#1

I’m looking for lighting to set the mood for shows, rehearsals, etc. I remember years ago I ran the faders for the Pauline Oliveros pieces “For Marilyn Monroe and Valarie Solanas…” and I was pretty stunned at how beautiful a solid color washing into another could be (which is weird because I’ve been a fan of 70s Italian horror films for the past 20 years).

Does anyone have any recommendations, or just want to chat about what they use? If it’s DMX, I could write something in Max to control it, but surface level searching seems to reveal a lot of cheesy flashing, twirling DJ lights, which is not the mood I’m looking for. I don’t have an enormous budget, but I’m also open to saving up if something is significantly better.

Anyway, being trapped inside from the past several months has made me much more interested in things I can do to create a particular mood. I’d appreciate anyone’s thoughts.

#2

I’ve had a lot of fun using the dmxis usb>dmx converter box from enttec. pretty simple to use and comes with it’s own software, both a standalone application and a plugin. wrote the entire light show for a tour I went on a long while back and ran it from Ableton onstage, it was relatively easy for someone with no previous dmx knowledge.

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#3

A friend of mine is the lighting designer who built these custom LED panels for Luke Schneider…

She uses the L.E.D. Lab app on her iPad to control them live, but it looks like you can have external control via MIDI, OSC, and DMX through it, too.

I’ve been in the room during one of his shows - can confirm it creates beautiful, immersive ambient color washes!

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#4

That looks like a great interface, I might start with their cheap model. What are the lights that you use?

#5

i use a Chauvet DMX controller that has MIDI.
that seemed to be the easiest approach for me.
(i had to teach myself all about light systems…but i admittedly am not a super authority)
:stuck_out_tongue:

as far as avoiding cheap looking Pause & Play crap…
it really depends on the light fixture.
as i discovered…each fixture can do some things really well and not so well if not at all.

kinda like audio effects…
a distortion pedal will do what it does well.
however you are not going to get a delay or chorus sound out of it.

for instance…
i have several Q-spots…these are moving head lights that will produce millions of colors, has gobos and strobe.
however…the strobe effect is NOT like having a STROBE that produces the ever so populoar epileptic seizure inducing effect.

also be aware that the lights can be a bit slow to react.
i always have to move everything a 32nd note early so the lights would be perfectly quantized with the music.

here is some live footage from my old band Morgue City…we played everything to a click so we could have electronics and noiz with us onstage. the band consisted of only drums, guitar and vox so we wanted to make more of a show out of it.

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#6

Has anyone used (one or more) projectors? LED projectors are so cheap these days I recently bought one to experiment with. I’m planning on streaming live on twitch with a webcam and a projector having premade visuals (at least to start with) as a “light show”.

I made sure I got one which accepts an SD card so it can be completely standalone if needed. I then run a video from it which more or less defines the music I play. I improvise live so it might take a little getting used to, but shouldn’t be too far of a leap. Just keeping everything as simple as I can.

The dream would be to have a couple of powerful moving head projectors with live visuals and use them in a real live venue.

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#7

The big problem with projectors is getting the venue sufficiently dark. I’ve done it quite a bit (I worked in A/V for a long time, and as such inherited many decent projectors). One of the main reasons I’m moving towards lighting is it’s often hard to see what’s going on, and having abstract light changes seem like they would work, or at least not be distracting under less than optimal conditions.

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#8

I’ve wondered about using some Philips Hue bulbs as a low-effort color wash source. My understanding is they come with their own software that’s oriented to consumer home lighting; would be interesting if it were hackable or had some kind of API.

#9

in my somewhat minimal foray into this world i’ve found that the fixtures can be quite expensive if you want good color range and smooth transition.

cheaper dmx fixtures tend to only be able to nail some of the color spectrum, have trouble transitioning smoothly and can even appear to be flickering once you start shooting video.

i’ve rented higher end products from companies like astera and quasar science for one-off projects and was very happy with the results and light quality. spendy tho! curious to try out the astera NYX bulbs

when i looked into hacky ways to control phillips hue bulbs i was discouraged by the variable latency… that was a while ago, perhaps someone has figured it out. they sure do look nice! would probably be fine for dynamic lighting where sync isn’t necessary.

#10

Okay, first google result for DMX control of Hue bulbs is some software on Github: https://github.com/sinedied/dmx-hue/

The documentation there states:

With the Philips Hue API it’s only possible to update the state of bulbs 10 times per second, 1 bulb at a time. Compared to a single DMX universe, which controls all 512 individual parameters up to 44 times per second, there’s some major differences in how quickly we can update your lights using this software bridge.

This is especially noticeable when using automation sequences, if you try to update Hue lights quicker than 0.1s times the number of lights in your projects, some updates may be skipped. This is unfortunately a limitation with the Hue lights API and I cannot do anything about that.

#11

Projections for live streams are great! I agree it’s tougher when we get back out into “the real world” where you don’t always have control over how dark the venue will be or even placement of your projector. It can be hit or miss but it’s much easier set up than going the DMX route and can still be a lot of fun!

Here’s a livestream I did with projections washing over my during my set. I was just playing a nature doc off Netflix :joy:

Also, a band my wife plays in has used projectors as sort of “lo-fi” laser shows for their live sets! Requires a dark room and a good amount of fog to work but the effect is pretty cool. They just angle the projectors and point them into the crowd. The projections being played are just a black background with solid lines moving across the screen and no other movement. Mimics the effects of lasers really well and way cheaper.

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#12

the problem with the price of projectors is the lumens.

lumens = money

if you really want to use a projector in a live setting you have to spend the money on one with plenty of lumens that can work in an environment where you don’t have control over some or any of the ambient lighting.

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#13

Even very minimal intentional lighting can be so effective! I picked up a pair of inexpensive (around $20 USD for the pair) remote control"waterfall" LED lights that can transform a space.

Also, the fog + laser light show in small venues was very exciting the one time I saw it done!

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