Stage Lights

R

raybdoc

Member
Is anyone using MIDI from the FM3 to control stage lights? What setup are you using? I want the lights to change when I go from scene to scene since I’m already performing scene changes for guitar sounds at natural transition points in the song. I know how to send MIDI scene changes, but I’d like to find out people’s experience with lighting software, how you route things, whether you use wired vs. wireless setups, what lights you use, and anything else that would help in the planning stage before committing money to it. I’m using a Mac laptop and iPad; my bands have 4-5 musicians and play in small-to-medium sized venues (breweries, wineries, bars, private parties). Would be nice to have a lighting/sound person or to automate lights through playing to a click but I don’t see those things happening any time soon.
 
We’ve done this a few times with lights. My suggestion is not to use the FM3 as the midi brain. You’ll avoid a lot of problems and frustration by making your Mac the master. Then distribute midi to your FM3 for scene changes, to a midi to dmx converter for lights. All of which can be sync’d to a click track running on your Mac.

Depending on how many lights you have, you’ll likely want to run it on its own dedicated power separate from audio. We’ve used ADJ Jolts, everything wired.
 
@raybdoc I do this on an AxeFX III using Scene Midi. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work on an FM3, apart from a shortage of buttons. I have separate Scenes for Intro, Verse, Chorus, etc. Whenever I change Scene the Scene Midi block sends MIDI messages to change the lighting colourway and pulse/flash type. MIDI signals go via a midi/usb converter into a Windows computer, running DMXIS, which controls the lights. DMXIS is now obsolete, but there are other products.

I’ve not automated the lighting tempo in case we play a song at a non star dare tempo. Instead I tap in the tempo on an external pedal which has two output cables, one to the AxeFX to set the tempo for time-based effects like Delay. The other cable goes to DMXIS.

One refinement which I find useful: Changing Presets loads a default Scene which mutes guitar send to FoH, and put up a quiescent lighting pattern which we use between songs.There’s no specific button needed for this. I only get to it by changing preset.
 
toneseeker911 said:
We’ve done this a few times with lights. My suggestion is not to use the FM3 as the midi brain. You’ll avoid a lot of problems and frustration by making your Mac the master. Then distribute midi to your FM3 for scene changes, to a midi to dmx converter for lights. All of which can be sync’d to a click track running on your Mac.

Depending on how many lights you have, you’ll likely want to run it on its own dedicated power separate from audio. We’ve used ADJ Jolts, everything wired.
Click to expand...
1,00,000,0000%.

It's far better to have off-stage equipment be the main hub of your operation. It sees far less wear and tear and a backup is less expensive as well. You can program everything in a DAW via MIDI, even continuous controls like wahs, and only worry about running around and looking awesome!

When in doubt, I strive to isolate individual jobs to individual devices.
 
Roland said:
@raybdoc I do this on an AxeFX III using Scene Midi. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work on an FM3, apart from a shortage of buttons. I have separate Scenes for Intro, Verse, Chorus, etc. Whenever I change Scene the Scene Midi block sends MIDI messages to change the lighting colourway and pulse/flash type. MIDI signals go via a midi/usb converter into a Windows computer, running DMXIS, which controls the lights. DMXIS is now obsolete, but there are other products.

I’ve not automated the lighting tempo in case we play a song at a non star dare tempo. Instead I tap in the tempo on an external pedal which has two output cables, one to the AxeFX to set the tempo for time-based effects like Delay. The other cable goes to DMXIS.

One refinement which I find useful: Changing Presets loads a default Scene which mutes guitar send to FoH, and put up a quiescent lighting pattern which we use between songs.There’s no specific button needed for this. I only get to it by changing preset.
Click to expand...
Interesting - so is one of the eight scenes of each preset the default scene?
 
kywabunga said:
1,00,000,0000%.

It's far better to have off-stage equipment be the main hub of your operation. It sees far less wear and tear and a backup is less expensive as well. You can program everything in a DAW via MIDI, even continuous controls like wahs, and only worry about running around and looking awesome!

When in doubt, I strive to isolate individual jobs to individual devices.
Click to expand...
Sounds like good advice. Although I might have to find another band. Hey, maybe Fractal will invent a button that makes your band want to play to a click. 🙂
 
I'm also an board with "use a computer".
My band is running on Ableton with preset and scene changes via MIDI, lights via DMX(IS), ...
But - what I really like - I start songs with my FM3 :)
All songs are placed in the session view and I have a dedicated switch on my FM3 to start always the next song.
We also have some interludes (running as loops), so I can step through the whole set - which is really awesome.
 
Bruce1448 said:
My band does like toneseeker911 suggested. You can see our rig here:

DMXIS is the light interface we use and we have 12 Rasha Crux Hex lights.
Click to expand...

Thanks - enormously helpful video. Also, those lights look convenient with the battery power and wireless DMX. What kind of stands do you mount them on? What do you use to transmit from laptop to the lights?
 
MrPond said:
I'm also an board with "use a computer".
My band is running on Ableton with preset and scene changes via MIDI, lights via DMX(IS), ...
But - what I really like - I start songs with my FM3 :)
All songs are placed in the session view and I have a dedicated switch on my FM3 to start always the next song.
We also have some interludes (running as loops), so I can step through the whole set - which is really awesome.
Click to expand...
Are you using a midi cable to the laptop, or is it wireless? Also, what are some of the interludes you’ve come up with?
 
raybdoc said:
Interesting - so is one of the eight scenes of each preset the default scene?
Click to expand...
Yes. I chose to make scene 8 the default starting scene for every preset. The pedals on my FC-12 only give me direct access to scenes 1 thru’ 5.
 
raybdoc said:
Are you using a midi cable to the laptop, or is it wireless? Also, what are some of the interludes you’ve come up with?
Click to expand...

Wireless MIDI (WIDI) (FM3s to MacBook), wired DMX (MacBook > DMXIS > Lights)
Interludes: Ambient stuff with heavy valhalla reverbs :)
 
Last edited:
raybdoc said:
Thanks - enormously helpful video. Also, those lights look convenient with the battery power and wireless DMX. What kind of stands do you mount them on? What do you use to transmit from laptop to the lights?
Click to expand...
Glad it helped!

While we have used wireless DMX in practice, we have found it unreliable in the real world, so we always wire them for shows. Otherwise, we're using a cheap wireless Donner dongle from Amazon.

We don't use stands - we're a pretty moody postrock band that likes it dark so we sort of go for silhouette style lighting from the stage. Something like some OnStage T stands would probably work well though!
 
Bruce1448 said:
Glad it helped!

While we have used wireless DMX in practice, we have found it unreliable in the real world, so we always wire them for shows. Otherwise, we're using a cheap wireless Donner dongle from Amazon.

We don't use stands - we're a pretty moody postrock band that likes it dark so we sort of go for silhouette style lighting from the stage. Something like some OnStage T stands would probably work well though!
Click to expand...
Too bad about wireless DMX - were you getting dropouts?
 
raybdoc said:
Too bad about wireless DMX - were you getting dropouts?
Click to expand...
We were playing with another band (their album release) and they were using wireless DMX as well. Since they were all setup, our transmitter just kept connecting to their setup and we couldn't get ours working fast enough to do lights that night. We decided after that to just go wired all the time. Just more reliable. We do notice that there's less latency going wired too.
It's a bit of a pain, but we typically wire them up and set them up during soundcheck anyway.
 
Bruce1448 said:
We were playing with another band (their album release) and they were using wireless DMX as well. Since they were all setup, our transmitter just kept connecting to their setup and we couldn't get ours working fast enough to do lights that night. We decided after that to just go wired all the time. Just more reliable. We do notice that there's less latency going wired too.
It's a bit of a pain, but we typically wire them up and set them up during soundcheck anyway.
Click to expand...

Well that must have sucked! Not the Evil Wireless Band, was it (heard about those guys…)?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom