Midi Users - "What Works For You"

[Shannon D]

I have been using the submasters for just about all my DJ jobs which gives me lots of flexibilty to "Freestyle" my light show. This of course was not a "set it and forget it" approach. You literally have thousands of combinations to work with, but it required you to make changes or it would just stay doing the same thing.

I am concentrating on my bands lighting application using midi now. I am finding that all my previous programming for the submasters won't work too well with my next adventure. I need more of a "set it and forget it" appoach. Atleast while we are playing a song. I have my midi controller working with Freestyler and I must say, "WOW"! Being mouse free takes it up two or three notches!

I started creating scenes to use the Cue window rather than the Submaters for midi control. I have my bass drum mic coming out of an AUX send to feed Light to Sound and trigger the bass count. It is working ok, but its not on the money three quarters of the time with changing of Verse to Chorus; Chorus to Verse; or beginnings & endings. I assigned a midi to Manual Trigger to help with this.

My question here: If you use midi, how do YOU program or build your scenes, so that you have the most available with just one or two presses of a midi button without switching banks? Everybody has their own ideas of working with this software which best suits their needs. I am curious to see how many different ways of programming we come up with. I'm sure we would have several different ways of doing things and this is OK. Not all midi controllers are the same. Some have faders and some don't. Some have keys, others just buttons or pads. If you post here, please tell us what kind of midi controller you are using along with how you assign the midi to trigger Freestyler.

Shannon D

[Bigjd]

If it was me what I do is build general sequences, and add effects to the buttons, or a pedal on your board.
Then you would have certain modes/mood for different songs and effects at your feet to augment them.
Being a guitar player/lead singer/PA guy/ lighting guy for my band i find the most effective control I have is black out at the end of a song and a favorite saved for those moments between songs.
Most people won't notice the wash/mood changes as much as they will dynamic effects projected through a good haze.
So you can puncuate your stage/song with different moves of your scans and movers as well as beam effects.
For me this is more effective than trying to program each song . You can then write different banks for different sets and have it set for--------------------- Anyways you get the picture!
JD

[fijit2000]

Hi, i dont have moving heads or any fancy fixtures, I'm setting up a small theatrical show, i currently only need 1 fixture, (12 ch dimmer) I don't know about using more than one fixture, but i don't see any reason why this shouldn't work.
Firstly I opened the freestyler config.ini, and changed my sequence step count to 100 instead of 15 and saved, This amount could be changed to pretty much whatever you need,

Then i set my levels in the new sequence window, each step being a new setting (act 1 scence 1,2 3,.......)
the first step i use as my curtain & house lights with a long dwell time, the show starts on step 2.
once i had finished setting all steps, saved it, & added to cue.

Open the cue window, pressed the blue play button, immediately clicked Manual trigger (to stop the auto playback), which i had assigned to note c3 (60?) the show now runs in sync with my soundtape, (after a hiccup with midi ins-outs)

When I set up my manual trigger, I noticed that i had to have an external midi input device, as my computer only had a default microsoft output device. I had wanted to use just 1 computer running Cubase or Ableton live, with a soundtrack playing through my audio, and a midi track with 'beeps' being sent to freestyler.
I managed to find a Virtual midi device called LoopBe1, which is freeware (for non-commercial use, i assume you pay and register for use commercially). It is simple to set up and works a treat. now when i go to my freestyler setup page, midi, it is listed under midi input devices, so i set my ableton to use it as a midi output device, sending the assigned note (c3).
One thing to bear in mind is, in the freestyler config .ini file it will specify midi volume at the bottom of the page, mine is set at 127, (maximum level) so i have to set my beeps to be outputing at 127 volume, i didn't do this at first and it didn't work, now i have adjusted my beeps, Sorted!

hope this comes in usefull!

Fijit2000