what is the best way to program solo,s for a band

[Hugo]

Hi I,m a new user of the pearl tiger, and would like to know what you think would be the best way to program a solo.

Sorry for my english btw it's not my main language

At the moment i,ve programmed my solo,s like this:

Solo memory 1: 1/4 movingheads dimmer at 75% shutter open, colour white, gobo/prisma off, Pan/Tilt pointing at the artist. All other movingheads the dimmer at 100%.

At the moment i want to use this solo i first decide what all other movingheads have to do that are not being used for the solo by using palletes and memory,s. At the moment I use the solo memory all lights fade in and the movingheads used for the solo switch to the recorded white/open beam and there fixed pan/tilt position.

Here comes my problem how can i hide this attribute change when fading in the memory. I don,t want a rainbow of colors at the beginning of a solo.

How can i solve this, without having to program 10minutes for each solo.


And as extra i would like to make a solo that can split up by using a chase, for example: having 4 movingheads at the drummer when the guitar comes in 1 movinghead from the drummers postion moves to the guitar, and the same again when the singer starts.

[niclights]

Hi,

Since there are so many ways of operating on the Pearl I will just try and give you a few different ideas:

You can set whether an attribute can fade or not in Program/Patch/Patch Utilities/Set Instant/Fade. However, if you tell an attribute to be instant, it will never be able to fade in your show.

You could keep only intensity information in your playbacks and select everything else from palettes. Simply manually fade out, apply palette(s) and fade back in. Remember you can have a single palette that sets up all the necessary information and you can use the preset handles to keep playback usage to a minimum.

Another option is to use mode2. This makes a playback fade all attributes by fader with the added benefit that it will also fade them out again. So, if you record vocal pos/white/open gobo etc. and set to mode2 (edit times) and then set these fixtures to another colour/position, when you fade this playback in it will change to vocal/white and when you fade it out it will return to the previous settings.
Therefore this becomes a 'momentary' effect and is a very useful application for mode2. However, the fading is a disadvantage in this situation, and so you might want to keep the intensity separate.
Note that for mode2 to work the attribute must be set to fading in patch utilities.

You can also make use of complex timing in a chase. For example:

Step 1 = vocal pos, white, no gobo. Fade = 0sec.
Step 2 = dimmer. Fade = 4sec.
Stop on final step.

This is a simple example - obviously you can have more steps as required.


For your split chase idea you can make use of linked/unlinked steps.

An unlinked step will wait for you to press [go] before moving to the next step. So, you can record some set of linked steps that might be similar to the above example for each position but with the link turned off between each set:

Step 1 = lights to drummer. link on.
Step 2 = dimmer on. Fade =2sec. link off.
[waits for go]
Step 3 = light to guitar. link off.
[waits for go]
Step 4 = light(s) to vocal. link off.
[waits for go]
Step 5 = dimmer off. Fade =2sec.
Stop.

The easiest way to set these up is to record the steps of the chase as normal and then [unfold] it onto the playback faders where you can then set times for each step with [edit times].

[Hugo]

Thanks Alot

that was what I needed. You gave me the key to the door

The 2 step chase is very nice, the dimmer fading in instead of snapping will look much better and you wont see the color/gobo change either, does a chase also return to the previous setting? like mode 2

I didn,t thought about using paletes for setting up each solo and to hide the changes that are taking place I could make 4 groups with the sets of movingheads used for the solo, to turn the dimmer to 0% and then apply the solo palette with 75% dimmer. This is a very fast way to program the solo's when there is no time.

[niclights]

Unfortunately you cannot use modes in chases. However, standard fade times give separate control over HTP and LTP fades. Therefore you can achieve the same effect as in my example simply by setting a fade in (which will apply to the dimmer) and making sure the LTP fade is set to zero (all other attributes). So, you can achieve the same result and have mode2.
But the problem comes with fading out. If you faded the dimmer slowly (either with timed fade out or by fader), all the attributes will fade to their previous values at the same time. That is why you would normally want to keep the dimmer on a separate fader so you can fade it out before killing the mode2 playback containing the positions & colour etc.


I almost always use palettes for everything because it keeps playbacks clear for other things.

In case you are not aware the user setting 'quick palettes' means you do not need to select fixtures. Just hit the preset add button and everything in the palette will apply (depending on attribute mask). Selecting fixtures still works if you want to apply to specific fixtures.
The setting 'palette paging' gives you four pages of palettes using the fixture page buttons.

You can also access palettes from the 'palette' menu (palette key). This menu will always remember the page you were on and so can be setup to give fast access, or just an additional five at any one time. Also, when in this menu, the palette fade time remains until you change it.

[Hugo]

But the problem comes with fading out. If you faded the dimmer slowly (either with timed fade out or by fader), all the attributes will fade to their previous values at the same time. That is why you would normally want to keep the dimmer on a separate fader so you can fade it out before killing the mode2 playback containing the positions & colour etc.

I like it that mode 2 fades back to the previous values but, how would you program the dimmers for this. you would need alot of seperate dimmers for each solo i think??

my idea is to make 4 groups with movingheads used in the solo and once you want to fade out select that group and close the shutter and then open it again once the previous valuas are restored

I,m using quick palettes and the palette pages, I believe its the only good way for palettes to work together with playback so they override each other, without having to fade a palette.

[niclights]

You could include shutter off values for all the fixtures that are not used in the solo.

So you could have a playback that contained dimmers for all fixtures. Normally they're all on, but when you fire a solo cue it would turn off the unused ones and leave only the relevant. Assuming this is a mode2 cue then when you lower the fader the all the shutters will return to their original open state.

Obviously you would probably tidy this up by manually fade out the intensity playback before firing the solo cue, then fade in for solo. At end of solo fade out, kill solo cue, and finally fade back in again.

However, in my experience you can usually achieve all this with just positional palettes. I rarely see significant solos that are anything other than drum or centre vocal, and both of these would have palettes already. Anything else you usually find out before and can account for - ie. a keyboard or guitar. Often for these I will have a positional palette ready but bring the intensity directly from preset handle.

/edit: I will point out again that for mode2 to work the attributes must be set to fading. Usually shutter channels are set to instant in personality files and so probably need changing. It is also very useful to have a VDU connected, otherwise this is rather tricky!