DMX multitrack sequencing

[projektil]

Hi all,

first, massive thanks for creating and maintaining this project, it opened the world of lighting to me and I love it. Since my background is around 20 years of music making in the homestudio, I´m very much used to the operating of programs like Creator (Atari), Cubase, Logic, Ableton etc. I currently run Ableton and NI Maschine as main tools.

Now here is what I would like to do (and please tell me if I should go look elsewhere or if there is a better way to achieve my goal, I´m a newbie to light) :

When I create music, I create one track for the Note on/off information. In case of a synth baseline for example, I will then add three or more additional tracks for MIDI CC information that control Filter Cutoff, Filter Resonance, the A of ADSR and so on. Since the controller information is on separate tracks in separate clips, I can easily move them around, copy them, edit them, stretch them, creating variations with just a few clicks. Let´s say I created a filter CC clip that opens the filter on every 3rd out of 4 16th note (3, 7, 11, 15), I can easily copy that clip to control resonance as well. Or control the filter of another synth - or change the CC to have the same pattern applied to ... let´s say the send level to the delay etc. You get the idea. Also, changing the timing of one CC parameter does not affect the others. So I could push the pattern mentioned above one 16th forward, and then have the filter open on 3,7,11,15 but the resonance go up on 4,8,12,16. All this information is also not in absolute timing (ms), but in relative timing, so if the tempo of the song changes, the information of CC will stay in sync. It´s a bit like the auto-time delay values of vst plugins, where the delay is tempo-matched.

Now the same operation would be nice for adding the light (and I think controlling light with 8 or even 16bit from a MIDI software with 7bit is not a good idea, so the setup is a separate software that is synced via midi clock).

So let´s say I create a clip (chaser?) that should flip from red to green to blue to white within a bar on every quarter note, with the timing controlled by MIDI clock instead of absolute values. Next, I would like to have a copy that does the same thing on 8th notes, 16th notes for effect. This color pattern should be sitting there on itself, and I would like to attach it to a bunch of LED bars, which do nothing but background light. I also would like the color scheme to control 4 moving heads or scanners. But their movement is controlled by a different clip/chaser so I can easily create variations of the movement without having to recreate all the color information as well. On top of that there may be addtional parameter sets like gobo, dimmer, strobe etc, which I would like to handle the same way. In essence, it´s a bit like a pattern oriented sequencer, just for DMX.

Also, procedural creation of DMX data (sine wave that cycles within 4 bars etc) would be nice, but I haven´t seen enough of QLC to know whether that is probably already built in.

In case there is a clever way to do all this from Ableton or another MIDI sequencer without losing the 16 bit resolution the moving heads do offer... let me know. The best idea I have seen is using 14 bit MIDI, which may be good enough, but then again this is not exactly normal MIDI usage and seems to be tricky to use and implement. So I guess a DMX program built with 16bit resolution in mind makes a lot more sense.


Kind regards !

[Januce]

Many thanks for the application.
I'll add to the topic: it would be nice to develop the theme of a multi-track sequencer. It would be very useful stacks of tracks, so that the stack is assigned to the fixture, and the tracks inside the stack on specific channels of fixture. Then it would be possible to use the same prepared scenes or EFX to apply to a particular ficture without additional settings or duplication with other settings. And in the case of moving heads or scanners, add to the tracks multiplication by a given constant, as well as restrictions on the maximum and minimum values. This would allow a very quick reconfiguration of the show for specific scenes.
Best regards.