Basic Tracking Console Question

[Amishplumber]

Hi all,

Up until now I've been using express/ expression line consoles for most of my gigs, but have decided I want to learn something newer, so I'm renting an Element for a dance show I have coming up next week. Nothing very artsy, its one of these big suburban dance schools with a million kids coming on in one dance after another.

I've watched all the youtube tutorials for the element and I'm feeling confident about most things, except for the fact that we often record cues out of order... The rehearsals usually happen in a different order from the final show, so I usually have the 100s be one song and then the 200s another etc. Hasn't been a problem before, but everything I've read about tracking says its best that the cues get recorded in order. Should I expect any problems? My thinking is that I should just record a blocking cue at the beginning and end of every dance and therefore keep the tracking contained to within each number. Is that what I should do?

Also any general Element tips and trick would be appreciated! Rig is about 100 channels of conventionals + couple dozen scrollers + 14 LED PARs and 4 moving heads. Really would have liked an Ion, but didn't have it in the budget. Luckily we do 0 isolation, everything is full stage, so the conventionals boil down to only a few different groups of control.

Thanks!

[mozsey]

As far as I remember, every console in the EOS family has a button called, "Q only." I know the ION EOS and GIO have it, so the Element should have it. You set your cue, and your syntax would be, "RECORD CUE 21.5 QONLY ENTER." If you go into the desk settings I believe you can also change from tracking to Q only recording.

[chausman]

As far as I remember, every console in the EOS family has a button called, "Q only." I know the ION EOS and GIO have it, so the Element should have it. You set your cue, and your syntax would be, "RECORD CUE 21.5 QONLY ENTER." If you go into the desk settings I believe you can also change from tracking to Q only recording.

And what does the [q only] button do?

[mozsey]

And what does the [q only] button do?

The Q only button does a momentary change in the desk settings to take the cue out of tracking mode. It tells the board, "I'm putting this in, and I don't want it to track through the cues that follow it."

[ptero]

Hi all,

My thinking is that I should just record a blocking cue at the beginning and end of every dance and therefore keep the tracking contained to within each number. Is that what I should do?

Thanks!

Sure. That is exactly what I would do. Use blocking tags/cues. Then the out of order style still works fine and things will track w/in each dance.

Does the Element do updates? Such as when in the middle of a run of tracking cues(in the middle of one of the dances in this case), you can make a change and update that to the first (or other desired) Q in that range. It'll set the level in that target cue and track through to a blocker. Great for something global (sts) like an environmental that wants to be the same throughout a dance.

[rochem]

This is done all the time with great success, so you don't need to worry about it as long as you're smart. Yes, you should definitely block the first cue of each dance so that changes you make won't track through. The Cue Only button is useful for making changes to just one cue that you don't want to stay for the rest of the number, but try not to overuse it - many young designers get scared of the tracking concept, and end up making way more work for themselves by needing to fix every cue instead of just tracking it through.

[Amishplumber]

Awesome, thanks for the quick replies.

Do blocking cues affect automarking at all? If I do a blocking cue for the b/o after a dance piece and my next cue (first Q in the next piece) opens with movers, will everything be automarked as expected?

[flyboydc]

This is done all the time with great success, so you don't need to worry about it as long as you're smart. Yes, you should definitely block the first cue of each dance so that changes you make won't track through. The Cue Only button is useful for making changes to just one cue that you don't want to stay for the rest of the number, but try not to overuse it - many young designers get scared of the tracking concept, and end up making way more work for themselves by needing to fix every cue instead of just tracking it through.

Thanks, Rochem! That actually helped me out with the next show I'm about to do.

[LampyTom]

Tracking is awesome. I love it. As a lighting programmer with one of my specialty consoles being the Eos family, I find it extremely useful.

As has been said, block the first and last cues in each "song". A block cue, as I'm cure you've seen, is a cue set in stone. So regardless of what is before it, that cue will ALWAYS have those values that are stored for it. Unless you update the block cue. That way you can still take advantage of the tracking within the song. So say for example you want to drop the facelight for the whole song, simply select the facelight and update the first cue (which would be a block cue). These changes will then track all the way through the song. Although be warned it WON'T affect the final block cue.

[venuetech]

except for the fact that we often record cues out of order... The rehearsals usually happen in a different order from the final show, so I usually have the 100s be one song and then the 200s another etc. Hasn't been a problem before, but everything I've read about tracking says its best that the cues get recorded in order.

I usually number the dances by tens, so dance #15 is Q#151 - 159 with the nine cue consistency being a blackout. That make it easy to check for any tracking problems. and recording out of order.

[icewolf08]

It is fairly typical for lighting designers to lay out their block cues before they do anything else. If you have seen the show and started putting together a cue list in your head or on paper, you probably know where you need things like blackouts and where scenes end. I have worked with many LDs who will create a whole bunch of block cues right off the bat so that when we jusp around while programming, the basic framework is still there and tracking doesn't mess things up.

Make sure you read our wiki article on tracking and really have a good understanding of how it works. You will probably then find it to be amazingly useful.

[SamUpdike]

Sure. That is exactly what I would do. Use blocking tags/cues. Then the out of order style still works fine and things will track w/in each dance.

Does the Element do updates? Such as when in the middle of a run of tracking cues(in the middle of one of the dances in this case), you can make a change and update that to the first (or other desired) Q in that range. It'll set the level in that target cue and track through to a blocker. Great for something global (sts) like an environmental that wants to be the same throughout a dance.

Yes you can update a run of cues out of order by using the softkey {Trace}. If you just normally update a cue, it'll update the change in that cue itself and track to thru to the next block. If you [Update]{Trace} then it will take the updated level and search back up the cuelist to where it first got that move command, and update it there.

Another way of doing this would be lets say you're in cue 25, and the number started in cue 20, you could say [Update][Cue][20]