PARIS – Parodic metal band Ultra Vomit and EDM solo act Sebastian serve up two very different styles of music. But both share a penchant for pushing musical boundaries, and both are in the middle of popular fall club and festival tours throughout France. The two artists have something else in common too, each is supported by high-energy light and video shows created by Chirac Design and run with ChamSys consoles.

“We tend to have intense clients, and we strive to match their intensity with our shows,” said Chirac co-founder and Marilyn Manson LD Nico Riot. “I have been a ChamSys user for quite some time, because the simplicity of the console frees me up to do the things I envision.”

Riot’s enthusiasm for ChamSys is shared by his partner and Chirac co-founder Romain Dronne, who is using a ChamSys MagicQ MQ60 to run shows for Sebastian, and Gregory Dutein, who is powering Ultra Vomit shows with a MagicQ MQ80 plus an extra wing.

“Sebastian is an EDM light show, but without the cliché of it,” said Dronne. “Our show has to be tight on the rhythm, but with flood lights — and not an army of tight narrow beams. We are doing RGB fast color chasers. Ultra Vomit is more like a theatre comedy rock show that includes standup comedy and light, as well as sound effects, managed via ChamSys Magic HD.” 

Dronne is using the MQ60 for Sebastian because its compact size makes it easy to travel by plane and train on the tour. “This console can be transported as a carry-on luggage, but it gives me 12 universes without additional nodes. It has many of the same features as the MQ80, but in a smaller screen, with smaller fader knobs as well.”

For Ultra Vomit’s tour, the Chirac team began the design process on a ChamSys MagicQ MQ500, then once the show was programmed switched to a MQ80 plus an extra wing. 

“Each song Ultra Vomit does is a parody of a musical genre inside the metal sphere,” said Dutein. “We respect all the codes of every genre in term of lights and video contents. On black metal songs we use cold colors, strobes, smoke, and visual elements with black metal fonts. It’s more like a theatre rock show with a lot of jokes and interactions with the audience.” 

Given that Ultra Vomit’s show is very theatrical in nature, it is modified every week. Dutein uses his MQ80 to update his show throughout the tour. It’s power-to-size ratio allows him to make changes while riding on the tour bus. The ChamSys console’s Setlist Feature option makes it easy for him to add to the show mid-tour without cue list issues. 

“The ChamSys morphing option works great because it’s really fast,” said Dutein. “Also, the changing fixture palette option saves a lot of time. I love the cool and simple cue stack macros. It is very easy to change a page in a cue list, or activate a playback with only two characters.”

Each song in the Ultra Vomit show has its own animated backdrop. At the beginning of the tour video contents for the band was made from the visuals of their last album, “Panzer Surprise.” This design was inspired by The Looney Toons cartoon, and this forms the basis of the show’s visual content. 

As the show has progressed, Dronne and Dutein have created more content with different layers, resulting in in compelling interactive effects, such as a text synchronized with the singer to poke fun at various things. The Chirac team is using the Execute Button on their ChamSys consoles They’re also relying on the MagicHD for the content. “It’s really easy to program lights and videos together without losing time searching how to configure an external media server,” said Dronne.

Regardless of where Ultra Vomit or Sebastian stop on tour, the versatility of the ChamSys MQ60 and MQ80 is deeply appreciated. “Ultra Violet plays in a very wide variety of clubs and live music venues,” said Dronne. “Sebastian plays festivals. In both cases we never really know how big our show is going to be. This is why having a console with this combination of flexibility and power is so valuable.”

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PILTON, UK –  It was business as usual during the 36^th edition of the Glastonbury Festival. But given this event’s penchant for delighting the imagination with joyfully spontaneous eruptions of  the outrageous and unexpected, this means that things were anything but “usual” during the five-day free-spirited celebration of music and life.

Of course, there are some things that can be expected at Glastonbury year after year, such as standout performances by major stars, stunning stage designs, colorful banners fluttering on the hillsides, fans in wildly creative costumes, and ChamSys consoles being used just about everywhere.

This year, ChamSys desks were included in the production designs on eight Glastonbury stages, in addition to others being brought to the festival by a host of LDs working for a wide range of artists like Simon Horn for Maribou State, Isabel Del Moral for Rosalia, and Gary Wilson for Lewis Capaldi.

At the popular Park Stage, a MagicQ MQ500 Stadium with a Stadium Playback Wing served as the main desk, where it was used by a variety of LDs, including Tom White for Michael Kiwanuka. South West Group Events, which provided stage production, supplied the MQ500 Stadium, as well as the MagicQ MQ80 backup console.   The Lighting Manager for the stage was Callam Thom, and the Console Operator was Steven “Mac” McCracken. 

Southampton-based GLS Lighting supplied a MagicQ MQ100 plus Playback Wing for the Avalon Stage, which was overseen by Console Operator Will Thomas. The impressive artist list on that stage included James Morrison, with the desk operated by long-time  ChamSys user Martin Dudley of Martin’s Lights, and The Cat Empire with LD  Paula Trounce.  

Other places where ChamSys could be found during the festival included:

• The BBC Introducing Stage, which had an MQ80 plus an Extra Wing Compact operated Zac Leighton and Alex Merrett over the festival. 
• Silver Hayes WOW Stage, which featured an MQ100 Pro 2010 kit supplied by Fineline Lighting and operated over the weekend by James “Chimpy” Harrington.
• Left Field– With an MQ80 and Extra Wing Compact supplied by and operated by South West Group Events. 
• Greenpeace Field, which featured a MagicQ MQ500 programmed by David Howard. 
• Unfairground, which featured a MagicQ MQ80.
• The Rabbit Hole Inn Bar, which had a MagicQ MQ80 supplied and programmed by David Howard.

So even though fans have come to expect the unexpected from the world’s largest green field festival, the lighting designers and artists who come to Glastonbury want a consistent level of performance they know they can rely on, which is why ChamSys continues to be a common sight at the Worthy Farm.

BELFAST–  The Harland and Wolf Shipyard on Queen’s Island has seen its share of history. It was from this marshy outpost on the western end of Belfast Lough at the mouth of the River Lagan that the ill-fated Titanic was built. Almost a century later, long since it had stopped building ships, the vast complex was again thrust into the limelight as the main studio for the multi-Emmy winning HBO series Game of Thrones.

A visit to the shipyard-turned-studio with a gaffer friend in early 2011 plunged Keith “Shanksy” Shanks into the fantastical world of Westeros and Essos as the lighting programmer for Game of Thrones throughout its entire eight-season run. With him all the way, on every one of the 73 episodes (plus the pilot), has been a series of ChamSys consoles.

“I met the producers through my gaffer friend and was given the opportunity to work on the pilot,” said Shanks, owner of Key Console Systems in Belfast. “We never looked back, as I’ve been programming the show ever since that day, right up to the final episode.”

Ironically, Shanks had never used a ChamSys desk before working on the Game of Thrones pilot. “I was primarily a rock touring LD up until then,” he recalled. “However, I felt the console I was using would not be up to the task of this project.”

After carefully evaluating his options, Shanks selected a MagicQ MQ200 with a Playback Wing for the pilot show. He soon added a second MQ200 to his setup, followed by an MQ500 Stadium. By the time Game of Thrones reached its eighth season, he had four MagicQ MQ500 Stadiums and two MQ200s with Playback Wings at his disposal.  

The increasing number of consoles reflected the growing complexity of the Game of Thrones set lighting, which went from 14 universes to 19, as it moved from extremely high levels of illumination to more subtle and natural ones. More consoles were also needed to accommodate the variety of different sets used in the series.

During the last season, Shanks positioned the consoles at different locations throughout the Harland and Wolf facility (now the largest film studio in Europe). “We had six consoles here, one of which was in a van for when we shot at remote locations,” he said. “Our production schedule was so sharp that we had to have everything ready to go at every set, as well as the van, at a moment’s notice. Every console has a full system built into it, so we could move from one to the other with no hiccups.

“Speed was of the essence in this project,” continued Shanks. “There were a great many plans for Game of Thrones, and we had to move very quickly from one to the other. The multi-screen feature of the console was invaluable. Having everything at eye level let me get to anything I wanted very quickly. I’ve seen a lot of consoles that have way too many buttons to push to do the same thing that you can do far more quickly with ChamSys.”

The cloning and morphing features of his consoles also helped Shanks set up pages quickly. Also adding to the efficiency of the process was the easy interface with WYSIWYG. “We did a lot of  pre viz using WYSIWYG, especially the 3D version,” he said. “The interface between the ChamSys and WYSIWYG was flawless.  It was virtually plug and play. The internal drivers that ChamSys developed for this purpose were spot on.” 

Another valuable feature for Shanks was the broad color palette available on his ChamSys consoles. “During the course of this series we continuously got new heads, and the people at ChamSys were great at keeping the CT colors current,” he said. “The regions that the MQ500 has for color picker applications was quite impressive.”

In a show as multi-faceted as Game of Thrones, last minute edits and adjustments are inevitable. On these occasions, Shanks appreciated the cue stacking features of his ChamSys consoles, which made it quick and easy to edit cues and individual timing. He also relied on his desks’ WiFi capabilities for last minute changes. “The interface was very smooth,” he said. “When a designer wanted to alter something, it could be done very quickly. Again, time was always of the essence in this project.”

On the subject of time, Shanks was amazed at how quickly it flew in his eight seasons with Game of Thrones. “It was a great experience,” he said. “I enjoyed the series, but it was the camaraderie of the crew that I will miss most. There was a sense of family as we all pulled together working on a project that we knew would be remembered for a very long time to come.”

As for the future, Shanks has a new film project on the horizon. “It looks like it will be coming through,” he said. “When it does, of course I will be taking my ChamSys with me.”

Photo #1 Credit: Getty Image

Photo #2 Credit: Helen Sloan

INDIO, CA –  From the instant he stepped onto the Sahara Tent stage shouting, “Make some noise,” before breaking into “J’s On My Feet, “while being supported by the thunderous sound of his band, Wiz Khalifa’s Coachella performance was filled with dramatic moments. But for the Grammy-nominated star’s longtime lighting designer Jason Bullock, the real drama started about 24 hours before the show began.

It was then that the New York-based LD received the ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 desk from Upstaging that he would use to run his 90-universe show. “Coachella is a very important festival for all artists involved, so there was some pressure,” acknowledged Bullock. “I didn’t see the ChamSys desk until I arrived at the festival. I built the patch and show file in a Viz room on the site. Being able to build a show with a few hours and only get on the lighting system for three hours made time of the essence. ChamSys was the ideal tool, given that I was in a crunch.”

Bullock’s work was more than fast. As anyone who saw Khalifa’s 20-song show would readily agree, it was also inspired with an abundance of big hits, saturated colors, immersive video displays and airtight timing.

“The Sahara Tent at Coachella was primarily EDM acts,” said Bullock. “Since Wiz brought the entire band with him, I decided to make the show completely different than the other acts by going in the direction of a more classical rock show. Our beautiful set, which was designed by the team from Nimblist, made it easier to create this kind of look with its band risers and large center gate. We also had a powerful video display from Screenworks NEP that covered the front of the set and added to the intense vibe.” 

Bullock controlled a universe of Catalyst to send multiple outputs to the massive amount of video surfaces on the set. His show was extensive (his patch had 21 pages of paperwork), and impressively, he punted throughout its entire length. 

“My whole show was punted,” said Bullock, who ran all the FX, video and lighting. “Wiz is a very prolific artist, so there’s always lots of material to learn. Even right up until showtime at Coachella there were still alterations to the set list. After eight years of being with Wiz, I have developed a formula that works for his show.”

The friendly layout of the ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium helped Bullock at Coachella. “I really like how the MQ500 has a row of buttons over the playback faders,” he said. “This gives you way  more options for layering different fixture functions. With the larger screens and a few added buttons, the MQ500 is really a great upgrade. It’s also helpful that the software is consistent. If  you’ve  worked on any ChamSys product before, you’re on very familiar ground.”

Bullock credits his team with helping the Coachella show run smoothly. “Justin Collie and Nathan Wilson from Nimblist, my video content people Dark Matter and Matthew Fuller all contributed to the success of this project,” he said. “This show and the challenges involved were very stressful. My team helped, and so did my ChamSys. With ChamSys I have one less thing to worry about. I know it will always do what it’s supposed to do, and do it easily and quickly. That’s why I don’t use anything else.”

SUSSEX, UK–  Simon Horn never worked with Maribou State before, nor had he ever seen the multifarious  electronic music duo live, when he signed on to light their sold-out Brixton show.  Once he became involved with the group, however, he was quickly taken by their supple, infinitely complex sound. “I fell  in love with their music from the word ‘go,’” he said.  “I can only describe them as being to electronic music what Queen was to rock, with high-energy rhythm, mystical deep moments and dramatic charm that takes you from having the hairs stand on the back of your neck,  to shedding tears of love.”

So inspired, Horn, the owner of Purple Lighting, used his ChamSys Stadium MagicQ MQ500 console to power a lightshow  that captured the elusive essence of Maribou State’s music by serving up a seemingly endless array of big multi-faceted aerial effects that flowed across this entire rig with every evocative note. The fit between sound and illumination was so tight, that Horn’s “single show” quickly led to him lighting the band’s Kingdoms in Colour tour.

For Horn, the music of Maribou State is a fertile incubator for his design vison. “I am all about creating drama and movement in the air by not actually wobbling fixtures, but by creating pulse and chase effects in different arrangements and in different orders across the rig,” he said. “Just because a fixture can move doesn’t mean it has to. I can create a sense of movement by doing something as simple as having the beams on the X Bars punch through at different times. This tour is providing me with a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate my design philosophy. The band was very keen on moody dramatic looks and was open to thick smoke and silhouetted moments. It was an LD’s dream come true to be so dynamic.”

Like all creative visions that come to fruition, however, Horn’s ambitious design for the Kingdoms in Colourtour had its share of demanding twists and turns. He credits his MagicQ MQ500 with helping him achieve his vision for the show. For example, he relied heavily on his console’s Group Based Effects feature to create a fluid sense of motion without  having his fixtures themselves actually move.

“I used the Group Based Effects often to adjust the way different effects were applied,” he said. “The group based pixel map effects were great fun too, as they helped me apply multiple effects over each other. This  made for some great intricate moments across the X Bars. There was a lot of pixel mapping in this design, so I depended on all of the ChamSys Pixel Mapping features, both the main pixel mapper and the group grid based pixel map.”

The speed of the MQ500 also was important to Horn. “This is an incredibly fast console to program on,” he said.  “With the large screen, I have access to groups while still having instant access to color and beam palettes.  I built a large amount of groups to give me quick access to a variety of fixture orders. I also broke up the rig into quick accessible sections. Another thing I love is how easy it is to view what’s in the programmer, cue and palettes.   This makes for some very quick editing when I need to change or remove something I’ve accidentally included.”

Perhaps Horn’s biggest challenge was to integrate video content so it  could work together and cross fade between the visuals and the lighting. “I didn’t want the contrast of light and dark to be compromised by having a white canvas in place all the time, and there wasn’t the budget for an LED screen offering transparency, so I elected to project onto a dark sharkstooth,” he said.  “While directly behind the sharkstooth  I had six towers with LED washes and linear blinders.  On the first two numbers, I held back from using them. Then on the third song, they came into play as a massive surprise for the audience.”

Although the vast majority of the show was timecoded,  Horn had some “adlib moments” at the end of sections. He delivered in these instances without missing a beat, relying on the MagicQ’s controllable audio trigger functions. “The audio interface allowed me to  select certain frequencies of the audio feed to attack certain values with great accuracy,” he said. “It did things like give me very tight control to bump a cue stack of intensity stabs to this particular set of drum beats.”

With no production rehearsal and no previous experience with the band, Horn “hit the ground running” for his roughly 1000-cue show. “It was very gratifying to see the show come together for the first time after all the programming,” he said. “I’m grateful  to Keely Myres of Global Touring Office for bringing the opportunity to me, as well as Lite Up Events for the fantastic pristine equipment, and Ben Cullen Williams for the excellent content. This experience was unexpected, but it is something I will always value.”

CHICAGO –  It was still 32 days before the beloved Cubbies kicked off the 2019 baseball season, but as one of the most frigid winters in memory drew to a close, a group of 400 Windy City rock fans jumpstarted summer on the 20^th annual Chicago Music Cruise, a weeklong Caribbean excursion on Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of The Seas. 

Organized by local rock icons 7^th Heaven, the cruise featured a group of leading Chicagoland bands and radio personalities. When cruise-goers weren’t walking the ship’s promenade or dining at its restaurants, they were packing its theatre to dance to a relentless procession of rock and country tunes. Keeping pace with the hard-driving music notes was a dynamic and colorful Zach Scott-designed lightshow, run with a ChamSys Maxi Wing and ChamSys Extra Wing Compact.

“Given that space is always an issue in a cruise ship environment, I wanted something with a small travel footprint that would still give me enough power to run a 22-universe show with no hiccups,” said Scott. “I’ve been running shows with the MagicQ MQ 500 Stadium, but size was an issue here. It was also very important that whatever I used had the ability to be up and running quickly from show to show. Having used ChamSys for a long time, I knew that it would do the trick.”

In addition to his Maxi Wing and Extra Wing, Scott’s system included a MacBook Pro and Elo Touch Screen. “The MacBook Pro running the MagicQ on PC was the core of the operation,” he said. “I received plots a couple of months prior to the cruise, which gave me ample time to build the rig and preprogram the show. The Maxi Wing is great in this regard, since it lets me do my programming and playback through real faders, buttons and encoder wheels. The transition from pre vis to actually running that show on board the ship went very smoothly.”

Scott ran three different shows, two 60-minute versions and one 90-minute variety, during the cruise.  He controlled each show live through the playback faders and cue stack buttons on his Maxi Wing and Extra Wing Compact. 

“With 12 faders and 12 executable playbacks, the Extra Wing Compact expanded my options,” he said. “It’s a great tool. I counted on its flash buttons to bump up output at key points, and they are always very responsive. I was also able to execute very smooth fades with them. Dividing my rig between the two wings, I was able to run a full production show in a somewhat restrictive cruise ship setting.”

For Scott, the Chicago Music Cruise offered an opportunity to connect to rock fans in his hometown. “When you go to a concert, people see it and then they’re gone,” he said. “On a cruise, people spend days together, so there’s more interaction. I like that – plus this was a great chance to get away from the Chicago winter weather, too.”

Photo Credit: JPM Photography

THESSALONIKI, GREECE – Over 2,300 years ago Cassander of Macedon founded a city on the northwest corner of the Aegean Sea. Blessed with a gentle climate and beautiful scenery, the settlement became home to a thriving theatre community in the ancient world. This tradition continues to the present day, as Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city , has established itself as a leading entertainment center in the eastern Mediterranean with a thriving nightclub scene, a highly regarded film festival, popular theatres and a seemingly never-ending schedule of live music concerts. 

Indicative of the city’s current entertainment panache was the winter concert series at the Pyli A Performance Stage, which featured world-class entertainment and stunning patterns productions. A highlight of the series was a concert by multi-platinum contemporary Laïkó singer Antonis Remos. Supporting the legendary star’s passionate performance was a majestic George Porros-designed lightshow that immersed the audience with a stunning display of 144 overhead light tubes.

Suspended over almost the entire stage and extending out over the audience stage left and stage right, the tubes created an impressive image. Constantly morphing into different configurations as different tubes were turned on and off, the overhead display changed the entire look of the stage to reflect different aspects of Remos’ music. 

Kiriakos Dimitriadis of Audiotech controlled this overhead panorama with his ChamSys PC Wing and dual DMX. “We used the ChamSys for pixel mapping, and to control the tilt and intensity of the tubes,” said Dimitriadis. “I have been a ChamSys user for nine years. It is a very friendly tool that makes it easy to navigate my way around any show, even when I don’t have a lot of time to prepare, which was the case with this concert. 

“The lightshow for Antonis Ramos was rather elaborate with a lot of different angles and patterns. For this concert, my ChamSys PC Wing helped me plot a lot of the fixtures and hold the focus. It also was very convenient in remote in terms of controlling fixture positions, which was important, since the designers gave this show a great many special looks. The MagicQ software was excellent for controlling the fixtures.” 

Playing a key role in creating those engaging looks were the geometric patterns of beams and lasers (created by laser designer Tsitsanis Themis) that changed continuously, and often dramatically, throughout the show, giving the stage very different auras to reflect the wide emotional range of Remos’ music. 

Many of the geometric patterns were pre-programmed, but Dimitriadis added some just prior to the show. “ChamSys is very easy to work with, so it allows me to add looks quickly to a show,” he said. “All the functions I need to control a show are right there at my fingertips. The layout options are very user-friendly, and the fader options allow me to control some cues with great speed. The Fast Panic button for correcting mistakes was a big help.

Regardless of when they were programmed, the elegant and complex patterns of floating tubes of light and lasers gave the concert a transformative three-dimensional quality. In so doing, they added an ethereal quality to this timeless concert setting, making the music of this Greek national treasure all the more evocative. 

DENVER – Popular Colorado dream rockers Evanoff have their moments of dark bass-driven jams, but for the most part their ethereal psychedelic-tinged music doesn’t travel on the same sound waves as the thumbing traps that EDM star G. Jones swims in. Still, the two share an affinity for dramatic moments in music — and lighting. This was evident when the Boulder-based trio went to a G. Jones show recently.

So impressed were the band members with the infinite pans and tilts that fed off the energy of Jones’ musical performances, that they talked to their lighting designer Matt “Jonezy” Jones about moving away from the video -heavy look of their last tour and going with a beefier moving beam design. Jones was only too happy to oblige. Drawing on his ChamSys MagicQ MQ80 with wings, he created a deep, saturated other-worldly show with EDM-style visuals that wraps the band in immersive blankets of light from 36 moving fixtures.

“It was a great new look for the band,” said Jones of the lightshow, which appeared for the first time at Evanoff’s Saturday February 23rd concert at Denver’s Bluebird Theater. “We brought in 36 movers for our floor package, all patched into the ChamSys, then out via Art-Net to my 4-port ChamSys Node.”

Jones positioned many of his movers in ways he rarely has before. “I don’t usually do this when I design rigs, but I yoked many of my movers straight out,” he said. “I am usually not a fan of this type of hang, as it can take considerably longer to get perfect angles and beams to cross just right. But in my experience, when using infinite pan/tilt, this is one of the most valuable ways to hang.”

A ChamSys user for over 10 years, Jones relied on the pan/tilt offset features of this MagicQ MQ80 to help him align his beam angles. “The offsets allow me to get fixtures lined up via my patch window quickly and easily, so all things move symmetrically when fanning,” he said. “This saved an immense amount of time when we had to deal with wonky hangs. Another thing I valued in this job were the ChamSys’ cloning and morphing. This made it easy to create consistency from our existing programming into this new rig.”

In addition to his MQ80 console, Jones used his execute wing for most of his FX, as well as strobes, gobos and prisms, and all of his “hard looks.” His extra wing was relied on for beam positions, as well as all FX speed and size masters. “I break these out per fixture type, if possible, to allow for very granular FX control,” explained Jones. “Alec ‘Red’ Szuch, who worked with me on this project, did a remarkable job in this and every area of the show. I can’t say enough good things about him.”

Designing his show in Vectorworks, Jones exported it to LIGHTCONVERSE, and patched the ChamSys console and PreVis. This allowed him to see his beguiling beam patterns in a myriad of positions and from a range of perspectives.

“This design took a couple of iterations to get the angles just right for the room,” he said. “Beam positions are the single most important part of my programming, so I spent many hours pre-vising, as well as dialing in my beams onsite. With 36 beams, I designed the rig to wrap around the band, so we were really able to create some cool patterns by tossing the lights everywhere in symmetrical and asymmetrical movements, then stopping them at various points, all while keeping front light to an absolute minimum.”

Jones accented these intricate patterns further through the adroit use of colors. At times he saturated the stage with very dark, almost brooding hues, to create trance effects. Then, when the band took its music in a more upbeat direction, he used the flash buttons on his MagicQ MQ80 to crash bright whites through the colored patterns.

As it moved through patterns and colors enveloping the stage and artists in its immersive looks, Jones’ lightshow never strayed from its primary mission of supporting the music. “I am guided by a philosophy of ‘turning the music into light,’” he said. “In other words, my mission is to follow the music. Ultimately, this is what we were going for in this design.”

LONDON – Like a physicist who turns a mind-boggling array of equations into a single, elegant theory, Danish sensation Myrkur captivates audiences by weaving wildly different musical influences into a single performance experience that is as beautiful in its simplicity as it is unsettling in its complexity.  On her 2018 northern European tour, which ended December 22, the gifted multi-instrumentalist dramatized the breadth of her musical vision by dividing her show into two distinct parts: the first devoted to traditional folk music, the second to black metal.

Despite this stark contrast, the show flowed seamlessly, driven by the artist’s passionate performance and supported by a multi-faceted production design by David Howard with a lightshow that was run on a ChamSys PC Wing.

“The show itself is split into two,” said Howard.  “It starts with Folksange, a set of folk music from all over Europe played on traditional instruments. Afterwards, the stage falls to darkness before transitioning into an atmospheric black metal set. The show is designed to progress, with the metal set juxtaposingFolksange, but both have consistent design elements.

Key to creating this unifying design was the floor package that Howard created. Consisting of 10 “trees” of varying heights topped with LED tungsten-style lamps fitted with special RGB backlights fitted in custom-fabricated mounts, the design evoked images of a  forest of light on stage.

To distinguish the two sections of the show, Howard used the LED filament for the folk portion and then turned down the intensity level with dynamic strobing and color effects for the black metal set.  To augment the compact floor package (it travels in a 5x 20 kg container), he relied on in-house rigs.

The tour passed though a very wide range of venues, some with an in-house rig of over 60 automated fixtures, and others with almost no house lights. “Using the resources at hand to make a show with the same level of atmosphere was sometimes challenging, given the wide discrepancy from venue to venue, but it proved to be a very rewarding experience,” said Howard.

Helping him meet this challenge was his ChamSys PC Wing. “Using ChamSys made it incredibly easy to exchange fixture profiles, which was invaluable in helping me manage the variety of in-house fixtures,” said Howard. “I programmed spot and wash information into the show file, then morphed this programming onto in-house heads during the get in and programming period. Being able to morph programming onto in-house heads sped up the programming period at each venue. Doing this allowed an overall more consistent show feel, even where venue size varied dramatically.”

The compact design of the ChamSys PC Wing also aided Howard on tour.  “Given the size of the desk, I could do show updates in the tour bus,” he said. “This was a huge plus as the pre-production period was limited. Magic Vis made this incredibly easy too. It’s such a powerful built-in feature to have in a PC-based lighting package that aided pre-programming a great deal.”

Working with his floor package and assortment of house rigs, Howard was able to create an engaging multi-faceted show night after night that looked ethereally beautiful for the folk portion with warm colors, silhouettes and backlighting, then became more punchy with beams and gobos during the metal section.

“The transitional period between the sets consisted of a five-minute soundscape, where the lighting state transitioned from tungsten looks to a more aggressive aesthetic with glitchy and scattered bursts of flickering colored light,” said Howard.  “It was pleasing that this transition was picked up positively in reviews of the show.”

For Howard, the biggest reward wasn’t the reviews, but the feeling of mastering the demands of lighting a complex performance. “Being able to design and then fabricate a completely custom system lighting package, then translate this onto stages all over Europe was in itself very rewarding,” he said. “As a designer, you always want to light an artist who is atmospheric, and that’s certainly what we have in Myrkur.”

Photo#2: Dariuz Ptaszynski Photography

Photo #3: Patrick Spruytenburg

AMSTERDAM – Writing about electronic music star San Holo’s stop at New York’s Terminal 5 on his current tour in support of his LP album 1, a critic wrote, “San Holo acts like he is a part of the crowd, which makes us a part of him.”

This sense of connectivity has been repeated time and again around the world, as the Dutch artist, whose real name is Sander van Dijck, pours out his feelings in a deeply personal performance that seamlessly blends musical elements from the heaviest basses and trance beats to soft vocals and live guitar melodies.

Reflecting this heartfelt sound in light and video is a 13-universe Manuel Rodrigues-designed show, powered by a ChamSys MagicQ MQ80 desk and video server. Like the music of San Holo, which, though seemingly elemental, weaves diverse elements together into a uniquely moving sound, the album 1 tour lightshow is complex and intricately varied in its “simplicity.”

For Rodrigues, who worked with the tour’s Creative Director Thorwald van den Akker, this tightly focused approach is consistent with his design philosophy.  “In my designs I always try to go to the essence of the looks I want to create,” he explained. “I’m very rigorous in applying the ‘less is more’ principle. I try to find the simplest lines and then line up every lighting and video element perfectly with each other. The CAD drawing I made might look boring to the untrained eye; everything is just in rows of the same fixtures, and all elements are lined up with each other. But when the light and video work in concert, their aesthetics become more apparent because of the clean design of the stage.”

The validity of Rodrigues’ statement is  beautifully apparent to anyone who’s seen the 73 luminaires and 75 video panels in his rig work in harmony on the tour. Covering the stage with a matrix of intricately balanced beams of light, moving from brilliant colors to cool bright whites, and  accenting the artist with evocative side lighting, his lightshow reflects the passion and eclectic nature of his client’s musical performance without ever seeming intrusive or overbearing.

The video content, created by Bob Jacobs, also reflects the emotional tenor of the show, while paying homage to its retro quality. “Bob did a beautiful job,” said Rodrigues. “We evoke a sense of timelessness by shooting a lot of the video on old VHS cameras. San Holo likes to use a tape delay to give his sound extra layers of depth, and by using video cameras we tried to emulate the same feel. Often, this video content is then pixel mapped and used to drive the LED fixtures.”

The ChamSys MQ80 has been instrumental in helping Rodrigues achieve his vision on the global tour. “My console’s portability, number of universes supported, and the ability to capture palettes over Art-Net have been very important to me,” he said.  “These three functions combined are golden for a traveling LD.  I think ChamSys initiated a trend years ago of shrinking down the size of the lighting desk, and in the process has tempted other lighting desk manufacturers to release products with a similar form factor. The number of universes supported by the MQ80 is just insane for the price.  I have amazed many house LDs by copying their positions from their desks using Art-Net input.”

Rodrigues’ show on the tour is almost entirely synced. “The only thing happening live in this tour is setting FX speed / size and the front light for San,” he said . “I want to have as little front as possible, and therefore I make as small as possible light regions for San to step into — and I only turn them on when needed. The rest of the show is synced using M2Q. The bridge between Ableton and ChamSys enables the designer to use MIDI to draw light sequences. This information is then translated into the ChamSys Remote Protocol. San uses Ableton to play back his music, and I put my lighting MIDI sequences in this same Ableton set. This way synchronicity is ensured, and San still has all the creative freedom possible by default from within Ableton.”

During the time he was putting the show together, Rodrigues enjoyed a smooth open flow of communication with his client. “I was very happy with the input of San during the rehearsal process,” he said. “His ideas tended to be spot on. This all enabled us to have a very successful premiere of the show in St. Petersburg, Florida.” 

The collaborative relationship between San Holo and Rodrigues can be traced back to their initial meeting more than a year before the designer began working on the tour.  San Holo’s manager Budi Voogt introduced the two of them at the Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam. Dinner followed, and the rapport quickly became apparent.

“I immediately felt connected emotionally to San and his approach to his work,” said Rodrigues. It’s a connection that fans who are packing San Holo shows across the globe can readily understand.

HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, UK – Simon Horn kicked off the 2018 holiday season with a sleep-deprived weekend. As the sole designer, programmer and operator at Cream Weekender’s main Skyline Pavilion Stage, he spent most of his time between December 7^th and 9^th running the lightshow for a large and diverse mix of DJ stars on his ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium console with a Stadium Wing.

Other than a laser operator who came with Pete Tong, none of the artists brought their own LDs – and though Horn had a second operator there to relieve him, he enjoyed the music so much, he rarely stepped away from the console.

“It was a labor of love,” said Horn, the owner of Purple Lighting Ltd. “Apart from the one laser person, none of the acts brought their own designers or operators. This was pretty much my baby all the way.”

Horn not only loved his baby, he “raised” it to reflect his vision for the wildly popular event, which was put on by the UK clubbing legend Cream at Butlin’s Minehead Arena. 

“Budget is always a consideration, and that forces you to make decisions about the relative importance of things,” he said. “So, I discounted any use of screen and visuals, since we didn’t have a dedicated VJ, and I am not a fan of generic busked video content. This decision allowed me to focus my complete attention on creating an impressive well-populated lighting design, rather than a standard light show with a standard screen setup.”

The result of Horn’s decision was a 180-fixture and 7-universe lightshow that sent a palpable surge of energy and excitement through the 7,000-capacity pavilion in support of artists like Leftfield and Basement Jaxx. Rather than have his fixtures move as disparate entities, each following its own course, Horn choreographed his powerful rig to create broad, often subtle movements, while retaining the general contour of his design.

“How the fixtures are moved or not moved is one of the keys to creating an immersive design, in my view,” said Horn.  “With this rig and many of my other shows, I passionately avoid simply resorting to movement just for the sake of movement.  I’ve said it time and time again, ‘Just because a moving light can move does not mean it has to move.’ I tried to have enough scope to create exciting drama without moving the fixtures! But when I did move them I was sensitive to keeping the shape of the design projecting into the audience.”

Horn also created compelling looks by manipulating focus positions. For example, he focused 30 of his spots on the middle of the dance floor over the crowd. “This created some incredible euphoric looks as I manipulated intensity and color effects and then slowly moved the entire set of fixtures as one,” he said. “The design was very much aimed at being immersive for the audience.”

This manipulation of focus positions, as well as the entire 3-day lightshow, was busked. “I would not have wanted any console other than my ChamSys for this extensive busking,” said Horn. “The combination of large screens, plenty of buttons and such fast software is a complete winner here!  I utilized the execute buttons on the MQ500 for a set of what I call ‘panic buttons.’  Lighting DJ sets is all about creating big changes when the music drops or breaks into a big hand in the air rave moment! My panic buttons were set so I could hit them and grab a sequence that overrides everything else, while I then set up to move into something else after I release that button. So, having lots of execute buttons on the MQ500 is very friendly.”

Horn also was appreciative of what he terms the “sound to light” quality of the MagicQ MQ500.  “Thanks to the detailed way that you can use sound input on the MagicQ, the console is a very powerful tool in a dance music busk show,” he said. “I can focus on the main elements of the design and have other features managed by Audio. For example, I can set cue stack to bump a step on particular fixtures or every 160 Hz beat and deliver a flash sequence that always stuck to the beat pattern.”

However, the thing that Horn values most about the MagicQ MQ500 is its easy offset patch features, which saves him time when updating positions from previous shows.  He also appreciates being able to apply effects to groups of fixtures simultaneously.  “I spent a lot of time in this show creating different group orders allowing effects to be moved across the rig in different way in their natural shape,” he said. “This allowed me to create a unique lightshow.”

Horn’s lightshow was so memorable, that dancers often paused to take photos of it with their cell phones. He describes seeing them do this as a “humbling experience.”  Spoken like a proud parent indeed!

ATLANTA –  Early in his career, Zach Scott found part-time work supplying small-scale audio and lighting packages to a local video gaming venue in Chicago. One of its managers, Brad Weir, later branched out to organize gaming tournaments across the Midwest. 

Weir employed Scott for a few years, but eventually the two separated, Weir to pursue his passion of video gaming tournaments, and Scott into lighting, eventually creating his own design firm, Illuminate Collective. But old connections have a way of resurfacing…  Seven years after losing contact, Scott received a call from his former venue manager asking him if he’d be interested in working at this year’s Hi-Rez Expo at the Atlanta DreamHack, part of the largest LSN Party and computer festival in the world. 

Accepting the offer, Scott went on to create sleek, camera-friendly stage designs for Hi-Rez Studios’ SMITE stage. A friend of his, fellow designer Dustin Derry of Stonewolf Studios, crafted the look of the PALADINS. Helping them both in this endeavor were two ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium consoles.

“I was brought in to provide design, programming and operation for two identical stages at the Hi-Rez Expo,” said Scott. “With two stages being completely separate, I wanted help from someone who would match my passion for this project, so I called Dustin. We took on both stages from start to finish, as designers, programmers and directors, both of us relying on our ChamSys consoles to achieve looks that matched the intensity of the event and competition.”

Both stages had eight-universe shows with 79 controlled fixtures and 12 truss warmers that were set to the game’s branding colors. With the competition broadcast on Hi-Rez TV, the two designers gave prime consideration to creating looks that would translate well on camera, while still creating a friendly environment for the players and live audience.

“After our initial creative meetings, the main focus was on properly lighting the players and broadcasters for the cameras, but also staying dim enough so people weren’t blinded during game play,” said Scott. “Our vendor, Atlanta Sound & Light, played a massive roll in the overall design of the rig. We collaborated for almost two months on fixture placements and the overall design. For the aerial effects and big looks, I used the broadcast program monitor as a reference for what viewers online were seeing, and I tailored my programming on the MQ500 to have the biggest impact for the cameras.”

Keeping up with the flow of live gaming for broadcast meant that the programming process had to be done in an “organic and simplified manner,” said Scott. “We used one page of faders that held intensities, movements and FX,” he explained. “All of these playbacks were programmed with everything but color data. We then built a couple of Execute Pages, which held each team’s color palette. We also needed to be able to break up the team colors into ‘rig left, rig right or rig center,’ based on which side they played on, or if they won the match. The custom Execute Pages on the MQ500 worked perfectly for this task.”

Scott and Derry also had to pay careful attention to ensure that the effects and colors on their two stages matched the plethora of looks from the video content. “The show directors would give us cues, sometimes with advance notice and sometimes with a few seconds to spare,” said Scott. “This is a perfect example of why the MQ500 custom Execute Pages with regions were a crucial part of our console layouts.

In addition to the Execute Pages, Scott found the MagicQ MQ500’s two large screens and the additional banks of playback buttons to be invaluable features in this project. “The extra bank of playback buttons on the top left of the 500 were used for effects that had to be triggered, but would then release automatically,” he said. “Dustin had a great idea to use the extra playback section located in the middle of the desk for quick fixture selection. This allowed us to call up any fixture group at the touch of a button.”

Throughout the competition, Scott and Derry had mobile pre-vis rigs setup in their hotel rooms near the Georgia World Congress Center where the event took place. Scott had a ChamSys Maxi Wing in his room and Derry a PC Wing in his. “We did offsite programming and tweaks throughout the week, so everything always looked right for the competition,” said Scott. Based on the feedback the two designers received about their design, they certainly succeeded in doing that.

ZEELAND, THE NETHERLANDS – Putting a neat, tidy  description on the sound of Dutch rock stalwarts Racoon is akin to trying to capture  the essence of a flowing river in a bucket. Over the course of their 20-year career, the irrepressible quartet has woven their way through an array of evocative sounds, being as comfortable collaborating with Armin van Buuren on a Trance version of one of their hits as they are performing with the London Chamber Orchestra.

Reflecting the multi-faceted style of Racoon in light calls for a design that can convey a wide range of moods in a clear, but subtle fashion. Erwin van Lokeren, the band’s longtime lighting designer, is accomplishing this feat on the band’s Fall ’18 tour with a lightshow that (like his client’s music) is at once straightforward and complex. An indispensable tool in helping van Lokeren achieve this is his ChamSys MagicQ MQ80 console. 

“I have been Racoon’s designer since 2006, and it is always exciting and challenging working for them because their music is so diverse,” said van Lokeren. “Racoon music ranges from up-tempo pop to really fragile small songs. This means that I have to go from making the show look big, to creating something very small and intimate.  On this tour, I try to create a show that is a bit industrial. I have lights moving up and down in different positions, so they work as scenic pieces as well as sources of illumination.”

Limiting his three-universe show to 62 fixtures, van Lokeren is keeping his rig uncluttered to evoke an intimate hardcore basic mood on stage. This sense is reinforced by his use of retro theatrical fixtures that are hung at varying heights over the band.  Changing the position of these fixtures creates a sense of movement on stage, in addition to leading audiences through the different emotions evoked by the music.

“On this tour, we achieve impact not by overwhelming the audience, but by changing effects to relay different emotions,” said van Lokeren. “By doing this, we reinforce the deeply personal connection between the band and its fans.”

In light of his design vision for the current Racoon tour, the effects  options in van Lokeren’s ChamSys console are of particular importance. “It is really very nice that the MQ80 gives me such a wide range of different options in the effect (effects?) section,” he said. “I like having so many possibilities to search and create the right effect that I desire.  The intensity master fader also works great for me, allowing me to adjust the brightness in venues, for example, where the roof reflects a lot. Given that this is a mood driven show, I need precise control, which is why I’m very happy to have the MQ80 with me.”

In addition to his MagicQ MQ80, van Lokeren is using an extra PC Wing to control  front lights and hazers. “The Wing allows me to adjust smoke at any time during the show,” he said. “My biggest challenge on this tour is to get the right amount of haze on the stage. We are often at venues that have a lot of air-conditioning, which is a challenge. On this tour, haze is 90% of my show, because it’s great a (at?) setting the right mood.”

Meeting this and other challenges is easy for van Lokeren, thanks in part to the work of his systems tech (techs?) Bertje Ploegh and Marcel Koeter. Of course, figuring out how to create an engaging lighting design under a variety of circumstances is something van Lokeren knows a thing or two about. He notes that this tour will mark his 1000^th show using a ChamSys console.  “You can describe me as being very loyal to ChamSys,” he said. “For years, it has helped unleash my creative spirits.”