The Water Street Project Week 9: Max Patch Progress, Lighting Board Challenges

This past week, I spent a lot of time in the Traditions space on campus working with the Elation Show Designer 1 lighting board to test both scene writing and Max functionality. Assisting me were instructors Mark Kalinowski and Dr. Teresa Nakra, two professors very knowledgeable in stage equipment and music technology. Two testing sessions later, I feel like I am very close to having a patch that will work fairly well with the equipment.

During my session with Dr. Nakra this past Friday, we confirmed that, when connected to the lighting board, a simplified version of my Max patch does control lighting scenes. At the very least, I will be able to put on a show that controls the static LED Sixpar lights. The main problem that I am encountering in Max is that the patch accidentally selects incorrect chords and therefore occasionally changes to the wrong scene by mistake. I would like to meet with Dr. Nakra to discuss how I may be able to limit this error. One thing we have discussed is the possibility of using a footswitch to control different sections of my Max patch, and exclude specific chords from accidentally being selected when I am in a different section of the song.

And in my session earlier today, Mark and I reset the lighting board to its default factory settings in an attempt to get the Rayzor Q7 moving lights to display color properly. While we were able to patch the Sixpar lights to their original settings without any trouble, the Q7 lights still have not been addressed correctly. The main problem I have encountered is that the board comes with a list of different lights that it automatically detects and can patch without problem. Unfortunately the Elation Rayzor Q7 is not on that list, which means it needs to be addressed manually by somebody who knows what they’re doing. Or, you know, me.

The biggest thing that I have taken away from this week is that I am very surprised by the sheer volume of things that the lighting board is capable of doing, and how little the board, space and lights are actually used to their full potential. There are so many possibilities for interesting, interactive projects, or even just more involved lighting setups on the stage, and it amazes me how infrequently that the Traditions space gets utilized.

I plan to have 3–4 more sessions at Traditions before April 20th, in just over a week. Now is the time to really troubleshoot the lighting setup, finalize my patches, and run through my albeit short set as much as possible leading up to the date of the show. I am excited, stressed, proud, tired, confused, and possibly slightly insane, but we are now coming up on the home stretch of the project!