Just about to embark programming lights for my show

[Danny]

Hi guys

I purchased slm years ago because of its midi compatibility, I have never had the chance time or money to use it as a midi controller yet, but love it for live audio playback.

So i have just purchased two banks of Dmx quad led cans and lasers etc, Dmx smoke machine

So I would appreciate suggestions from people who have more experience than me what they would do if they where on day one and had 70 odd songs to program lights for.

As of yet I have not bought any Dmx programs that would run in the background on my pad, or any sort of lighting desk that might change scenes when instructed by slm or any iOS to Dmx converter, I really would love to know what gizmos everyone is using.

Just so you know, we are a two guitar duo, doing pink Floyd zz top Brian Adams etc covers in bars, not wembley stadium,

All suggestions appreciated.

Cheers

Kev

[Ruckman65]

Hello Danny. We are running our lightshow with the iPad app Luminair. I have have created midi presets in SLM and matched those to programmed lighting scenes in Luminair. SLM sends the midi commands to Luminair (on the same iPad). The iPad sends the midi commands wirelessly to a MidiKing DMX interface which, in turn, is connected to an Apple router. It is a great setup for us which, for the most part, works flawlessly. 

[Danny]

Hi ruckman

Thanks mate

I was wondering if there are any on line tutorials that might help me that you are aware of.

I will of course check out the products you suggest and see if the tube throws anything up that might help me.

Thanks very much.

Danny

[Danny]

Hello again

I can't find this device midi King on Google.

Can you send me a link please

Thanks.

[Ruckman65]

Hello Danny. Sorry, I got the name wrong. it is DMXKing, not Midi King. You can follow this link to their website. http://dmxking.com/.
I bought the ultraDMX RDM Pro. I had read that Enttec was a better product and that the DMXKing interface was difficult to configure. Nothing could be further from the truth. It worked straight out of the box with no configuration at all required. I have SetList Maker and Luminair on my iPad. I run a local network using my Apple Airport Express. The ultraDMX RDM Pro plugs into the Airport Express. I connect the lights to the ultraDMX RDM Pro with a standard XLR cable and there it is! Of course, I had to program the lighting scenes in Luminair but that is relatively easy. You can check Arlo's website to see how to create midi presets in SetList Maker or BandHelper.

I create a lighting scene in Luminair. I create a midi preset in SLM and assign that to a particular song. Back to Luminair and go to 'midi learn'. Back to SLM and play the midi preset and Luminair 'learns' pairs the lighting scene with the song is SLM. When we're on stage, I press the song name which has midi automation activated, the backing track for the song starts and the lighting scene changes. It works very well and is quite reliable. Unfortunately, I could find no tutorials on YouTube so most of it was through experimentation. I had some serious issues with how SLM was transmitting midi messages but the very clever Arlo has fixed that with the release of SLM version 4. Let me know if you need any help with the setup.     

[Danny]

Hi buddy

Thanks for that,

I will check it all out.

I initially bought slm so that I could do simple program changes for fx mute and song specific reverbs on a midi fx unit. I never got around to buying an iOS to midi device because at the time I found navigating through a song with the cursor arrow buttons running in tiny increments of time really time consuming, Arlo mentioned at the time a speedier method was on the to do list, so I will check out the videos and see what happens.

I am in a quandary right now, iOS lighting app is 80 bucks plus 200 for the interface VS running off a laptop with show magic for about 400 bucks

I will let you know what I decide. It's took me ages just to do a couple of scenes and a couple of bars of Dmx with show magic, I like the option to play the song and just tap the space bar whilst in record mode, then add scenes later.



Many thanks for your help

Cheers

Danny

[Ruckman65]

Hey Danny. I tried to laptop with Show Magic for a while but it was just too difficult to use so I gave it away. For sheer simplicity of developing lighting scenes, I have found nothing that beats Luminair. It is probably not as full featured as some other laptop/software combinations but it suits my purposes just fine.

[Danny]

thanks

I have spent three days to program about two minutes on show magic, , the first few days where more learning the program than anything.

I was looking for Arlos video on midi but your tube says it was removed.

Re my pad and slm, I want to play the song in real time and record place holders for the scenes I will create, and then be able to get in to the place holders and shift them in time to sync them with the accents in the music, is this easy enough to do, as I said, I found it hard on early version slm to scroll through a song and move the bits I had recorded in the automation track around.

Also I am not sure how many midi commands I can record? For example I have inserted nearly 60 commands on show magic relating to scenes and chases for a seven minute song, can I do this with slm?

Cheers

Kev

[Ruckman65]

My understanding is that you can add unlimited midi commands to a song. The way I do it is to add all the midi presets I need then play the song after pressing the midi automation icon. Then, the lighting scenes can be cued as needed. It does take some time to get the cues right and, with 60 commands for one song, this would be time consuming no matter how you did it. 

[Danny]

Thanks very much for your help,

If you ever come across a video describing what you are doing, please pass the link on

Cheers.

Kev