Anyone use Strobe lights?

[lepersmeesa]

Anyone here use strobe lights as part of their live performances?

I want to be able to control the strobes using midi if possible as we already play to a click track and have everything else controlled by midi.

Also what kind of strobe lights should we be looking at for small bar/club venues?

 

[alan1990]

http://www.djtronix.com/amdjmidpak.html


i use this to program my bands light show. We play to a click as well so all the lights are automated to our performance. Its easy to do with midi ,each note makes a different light come on and the light is only on when the note is being played pretty straight forward i guess lol

 

[MetalMan_99]

My band does this and it works really well. Here's what we use:

MIDI out of Cubase into a 'NJD MDC128' MIDI to DMX converter. Out of this we daisy chain the DMX strobes together with DMX cables (we have a couple of lasers in the chain too)

We use 2 'AMERICAN DJ SP 1500w' strobes which admittedly are very bright and so would probably be too much for small venues. Maybe something around the 500w mark would be better?

To control the flashes you set each strobe to a DMX channel between 1 and 128, which corresponds to note numbers in the sequencer. Sending a short note makes them flash once. It's really responsive and we've programmed some fairly complicated sequences with it - looks awesome when you put them in sync with the kick drum.

Hope this helps
Tom

 

[lepersmeesa]

Thanks for the info man!

The midi to DMX looks great. I cant find 500 watt strobes at the moment, but will definitely look around.

Thanks again!

Dez

 

[xFkx]

Behringer does an eurolight... looks like it can also do the job (and the price beats the dmx fo sure)

 

[Metaltastic]

And SO reliable!

 

[xFkx]

And SO reliable!

Well... when it fucks up doring a show nothing that bad happens, you just loose the lights

 

[GarethSE]

Well... when it fucks up doring a show nothing that bad happens, you just loose the lights

I'd say loosing your lights qualifies as "that bad."

 

[xFkx]

I'd say loosing your lights qualifies as "that bad."

Well i was thinking of a minimal scenario (since the behringer only has 4 outputs) where you have in-house lights doing their stuff and you have your own 2 strobes and a spot for the occasional breakdown or two.. nothing bad when that fucks up.

But yeah, if you have a fully synced show, and you want to take over the in-house lights... definitly something better should be bought

 

[lepersmeesa]

I think with three strobes and the midi to DMX converter I can do everything I need to.

That is have the strobe lights flashing, controlling the intensity of the light, and also the ability to turn off the house lights completely using them at low intensity settings during parts where no lights are really needed.

One behind the drummer (of infront of the drum kit) and one infront of each guitar cab. Anyone think against this?

 

[Executioner213]

I've always been kinda interested in this. Maybe it would put good use to my Behringer FCB1010 once I replace it with a REAL floorboard for my rig

 

[Z3R0]

We run a DMX controller and have a light guy run our stuff live. The strobes and all the LED lights that we use can then be controlled and i think it's a lot more interesting then something that's always programmed and that same for every show to a click, or just in audio reference mode.