At a loss here...

[ThreeWatt]

Hey everyone, I have a rather confounding problem, I guess I lack the experience to even fathom an answer for it.

Two nights ago, I ran lights for PJCs jazz band, and most of the time the band director wants a bright, static look which is fine for the most part, just boring, but the players kept insisting on some light F/X, which got me all in a tizzy. The director agreed after a band meeting, and I got to work making the best effects I could. The show was great, everyone loved it, standing ovations all around, and the director was really pleased at the performance.

After the show, he comes up to me and asks if I could somehow sync the effects with the beats of the band. (I can't do it manually, with all the time changes, tempo swings, retards, improv solos, really long pieces, etc.)

So I ask the sound guy if he knows anything about that, and he says something about MIDI Show Control. I don't know much about it, or how I could use it, so there's my question. What would I need to do something like that? Devices? Software? Any books on the subject? I'll take all the help I can get.

(the only stuff we have in the booth at present is an ETC Express 48/96, a sound laptop with some editing and recording software, an Echo AudioFire4 which has MIDI, I'm pretty sure, a soundboard, and the whole band is miked.)

Thanks for any help I might get!

 

[avkid]

Your express does have MIDI capability.
etcconnect.com/docs/.../datashts/Express_48_96_vD.pdf

Start by reading these:
Musical Instrument Digital Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
MIDI Show Control - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[shiben]

After the show, he comes up to me and asks if I could somehow sync the effects with the beats of the band. (I can't do it manually, with all the time changes, tempo swings, retards, improv solos, really long pieces, etc.)

This sounds like a good reason to use bump buttons. You can use them to do more than just bring up lights, but also run chases, etc. Then you can listen to the music, and bump in time. I have run a bunch of Rock shows this way, and you can see the NIN LD do it as well on youtube. All it takes is a decent sense of rhythm and some practice. Although MIDI is an option, it might be much easier to play your board like a piano.

 

[Footer]

Forget midi. Unless everyone is playing to a click track that is going to get your nowhere.

The express is one of the worst consoles to do this with in any type of complexity. You can just do the bump button thing and that works. Doing chases is a bit more of a pain. Because the console does not allow you to change the rate of an effect on the fly. I don't believe there is a way to get an effect to run timed step by step by pressing the bump button repeatedly, but I could be wrong on that.

You are pretty much stuck with doing flash and trash with the bump buttons at this point. If you are not using clues, you could use the cue stack and link the last cue in a stack back to the begining. That would at least allow varied looks that you could sync. It would not give you total control over what is next, but it would be something. You could make multiple loops in a single cue stack. You would just have to manually (or with macros) move from one section of the stack to another.