Tune Up: Lighting and Visualizers

posted in: Features • Reviews & Playlists

Everyone’s been to a live show and been completely blown away by the lighting display and pyrotechnics at least once. Images of Kiss, and more recently Muse come to mind. While it’s tough to create this sort of visual show for a smaller band, there are some simple products that make the creation of an effective lighting display at  a small venue a simple task. We’ll first recommend a few portable units for lighting, some general tips for easy effects and end with a unique way that an OurStage band is achieving lighting at their live shows.

Small Units

Many lighting displays operate with complicated program settings that control lighting racks, large boom stands and even lasers. However, setting up simple constant lighting sources for onstage effects can at least give your music that extra bit of visual appeal. There are a lot of different types out there, many of which are probably more suitable for a DJ. Because of the diversity of the units, we’ll link you to one in particular. The American DJ Galaxian 3D is a moving light fixture than can be hung from the ceiling that also doubles as a laser appearance. There are also lighting strips that you can purchase that offer a moving line of LED lights that, if placed strategically, add color to your scene.

Most clubs have simple light racks affixed to the ceiling. While some give you the option to program lighting changes”many bands even hire lighting operators”even small bands can benefit from some simple solutions. Merely learning what colors and fade out effects are easily achievable with the club’s system can help you to cater the existing lighting to a few moments in your set. Sometimes even the sound engineer is willing to make some simple, real-time changes if requested.

Visualizers

One of the most interesting uses of visual effects that we’ve seen from an OurStage band comes from Austin, TX alt/rock group Distant Lights. Everyone is familiar with the iTunes visualizer (or any visualizer for that matter). It gives you the ability to watch a color set of shapes and patterns that react to your music on your computer. However, the effectiveness of a visualizer in a live setting is just as pertinent. It might seem difficult, though, to create a visualizer that reacts to your music (perhaps it would require some difficult programming). Distant Lights, physics enthusiasts that they are, found a way to achieve some great visualization simply using a camera, some light and a container of water. Check out their cello player as he explains the concept:

The concept is quite simple and yet really unique. The band was actually aiming to take this concept to physics conferences to help demonstrate the geometric fluctuations that occur from vibrations in water. Not only is this an educational and scientific effort on the band’s part, but they also use it quite effectively at a live show.

Whether you’re looking to utilize a clubs’ existing lights, use your own smaller units or even come up with an innovative idea like Distant Lights, visuals are extremely important in creating a great live set.