure it’s on the right setting. If your lights don’t respond properly, this may be an issue. If your lights don’t respond at all, check the blackout button and accompanying LED indicator. So now that you know everything works and you’ve got control over all of your fixtures, set up the lights on their stands and t-bars in some semblance of what the actual rig will look like, and it’s time to program!

Part 5: Basic Programming I It’s time to start programming some looks. Let’s start off with some basic colors, and I’m assuming that you have some LED Parcans or washlights of some sort here, along with one of the low end controllers (DMX or Obey series from Chauvet, or some sort of Operator from ADJ). Start out with your controller in Bank one. If you don’t know the absolute basics of using your controller yet, go read its manual. So the first scene in the bank is going to be a blackout – so that only needs to have things in the right mode. So set any modes that you need to (pertinent to Colorpalettes and several other fixtures), and leave all intensities and other channels (R, G, B, color macro, etc) down. Now record the first scene in the bank. Now in the next scene, you’re just going to have all of the lights in RED. So set up a scene that has all of the lights in red. Put intensity values at full, and red values at full for each fixture. Record the next scene. Do the same for green and blue in the next two scenes. You now have scenes one through four recorded. Exit program mode of your controller (if it has one), and hit the scene buttons to make sure that you’re able to recall scenes easily. Now go back to program mode, and program the red, blue, and green scenes again, but this time make them strobe. Set the DMX value for the strobe channel (or whichever channel controls strobe) to the rate that you want, and then have just red up. Record scene five, and repeat the process with green and blue for six and seven. For eight we want to have a white strobe, so set up scene eight as strobing with red, green, and blue all at full. Now go back and make sure that you can recall all of these scenes. Now to try your hand at playing back these scenes as a chase. If your controller is any one of the Chauvet DMX or Obey series or any other standard cheap DMX controller, it should have an Auto button over on the side. Press scene button one and then press the auto button – then move the rate/fade sliders until the scenes in the bank are cycling. This is a “bank chase”, or chasing one bank at a time without having to assign it to a chase button.


Steven Kosiba

Now that you’re able to program a bank chase, enter Program mode and go to the next bank of scenes. Set all of the LED fixtures to just Red. If you have some effects lights, such as Pearls or what have you, bring up their intensities. If you’re using punch lights or pinspots, put some of those in here. Add scanners if you have them, with a gobo but no color. Position them at center (50/50, or 128/128 for pan/tilt channel values). Record this scene to the first scene button. Now leave the whole scene up but bring up the green in the LEDs as well, move the scanners to a new position, change pinspots, whatever. Record the next scene. Now take down the red, change the other lights and scanner positions, and record the next scene. Now bring up the blue (so the LEDs now have blue + green), change the other lights and move the scanners. Record the next scene, take down the green (now only blue), change things, record the next scene, bring up the red (LEDs now red + blue), change things, record the next scene. You now have six scenes in the bank. Exit program mode, and recall these scenes individually to make sure that they all recorded properly. Now go to auto playback mode, and adjust the rate and time faders until you have a good chase going. This can take some finessing of your timings to get it right. You should have a sequence that has a rainbow chase of LEDs with the effects lights constantly changing. Now that you are able to program banks of scenes and play them back individually or as chases, you should be able to move on to learning movement effects (if you have moving lights), and then on to designing your show.

Part 6: Basic Programming II Now we’ll go a bit more in depth in to the workings of these controllers and look at MIDI implementation and actual programming and playback of your live show. One of the first things that you probably noticed when you programmed your first scenes on one of these controllers is that whenever you go to program a new fixture, you have to take all the sliders back down to zero to start over again. This means that you can’t really get the same settings on any two fixtures unless all of the sliders are pushed to full or at zero, or you stare at the LCD display and carefully read the numbers that it displays (only on some of these controllers) as to what the channel value is. Well, on most of these consoles, you can select more than one fixture with the fixture buttons and control the fixtures that way, which means that all of the fixtures will have the same values. So if you want all of your LED Parcans to be Red and strobing, then you select all of the fixture buttons that are your LED parcans and set them to Red and strobing. However, what you have to remember is that if you have different types of LED parcans, the channels may not line up properly, so you may be changing the red channel on one of your LED parcans and the blue channel on another one of them if you have more than one model of LED Parcan in your rig. When you are programming banks of scenes for your show, it is important to consider how you will be playing back the show live. If you will be using a MIDI controller of some sort to play back the scenes, it is important to arrange your banks with only as many scenes as you want to chase naturally. You may want to do this anyways because it makes playing back bank chases easier. Program still scenes (scenes that you don’t want to be in chases/sequences with other scenes) in to the first scene of an open bank. This is because when you recall the scene when the controller is in auto mode, the only way to get a still scene (that doesn’t chase within a bank) is to have only that one scene in a bank. By the same principle, if you want to have two scenes that chase back and forth, you can program them in to the first two scenes of a bank. If you are good with electronics, you can easily modify any of these controllers from just having their internal microphone for sound input to having an external sound input jack. With this, you could get a tap tempo metronome and put it in to the audio input jack so that you can control the rate of the chase with that tap tempo button instead of the lousy one that doesn’t work that’s on the controller. This method will allow you to easily set the pace of a chase and not have to try to adjust the time and rate faders live. Either that or you can run a gated output from the kick drum or snare drum to the audio input jack that you install.


Steven Kosiba

When using MIDI to recall scenes, you will either be using a MIDI pedalboard, a MIDI drum pad, or a MIDI sequencer. If you’re already using a MIDI sequencer, you probably don’t need an in-depth explanation of how this whole deal works. You send a MIDI note command and the controller changes scenes. If you’re using a MIDI drum pad or MIDI pedalboard, you’re probably going to need a bit more help here.

Part 7: Basic Programming III: Buttons & Encoders This section is mainly focused around the MLC16D, the MLC128R, and the Magic 260. These controllers are in a class of their own. They are able to quickly recall scenes or sequences at the press of a button, and have a lot more capabilities when it comes to timings, MIDI options, audio sensitivity, and general ease of use. Also, it’s much easier to program fixtures with these, because you don’t have to reset faders after each fixture you program. Because the encoders don’t have stops on them (like a fader has a “stop” at the bottom and a “stop” at the top), you don’t have anything to reset when you’re using encoders. Also, the encoders actually display the value that the fixture should be at. For instance, if a particular channel is a color wheel, and the fixture personality is properly made with all of the indexing values for the color wheel in it, you will be able to see the color that the fixture should be at on the screen above/below the encoders. This is nice, because now instead of having to remember exactly what each channel does and which values to put it at, you can just select a fixture and see what attributes/parameters are controlled by which channels. More often than not, the pan and tilt values will not be controlled by encoders, they will be controlled by a joystick. The nice thing is that these joysticks are often much nicer than the lousy ones on the cheapo DMX and Obey series of controllers and the ADJ Operator series. With this, you can quickly move lights to a new position when, or even control the position live to follow a performer. Now that I’ve explained why you should have purchased one of these controllers in the first place, let’s get down to some techniques that you’ll be getting used to. The MLC16D (with the D standing for Disk, there is a model without a disk drive but it’s really worth it to be able to save your show) is really the odd guy out here in that he has a separate set of buttons for fixtures and for fixtures, with group buttons and modifiers for the fixtures (add, solo, copy, and default). The ADD button allows you to control more than one fixture at once (adding fixtures of a like type together for control), the SOLO button allows you to single out one fixture for a “solo”, the COPY button allows you to copy values of parameters from one fixture to another. The “DEFAULT” button allows you to put a fixture back at its defaults. For moving lights, this is usually no color, gobo, or effects, pan and tilt at 50 percent, intensity at full, and the strobe open. This allows you to start fresh when programming a new scene. There are also four fixture groups that allow you to select multiple fixtures at once. So if you have eight LED pars, four scanners, two LED Pearl fixtures and two four-channel dimmer packs, you can have a group for each of these to control them in unison. So you can grab the LED Par group and set all of the LED Pars to the same parameter values, and then you can select all of the scanners and set them to the same values, and then the same for the Pearls and the dimmer packs. The lower set of buttons can be either a single page of scenes, one of four pages of patterns, or a single page of shows. A “page” is a group of scenes, patterns, or shows that you can access all at once via the front buttons, this is much like a “bank” on the lower quality controllers. A “scene” is a single set of values that can be stored to a scene button in a page and recalled with the press of a button. A “pattern” is a sequence of scenes that are recorded together with internal timings, and the rate of them can be controlled via audio input or the tap/sync button. A “show” is patterns linked together to form one big pattern. The MLC128R is very similar, but it doesn’t have a separate set of buttons for fixtures. The buttons can be either fixtures, scenes, patterns, or shows, and there are multiple pages of each. Other than that, operation is really the same as the MLC16 and MLC16D. The show files, fixture personality files, and any other files generated by these consoles are really easy to follow and edit in a text editor on your computer, so it’s worth getting a means for reading files from the console (such as a 3.5” floppy drive for the MLC16D or the proper card reader for the MLC128R). The MLC128R has fewer buttons total, but can actually control more fixtures with more scenes and more patterns than the MLC16, you just have to push more buttons to get to them.


Steven Kosiba

The Magic 260 is a controller made by Elation for American DJ that is based on the MLC128R. However, it has a few more features in some respects. It allows you to use effects for pan and tilt movement, and has preset positions that you can record in to scenes or patterns. So for instance, if you would like to have your scanners move to the drummer for a solo in a certain scene, but your setup is different every night, so your drummer will be in a different place in relation to the scanners every night you perform. You can use a preset position for the drummer, which will allow you to change that position whenever you set up your lighting rig, and then the lights will go there every time. Larger professional lighting consoles have dozens of these, and they are called “position palettes” or “focus palettes”. When you are programming on these controllers, it’s good to get a basic set of static scenes programmed first, and then start with patterns. Programming scenes is easy – you press the record button and then you press the scene button that you want to record to. The scene is now recorded. You can recall it by pressing the scene button. There is no separate program or playback mode on the MLC series controllers, you are either in live values or in pre-recorded values of a scene or pattern, and you don’t have to be in a different mode. All of these controllers have MIDI implementation which is better than the basic controllers. You’ll be able to access all of the different patterns and scenes without having to worry about programming certain amounts of scenes in to different banks and setting the controller in auto mode and all of that crap. You’ll probably have a MIDI note value to set the page to be in, and then a MIDI note value to select the scene or pattern within that bank. Some notes on questions that I occasionally get on the MLC16: to adjust fade time of scenes when simply playing them back live with the “scenes” page, use Wheel 1 to adjust the “Fd: ##” which is the fade time in seconds. If you are having issues with a pattern playing back, make sure that you don’t have any fixtures selected. If you need a custom personality built for a fixture that NSI/Leviton doesn’t have a profile for (their library additions are notorious for taking forever), I can build one for you and send it to you. I can also tweak profiles for you if you need that. You’ll notice that I didn’t exactly do a step by step walk-thru of these controllers. This is because for controllers of this level, they will actually send you a manual that was written well. You’ll be able to actually learn about the inner workings of the controller from the manual. The manual for these was written by someone who knows how to explain things fairly well, even for the Magic 260.

Part 7: Advanced Programming I: What Does That Do? Well, if you have moving lights, you may wonder what’s going on inside, and why certain effects can be produced while others cannot. I personally suggest watching videos on youtube of moving lights with their covers off in order to understand the inner workings if the fixtures. First off, you have a color wheel. This is a circular piece of metal with holes stamped out in it around the edge. Each of these holes contains a “chip” or small piece of dichroic glass (or simply colored glass in lower-end movers, but most use dichroics now). Dichroic glass is specially treated glass that only allows a certain spectrum of light to pass through the glass. This means that the colors will not fade or discolor with time. There will also probably be a gobo wheel, unless the fixture in question is a wash fixture. The gobo wheel has a series of metal and/or glass patterns in a similar metal plate to the color wheel. These may be stamped directly in to the plate (in the case of older or lower end movers), or interchangeable by means of unscrewing the gobo wheel or certain set screws around the gobos. Increasingly, many manufacturers are using gobos that are easily replaceable without tools once you take the cover off of the fixture with a screwdriver. Some manufacturers are even making fixtures that require no tools to replace gobos. If your fixtures have rotating gobos, this is now often accomplished by gears but in some older fixtures (notably the Roboscan Pro 518), there is a belt drive for the rotation of the gobos. The rotation of the gobos is usually accomplished by a gear-in-gear system that allows the gobo wheel to rotate independent of the rotation of the gobos themselves. You will also probably have a shutter assembly of some sort for strobing. This may or may not be combined with the dimming flag, or dowser, which is a piece of metal that moves in front of the light source to


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dim fixtures with arc/discharge lamps. If your fixture has a prism, this is usually on a separate holder that flips in to place, and if it rotates, there will be a separate motor for that, too. The prism may also be on an effects flag that has several other items, such as color correction filters. Thus, there are some interesting effects that you can do. If your fixture has built-in gobo shake, this is accomplished by having the motor that rotates the gobo wheel snap back and forth really fast. If you have split colors, the motor for the color wheel stops at a point between two of the color chips so that the beam of light passes through half of one of them and half of the other. You can also have color shakes that usually shake between two colors on the wheel, which can be a very interesting effect. If your fixture does not have color shake, it is easy to emulate. Just flip back and forth between two colors on the color wheel with the proper fade time, and you have a color shake effect. Many fixtures also have a gobo “scroll” effect. This is a great effect. It rotates the whole gobo wheel continuously, so you are switching from gobo to gobo to gobo to gobo in a slow rolling effect, or fast. Most fixtures have some range of values for this sort of effect that allow you to set the speed of the effect. Knowing how the innards of a moving light work really allow you to create effects on your own with control software or a controller. With the right fade times and control values, you can emulate a lot of these effects even if they aren’t included as macros in your lights. Using the built-in effects of your moving lights, or making the equivalents of them with your controller, can be an easy way to add a whole new level to your show.

Part 7: Advanced Programming II: Making it Move This section covers the topic that I most often get questions about – “well, I got moving lights, but how do I make them move around the stage and look cool?” Well, the answer to this depends on the fixture. If you have the Martin SCX series scanners, the answer is easy – movement macros. These allow you to move around a central point at a certain speed with a certain pattern of movement. This takes a lot of complex movement programming out of your hands, and can literally save hours if you have a controller that doesn’t have a shape generator. Speaking of shape generators, they are your friend. If you have a console or software with a shape generator, this will allow you to make your movers do circles, figure eights (often called “infinity shape”), snaps, sinewaves or triangle waves, and random movement chases really easily. You are usually able to define the shape table (pattern/mathematical function that will control the shape of the movement) as well as the amplitude of the movement (how big the radius for a square, how big the range for a sinewave, etc) and the speed of the motion. This allows you to create great movement effects in a hurry. I can program an eight point circle in a few minutes with the right controller by hand – but I can do it in a few seconds with the right controller that has shape tables – and it’ll be far more than eight points, so it’ll look a lot smoother and cleaner in terms of movement. However, if you don’t have SCX scanners or a controller/software with a shape generator, do not worry – there are ways to do awesome movement effects with your controllers – it just takes a bit longer. Let’s start with a basic line – get your fixture powered up and running, and go to a fresh bank of scenes in program mode. Move the light to one side of the stage, and record the first scene. Move it to the other side, record the second scene. Now play them back in auto mode – you should be able to get a movement that sweeps back and forth across the stage. Let’s just add one more point, and get a triangle. Go back to your second scene in program mode, and record it as the third scene. Now change the second scene to be a position that is downstage of the other two positions, and about halfway between them in terms of pan values. You now record this as scene two. You should now be able to see a triangle movement when you go in to auto mode in that bank. Now let’s add a bunch of points and do a circle – I usually do eight point circles. I get masking tape and put eight tape X marks on the floor that are roughly in a circle centered on stage, with the upstage most point of the circle a bit back from the front of the drum riser. The circle can be a little bit less in diameter than your truss is long. You should fire up all of your moving lights, and evenly space them


Steven Kosiba

around these eight points of the circle. So if you have two lights, you start one on one side of the circle and the other across from it. If you have four lights, you put the lights on every other point. It’s nice if you have more than two lights to put the lights in order clockwise or counterclockwise around the circle – the effect looks a lot better that way. Once you have the lights evenly spaced around the circle, record the first scene. Then move all of your lights to the next X mark clockwise or counterclockwise (remember which way you’re going here!). Record the next scene, move to the next point in the same direction, record, repeat, so forth till all eight scenes are filled and all eight points have been hit by every light. You can get interesting effects by grouping up your lights in pairs here – i.e. if you have four fixtures start two fixtures on the same dot on each side of the ring, and record the eight steps of the circle. I’d recommend using the first and third fixtures on one side and the second and fourth fixtures on the other. You can easily modify such an effect to be a figure eight by just making an 8-point figure eight with the tape marks – or you can make it an oval, a random movement chase, anything you want. The next movement effect that I am going to explain is something of a classic effect – the Can-Can effect. It’s basically applying a triangular or sine wave to all of your moving lights. Make four tape lines on the floor going stage left to stage right – so the tape is parallel to the front of the stage. These should be somewhat evenly spaced and the furthest line out should probably be placed about a foot or two out in to the audience. You are now going to place the lights staggered out over these lines. Don’t use the pan controls, leave all of the lights pointed straight downstage. Start by putting light one on the line furthest upstage, the second light on the second row of tape, third on the third row, fourth on the fourth row. Now, record a scene. Then you need to advance everything by one – so light one moves to line two, light two moves to line three, light three moves to line four, and light four moves to line three. This continues. Whenever a fixture gets to line one or line four, it reverses direction. This creates the effect of the lights bouncing between two defined lines. You’ll want to keep the fade times in the right region here in order to not see the fixtures stopping at every single new position, so that it basically looks like they’re in continuous motion, much like a pendulum but tilted out towards the audience. You can also have what I call a “snap-wave”, which is where you start with all of the fixtures upstage (about in line with the drum riser, and one by one you snap them up to above the heads of the audience on a zero count, and then snap them back down. This is not for every song – but in certain situations in certain songs, it can be a really dramatic effect. You can either do this as a continuous or one time bump – in other words, you can start with everything down and have the lights move up and come back down one by one, or you can have one light move up over the audience and then the other follows it up and then the next, and then you bring them back down one by one once all of the lights are pointed up high. The effect produced by this is that one by one, the lights reach their upper limit of tilt, and then reverse direction and head towards the lower limit defined by the effect (usually not the physical limits of the fixture). Once they reach the lower limit, they again reverse direction. This is a six step effect, so you will leave two scenes of the bank open. To create an effect that looks more like a sine wave and less like a triangular wave, spread the two center lines further apart, but don’t move the top lines. This will make the top of the movement slower than the center, but will still look a bit choppy because of the low step count of the effect. You can also apply the above effect to pan motion instead to get a sweep effect across the stage. Simply put out the tape lines perpendicular to the originally suggested method, and program the effect with the pan motion. This will create a sweep effect across the stage. Offset the lights by different numbers of lines for interesting effects. You can do this effect with the lights at audience knee level, or up above their heads moving back and forth. You will find a set of effects tables in the back of this guide that show you visually how to set up and make these effects, and show you what each scene should look like from a top view with an example rig that has four scanners on the rear truss. This is an absolute top view, so it’s as if the camera was hanging over the rig from the ceiling. The examples are with four scanners on a rear truss, but you can apply these effects to any number of fixtures in any number of positions. Just remember that for scale, the truss is about fifteen feet long in those pictures, so don’t tape out a dinky little circle on the floor – make it big enough to make a nice effect. Each image is a scene. Scenes progress from top left


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to right then down to the next row. So on the circle effect, the top left image is the first scene, the next image to the right is the second scene, the third image on the top row is the third scene, then the first image on the second row is the fourth scene, etc. Reads like it should, no tricks there.

Part 8: Designing the Show I: Designing With Color This section is all about COLOR. What to do, what not to do, how to make it happen, and how to make it easy. Anyone can walk up to a DMX controller, and with little instruction, record a few simple cues. But if all of those cues look awful, conflicting, and uncoordinated, you won’t ever have anything to your show. It’s easy to make your lights go crazy. The hard part is knowing when and when not to do it, and how to achieve either side of that balance. The main thing that you’re going to have to do here is to decide what colors go with what songs. You may only have three or four color schemes for your whole show, but you have to know how to apply those to songs at the right times. Honestly, a lot of colors can work for most songs. However, once you pick a theme and a scheme you should really stay with it for that song. If your theme is green and yellow with the movers and green and blue with the LEDs, keep that for the song. You should try to give each song or set of songs a defined look to make it stand out from the last one you played in the set, or keep the theme the same to define a block of songs. For instance, if you go in to a block of slower songs, you may want to use a blue/dark pink theme or a blue/green theme. For faster songs, I find that sticking with a lot of bold primary colors is good, so I often like to do red or green with yellow or white cutting through it, or blue with red and white slicing through (by slicing I mean that these colors are in your moving lights or narrow-beam fixtures or as intermediate steps in chases that will punch in to the song consistently. There are a lot of color combinations that I like, but one of the ones that really has never cut it for me is red and aqua/cyan (blue+green). I like red and blue, green and red (on occasion, with the right kind of green), and I even like purple with yellow and amber with pink. You have to really feel out a song for what kinds of colors it needs. You can also go with lyrical references – if the song’s about water, guess what color you should make it? Red? Probably not, unless you’re talking about the absence of water. If you’ve got references to fire or to burning or to anything of that sort, consider a red/yellow/green scheme for the song. Use yellow and green for the verses and red and yellow for the chorus. You just really have to feel these things out for each song. It’s a skill that comes naturally or fails you all together – I usually don’t see much in between. Let’s take the song “My Own Worst Enemy” by Lit. It’s not really a “blue” song or a “teal” or “aqua” or “cyan” song. It’s a “red” song. Or a red and yellow song. Or, my favorite, a red and white song. There is never one right answer, just a few wrong answers. I could just as easily design the song based around a red theme or a green theme, each with accents of bright white breaking through.

Part 8: Designing the Show II: Color Part Deux: Gels and Frontlighting If you’re using conventional parcans, you may be wondering what gels to put in them in order to get your desired effect. My favorite (and the standard in the US) color filter manufacturer is Rosco, but Apollo, Lee, and GAM (Great American Market) also produce a good product. If we’re talking frontlight, there are a few things to look at: If you’re using them for just a little bit of face light with only enough cans to cover the stage once, you probably want to look at a light Bastard Amber (Rosco R02 – all numbers with the R prefix are Rosco numbers) for your face light. This can really carve performers out of the stage and really let people see your faces. If you are doing several colors of front light, I recommend R02 Bastard Amber, R34 Flesh Pink, and either R68 (Parry Sky Blue) or R74 (Night Blue). The pink and amber should be fairly straight shots, but you want to do a cross wash with the blue. This is a great “tableau” look (changes, between songs, etc), and can also add nice frontlight color certain songs. If you’re using a dark blue (R80 or R74), put it on the most upstage (towards the back wall of the stage) side of the T-bar (as T-bars are usually angled), or at the ends of a front truss. This will allow you to get the best cross wash that covers most of the stage and provides an interesting angle with this color. This is the look that you’re going for with this. You may also want to double up


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on fixtures, because the dark blues have very low transmittancies. So given four medium or wide pars per side on a T-bar, and that two pars (one from each side) can cover the stage, I would have an R02, an R34, and two R74 gelled fixtures on each side of the stage. This will give you good overall control over color balance. If you have LED fixtures for frontlight, ditch the R74 or R80, just use low-wattage parcans with bastard amber (and R34 if you have enough cans) to pick out performers. The saturated blue can be provided by the LED cans, and this is a great way to maximize your frontlight color options. If you’re using LED fixtures for frontlight, you should strongly consider using wider angle wash fixtures, like the Chauvet LEDsplash 200B or 152B. Two fixtures per side should suffice. For backlight, there are several standards. The known standard is if you are given the choice of only two colors, it’s Red and Blue. I usually pick R26 or R27 (depending on the saturation required and the power of the instruments), and either R74 or R80, depending on the band and music. I prefer R74 for most situations, but R80 is something of a standard for band lighting. If you have an option for another color, it’s usually a yellow or amber of some sort. R12, R312, R15, or R22 or R23 for the darker amber end of things. Given a fourth color, either green or pink depending on the band. For a good backlight green, I like to use anything in the R90 thru R95 range that fits the music. Usually R90, R93, or R95. Those are fairly good colors. In the pink range, R39 is my decided favorite. Other good pinks include R339, R42, and R46. The colors really vary by band. If given four colors for a funk band, I might choose R39 (a dark pink), R95 (a blue green), R15 (a yellow on the amber side of things), and R74 (a nice dark blue). If given four colors for a hard rock band, I would probably choose R12 (a bright yellow), R26 (a strong red), R74 (a dark blue), and N/C (no color, white). Another interesting color to throw in to the mix is a nice deep blue-purple. My favorite being R358 (Rose Indigo). There are several other options, but many of them are too saturated to be able to compete with the other gels in your rig. R358 is a perfect balance of color and transmittancy. Given six colors (a six-bar lamp bar), I usually pick R15 (but a double cut, as in two sheets of color in one frame for more saturation) or R22, R26, R39, R358, R74, and either R90 or R95 depending on the band. Sometimes sacrificing the green or yellow/amber for a no-color fixture is a good idea.

Part 8: Designing the Show III: Breaking it Down There are several basic parts that make up most songs. There’s the Intro, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Solo, and Outtro. This is many times the way I organize my lighting designs for bands when I’m doing it on short notice or on the fly. The intro will be one look that I can build on, then I’ll build on that for the first verse, switch up colors a bit (but not drastically) in the chorus and raise the energy a bit, bring it back down for the verse, etc…then when a bridge comes along I change up the lighting quite a bit (but generally keep to colors from the intro/verse and chorus) and then for the solo I basically do the bridge look but focused on the soloist, with more or less energy as needed. Then the outtro is the final look of the song or the fade to low cue, whichever the song needs. One of the most important things to realize is that not all songs need this many looks/chases. There are some songs that just need one or two cues, with a fade in at the beginning and a fade to black at the end. I do one or two cue songs on many occasions where the song just actually doesn’t need a bunch of flashing lights all over the place. However, it’s true – there are some songs that you want to do just that for – blow the roof off the place with lights. You have to be careful though – there’s a careful line between blowing the roof off and causing the whole building to collapse – the first is good, the second isn’t. The other thing that you have to realize is that stage lighting is as much where you put light as where you don’t put light. Dark space is just as important as space with light in it. If you focus all of your lights properly, no one will ever see the mess of cables that inevitably lies behind your amps and other stage equipment. If you want silhouettes, hint hint: don’t use frontlight or side light of any color. And try to use lights that are lower down than your main rear truss. You may want fixtures sitting on top of your amps or on the floor for silhouette effects. You may also want to simply uplight the back wall or backdrop with LED fixtures in order to create these effects. This way your silhouette will be seen against a strongly colored backdrop of the color of your choice.


Steven Kosiba

Part X: In Closing This is just a laundry list of stuff that I need to say. If you have any questions about band lighting, post them over at the Harmony Central Lighting Forum. If you have any suggestions of what to add to this guide, email them to me at [email protected]. I have put countless hours of writing, planning, and research in to this guide. I’m not asking the world, but five or ten bucks if you really get some good information out of this guide. Think of it like shareware software – if you use it, think about keeping up the effort. If you look at it and say “I already knew that!”, then keep it in your pocket – you’ve obviously done a lot of research yourself. My paypal email is [email protected]. I have also attached a number of system diagrams that I have done for people and just done for this guide in order to give you some ideas about how to start and where to go from there. The glossary is a constantly under construction thing – check back for updates as things progress, and send me suggestions for the glossary if you want to.


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Glossary American DJ – Importer/manufacturer of DJ lighting. They are a sister company to Elation Lighting. Antari – The atmospheric effects (fog/haze/etc) division of American DJ/Elation. Atmospheric Effects – Fog, haze, and any other effect that enhances beams of light. Attribute – A controllable feature of a fixture, like pan, tilt, color, gobo, etc. Barrel Scanner – See Rolling Mirror. Beam Angle – Effectively the “width” of the beam of light, given in degrees, or in qualitative terms such as “wide”, “narrow”, or “medium”. Technically defined as the angle at which the intensity of the pool of light is at fifty percent of what it was in the center. Bump Button – A button on a lighting board, usually an old-style two-scene board, that bumps the light up to full (or whatever the level of the Bump Master is at) while the button is pressed. Chamsys – The company that makes the MagicQ software package and consoles. This software package is very advanced and has many features. Chauvet – Importer of DJ lighting gear. Neo-Neon makes a lot of their stuff. Their moving lights are generally smoother than American DJ’s in terms of movement. I often recommend Chauvet before ADJ. CMY – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow color mixing. These colors allow you to mix almost any color you want to. This is “subtractive” color mixing, in that the color flags/gradient filters subtractively remove wavelengths from the beam of light. For instance, if you put in Magenta and Yellow at full, you will get Red, because Magenta and Yellow are the two secondary colors that contain red. If you know any physics of optics or color theory, this will make complete sense to you. Color Temperature – this is a measurement of how “blue” or how “amber”/how “warm” or “cold” the white light produced by a fixture is. This has relations to the temperatures of stars, but to make it simple, higher color temperature lamps produce bluer light. Color Wheel – A disc of metal that contains glass color filters around the edge, often dichroic glass. The edge of the wheel is in the path of the beam of light so that only one color (or two if you want to do a split color) is in the beam of the light at once. A stepper or servo motor controls the position of this wheel. Compu Cad (Elation) – Elation’s rebranding of the Sunlite software suite – a few different features, but it’s basically the same as one of the levels of Sunlite product. Daslite – The sister software program to Sunlite, built on the same platform but has a slightly different featureset and GUI. Dowser – A piece of metal or glass that is shaded or slotted so that more light can pass through at the beginning and the light is completely blocked by the time the flag/disc is completely in the light beam. Elation – High quality lighting manufacturer. Elation gear is some of the best in the business for mid-level rigs. Some of the fixtures are definitely reaching Martin quality Eliminator – Cheap DJ lighting gear distributor, the only thing I’ll buy from them is their mini-strobes. Encoder – One of two things, but most commonly data entry wheels on a moving light controller. Alternately, a positional sensor in a moving light that tells the light how far it has traveled. Fixture – In short, this is a light. A parcan is a fixture, a moving head is a fixture, and an LED panel light is a fixture. Focus – Can mean two things – the first meaning is how “hard” or “soft” a the gobo image is. “Hard focus” is when the gobo projection is very crisp. “soft focus” is when the gobo projection image is soft or fuzzy around the edges. Higher end moving heads have remote focus control that allows you to control the focus of the gobo images from your lighting console. One important thing to note is that when the images is projected at ten feet and is hard focused, it will not be hard focused if it is instead pointing thirty feet away at a wall. The focus will be slightly off. This is because the image is being focused on a surface that is further away. The other definition of focus is the X/Y position of a moving light on stage. For instance, “focus points” are positions on stage that a light is preset to that update throughout a series of scenes or cues. Fog Machine – A device that uses a heating element and a high-pressure nozzle to turn fog fluid in to the large white mass moving across the stage. Fogger – see Fog Machine


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Freestyler – A lighting control program built on the Sunlite platform, but much more stripped down. It is available at no charge and simply requires an Enttec USB>DMX interface. Gobo – A metal or glass pattern that is projected with a moving light or other gobo projector Gobo Wheel – A disc of metal in a moving light that has a number of gobos placed around the perimeter. There is an indexing servomotor or stepper motor that changes from one gobo to another or scrolls through them all. Hazer – A device that uses either a heater and nozzle or a compressor to produce a thin and evenly distributed layer of atmosphere that allows you to see light beams really well while not producing the thick, white cloud and annoying smell commonly associated with fog machines. Irradiant – The main US importer and distributor of Neo-Neon products. On par for quality with Chauvet (Neo-Neon manufactures a lot of Chauvet’s products). Joystick – A positional control device on moving light controllers that allows you to control the pan and tilt attributes of moving lights (scanners/moving heads). Kelvin – a measure of the “color temperature” of a lamp. Incandescent bulbs (e.g. par lamps) are generally around 3200 Kelvin, while arc source/discharge lamps range from around 6000 Kelvin to around 9000 Kelvin. The sun is around 5800 Kelvin. This scale originates from the astronomical blackbody radiation Planck spectrum, which judges the temperature of a star in Kelvins based on the emission spectrum of the star. Lamp Cord – Lightweight, 16 or 18 gauge two-conductor electrical cord that is used for low wattage, two-prong connector fixtures like mini strobes. Le Maitre – An atmospheric and pyrotechnic effects company that is best known in the band lighting market for their popular Radiance hazer. Light Jockey – Martin’s lighting software. Widely regarded as one of the best lighting control programs in the industry. Luxeon – A brand of high-power LED that is used in many high-end lighting fixtures. The standard wattages are one watt and three watts. MagicQ – A software control package and a series of lighting consoles from Chamsys. The Martin – A professional lighting manufacturer based in Denmark that produces high quality automated lighting fixtures. Martin makes the SCX series of scanners, and the world standard MAC Moving Heads. myDMX – American DJ’s rebranding of the Sunlite basic lighting control software. Comes with a basic 3D visualizer package that’s the same as the one in any Sunlite-based software. Moving Head – A moving light that swings the whole optical system to position the beam of light. The gobo wheel, color wheel, lamp, prism, etc are all housed in the part that moves. Moving Mirror – A moving light that uses a mirror to orient the beam of light. These come in several different types and are often refereed to as Scanners. Neo-Neon – A Chinese manufacturer of lighting equipment. Known for their LED fixtures. They manufacture a lot of equipment for Chauvet, as well as distribute their equipment directly through Irradiant in the United States. NSI – A lighting equipment manufacturer that makes a lot of dimmers and control boards, as well as selling parcan fixtures and DMX cable. Now under the umbrella company Leviton. Palette – A setting for a group of channels (focus palette – pan/tilt, beam palette – gobo, shutter, focus, color palette – RGB, CMY, or color wheel) that is used repeatedly in programming through accessing its memory location. Once a palette is updated, all of the places where that palette is referenced in cues, scenes, and sequences are updated with the new information. This is especially useful if you are loading in to a different stage each time you use your rig, but you want there to be special cues for each of the band members that are right on target with the moving lights every night. Rather than go through and update all of the cues, you can simply update the focus palette for each of the band members, and you’re set as far as positions are concerned. Focus palettes are also called “focus points”. Palettes are also called “presets” on some lighting controllers. Pan – The left-right movement of a moving light (scanner or moving head). Parameter – see Attribute Prism (3-facet) – An effect in most higher-end moving heads and some scanners that triples the image coming out of the front of the light. There are other types of prisms, such as 4-facet, 3-D, or 9-facet that all have different ways of splitting the image. The 3-d prism is a special effect that appears to blur the image out in one direction and then rotates the blur about the center of the gobo image.


Steven Kosiba

RGB – Red, Green, Blue color mixing. This is additive color mixing. So when you mix together red and blue, your eyes perceive it as pink or purple (depending on the color mix). When you mix red and green, you get something along the lines of yellow or amber (hardest to get with RGB Color Mixing). When you mix blue and green together, you get a blue-green color commonly referred to as Cyan, or some shade near it, like teal or aqua. You will notice that the colors made by combining two colors here are the same set of colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) used in subtractive (CMY) mixing. RGBA – Adds Amber to the RGB mix because amber is one of the harder colors to get with LEDs. This allows more colors to be produced with LEDs. RGBW – Adds White to the RGB mix because white is a harder color to get with LEDs, so this adds another dimension to the color mix. RGBAW – Adds both White and Amber to the color mix, resulting in an incredible variety of colors. Rolling Mirror – A subset of scanners/moving mirror lights. These lights have a mirror “drum” as it were that rotates about an axis, and that axis can pan back and forth. Scanner – A moving mirror light. These come in several varieties, the main two being flat mirror and rolling mirror. Shape Effect – A pre-built effect in a lighting console or fixture movement macro that moves the fixture in a certain shape about a center point. This allows you to get quick, smooth, continuous movements. Shinp – a Chinese laser company that produces many two and four module lasers. Shutter – The part of a moving light that strobes the beam – usually a single metal flag or pair of metal flags (small rectangles/triangles of metal) that “chop” the beam of light continuously to create a strobing effect. Step – A single scene in a chase. Steps are often very similar to each other but change slightly from one to the next. Submaster – A “look on a fader” – often found on manual lighting consoles (NSI manual boards, Scene Setters, etc) that allow you to set up groups of lights or lighting looks on faders. Sunlite – A lighting control software suite which is very powerful. Many other software suites are based on it, and most use its visualization engine. Tap/Sync – A function on many lighting controllers that allows you to tap the beat of the music in to the board. The quality of this function is related directly to the price of the board. I have yet to get the tap/sync button on the DMX/Obey series from Chauvet work, but regularly use the tap/sync button on the NSI MLC16D because it works so well. Tilt – The up/down motion of a moving light. Trackball – An alternative to a joystick, a positional control for moving lights on some lighting consoles (often a plug in device, through a serial or PS/2 port) that allows you to control pan and tilt quickly and easily for programming. Trait – see Attribute Wiggle Light – A moving light – either a scanner or a moving head. Generally used by people who don’t like them or more often than not, don’t know what to call them. Can also refer to the little 4515 oscillators that swing back and forth. X-Laser – a manufacturer of lasers in the United States known for helping people get the required variances for higher-powered lasers that they sell. Zip Cord – See “Lamp Cord”.


Steven Kosiba

Dealer Index This is simply an index of dealers who will sell you stuff. None of these dealers paid for placement. I hand picked this list from people who I would buy from. My regular suppliers are the top two here, and I honestly considered putting only them here because I think that you should buy from them first.

DJS Pro Audio & Lighting DJS Pro Audio & Lighting Location #1 3842 E. 13 Mile Road Warren, MI 48092 1-888-DJS-PAL-1 www.djspal.com www.djsprosales.com [email protected] Great company, great prices. They have a lot of stuff physically in stock at their store, and you can email their sales email and actually hear back if they have something in stock, usually sooner rather than later. Also, if you’re in their area, they have a kickass lighting showroom where you can check out a lot of the popular lighting fixtures and effects from Chauvet, ADJ, Irradiant, and others. More props for hanging out on the Harmony Central Lighting Forum to answer questions and make suggestions (user DJS Biff). DJS is a great company and really looks out for their customers.

Entertainment Systems Corporation (ESC, Inc.) 160 Technology Park Dr. Kilmarnock, VA 22482 (800) 582-2421 Fax 804-435-7920 [email protected] www.entsyscorp.com The guy at Entertainment Systems who you’ll get to know well if you place an order from them is Bill Cronheim. He personally responds to a lot of the purchase inquiries, and is very knowledgeable about stage lighting. He also hangs out on the Harmony Central Lighting Forum to answer questions that people have (User BillESC). He’ll give you lower than MAP on just about anything, and gives you free help on setting things up and suggestions for your rig. Bill is the first guy I bought lighting gear from, and I constantly refer people to him. He’ll really go out of his way to make sure you have everything you need and get it to you when you need it for a good price. Bill is the guy to contact for VEI products, like the VEI Novascans.

Centerstage Lighting www.centerstagelighting.com [email protected] Centerstage sells products through their website and their eBay store, where they often have dozens of B-stock items that are far below the best prices you can get anywhere else on the brand new ones – but the warranties are always reduced to a shorter term than the originals. This gets you awesome gear at a lower price. Also, on their website, many of the products that they say are their own house brand are actually ADJ and Chauvet products, and you’ll most likely receive an ADJ or Chauvet product, not a Centerstage brand product. They do this to sell things for significant discounts that MAP pricing would not allow them to do otherwise.


Steven Kosiba

Northern Sound & Light, Inc. 11 Shingiss Street McKees Rocks, PA 15136 (866) 796-6232 http://northernsound.net/ [email protected] I have used these guys before because they have the lowest prices out there. Shipping can take a while, but they’ll give you a decent price if you call them. I have always been able to get someone on the phone very quickly, and the folks on the other end are able to get you a price right then and there.

Cheaplights 17203 Bamwood Drive Houston Texas 77090 800 880-0883 www.cheaplights.com [email protected] Basically, they sell a lot of stuff that is actually name brand ADJ, Chauvet, or other distributors’ product, but they sell it under their own name. They have a lot of other random small lights as well, but you need to remember that if it’s super-cheap, there’s probably a good reason. If you’re in the area, I’ve been told that you can just go to their warehouse and check stuff out and ask them questions.


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Addressing Tables for Controllers Each of these tables contains the addresses for each fixture button of the controller (for those controllers that use fixture buttons). This is the quick and easy way to address all of your fixtures for your specific controller. For the numbers, Dipswitch 1 is on the far left of the readout, Dipswitch 9 on the far right. So for Fixture 06 of a Chauvet Obey 40, you want Dipswitches 1, 5, and 7 turned on. 12 Fixtures, 32 Channels per Fixture: Chauvet: Obey 70, DMX 70 Fixture 01: Address 001: 100000000 Fixture 02: Address 033: 100001000 Fixture 03: Address 065: 100000100 Fixture 04: Address 097: 100001100 Fixture 05: Address 129: 100000010 Fixture 06: Address 161: 100001010 Fixture 07: Address 193: 100000110 Fixture 08: Address 225: 100001110 Fixture 09: Address 257: 100000001 Fixture 10: Address 289: 100001001 Fixture 11: Address 321: 100000101 Fixture 12: Address 353: 100001101 12 Fixtures, 16 Channels per Fixture American DJ: Operator, Operator 192 Chauvet: Obey 40, DMX55, DMX44, DMX50, DMX50A, DMX40B, DMX40A, DMX40 Eliminator: DMX DJ Irradiant: DJ192-DMX, DJ12-DMX, Club 12-DMX Visual Effects, Inc (VEI): DMX-192 Fixture 01: Address 001: 100000000 Fixture 02: Address 017: 100010000 Fixture 03: Address 033: 100001000 Fixture 04: Address 049: 100011000 Fixture 05: Address 065: 100000100 Fixture 06: Address 081: 100010100 Fixture 07: Address 097: 100001100 Fixture 08: Address 113: 100011100 Fixture 09: Address 129: 100000010 Fixture 10: Address 145: 100010010 Fixture 11: Address 161: 100001010 Fixture 12: Address 177: 100011010 8 Fixtures, 16 Channels per Fixture: Chauvet: Obey 10 Fixture 01: Address 001: 100000000 Fixture 02: Address 017: 100010000 Fixture 03: Address 033: 100001000 Fixture 04: Address 049: 100011000 Fixture 05: Address 065: 100000100 Fixture 06: Address 081: 100010100 Fixture 07: Address 097: 100001100 Fixture 08: Address 113: 100011100


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Circle effect tables


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Can-Can Effect Tables


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Sweep Effect Tables


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Rig Ideas

basic band lighting guide v1.2

Documents

entertainment systems corp

martin smartmac luminaire

150w discharge source

basic band lighting

mail carriers route

audio input jack

chauvet led shadow

250w halogen lamp