Need some advice for home disco

[atticus]

Hi,
for my home disco I have 4 LED-Spots and a Gobo moving head. I have prepared numerous (blinking) colour and Gobo scenes; EFX movements; Collections for EFX+Gobo and then these together with LED scenes in superordinate Collections.
My guess is that these Collections should be played one after another to have plenty variety and then loop them. Is this the right idea?
What I do not want is to stick sequences to a certain song.
And did someone see a tutorial how to generally prepare a beautiful light show?
Thank you

[etchonmind]

I think you´re on the right track, but instead of playing a fixed order of scenes/collections, why not build a big field of buttons in virtual console and map each button to incoming MIDI?

That way, you can play your lights like an instrument, just for finding nice combos or even performing live. And if you need your hands elsewhere, record what you do in some MIDI sequencing software. You can then do all sorts of fun stuff with looping, randomizing or even generative plugins, if your MIDI program does support that.

Looking at the usual suspects, I´d pick a more clip/pattern oriented program like Ableton Live or Bitwig Studio. Haven´t worked with Fruity Loops, but it may be an option too. Cubase is more tape-oriented, so probably not ideal for that purpose. And of course you can go into wild territory (a.k.a. overkill) with Max/MSP and that kind of stuff.

[atticus]

Thank you for your reply!
As MIDI did not work at first try I switched to OS2L Protocol from VirtualDJ. QLC recognizes it and I mapped some buttons and a chaser. The buttons work, e.g. when I press blackout in VirtualDJ the command is executed. But the chaser does not react to the incoming beat notifications. That would be the most important part for anything to follow I guess.
Do you have any advice for that?

For what functions would you "pick a more clip/pattern oriented program"?

[Ranger762]

Thanks for the explanation! I was looking at some houses in Greece for the holidays, and thought it'd be a great idea to throw a little party for the family when settling in; and of course, I was thinking about giving a little lights show, as to show my wife it's not a pointless hobby

[GGGss]

Paul,

Do not promote things outside of the scope of QLC+.
Please edit your post.

thx

[mcallegari]

[moderator] I've edited the post and removed the unrelated link

[etchonmind]

Thank you for your reply!
As MIDI did not work at first try I switched to OS2L Protocol from VirtualDJ. QLC recognizes it and I mapped some buttons and a chaser. The buttons work, e.g. when I press blackout in VirtualDJ the command is executed. But the chaser does not react to the incoming beat notifications. That would be the most important part for anything to follow I guess.
Do you have any advice for that?

For what functions would you "pick a more clip/pattern oriented program"?

Regarding chasers, I don´t use them very often. From what I got elsewhere in this forum, MIDI sync for them does work, but can be tricky. I decided to go a different route and put that part of the logic outside of QLC+. The main reason being the ability to create shows in a variety of ways, like:
- programming them (that could be done by chasers as well)
- record live performances (fingerdrumming lighting scenes with a launchpad or MIDI keyboard)
- easily edit these sequences not step by step, but with quantizing, note length settings and other functions already available in MIDI sequencers
- generating sequences via plugins (ie algorithmic beat creator mapped to scenes)

It´s also nice to use Ableton Link protocol for sync instead of MIDI, as MIDI clock only knows about beats, ie tempo, but has no idea about the "1-2-3-4", which is given in Ableton Link. There is a number of applications supporting that protocol, I currently use Ableton Live and Bitwig Studio. Maybe we will see that in QLC one day, but I don´t expect this to have high priority.

My current setup is:

Traktor Pro as DJ application, creates MIDI clock and Ableton Link sync data.
This tempo information is consumed by Bitwig Studio, which plays back single clips or combinations of them.
Each clip is calling scenes in QLC+ via MIDI mapped buttons in a Virtual Console. Some clips contain notes of the same pitch, triggering just a single scene, others contain "melodies" or "chords", triggering multiple scenes in QLC. Clips can be layered or mutually exclusive, depending on where you put them. That way, you can have 1 bitwig track playing the "dimmer clips" and have a second track for the "color clips". Clips can be arranged on the fly, ie started, stopped, muted etc. Preferably with a controller like launchpad or APC.
And then of course you don´t have to just play back, but with a MIDI controller (launchpads in my case) you can also play the QLC scenes live. If you want to record that, the path is: Launchpad -> Bitwig -> QLC.

You could as well use Ableton Live for the same purpose, there is no special reason to use Bitwig, I just wanted to learn that program as well. But if you own neither one, I think Bitwig has the better price, as the entry level Ableton Live Light is limited by number of elements and the next level Studio version is giving you a ton of things you won´t need just for sequencing lights. Then again, you get Max4Life with that and can go wild creating your own plugins for creating/mangling etc. If you´re interested, try both programs and see what fits your workflow.

I´m still developing the overall system, so I can´t say it´s production ready. But so far it is working. Currently I have two concerns:
- no triggering (flashing) of collections, only toggling, so they become a bit useless for my purpose.
- overall timing behaviour (2 universes, lots of RGB, so I may need to have more universes with less members each)

Hope this helps,
Oliver