Using buttons/faders on playbacks most effectively for busking? How did you setup your desk for busking?

[Hummel]

Background
First I need to admit, that I'm still quite new to the FLX-S and I'm much more into sound than into light. It's a fixed setup for a school. We do like the FLX-S48 for easy programming and even teachers without much technical background can do this quite easily. But for our concerts (with a lot of songs from different bands and our bigband) we can't prepare everything in advance, so we started to think about busking.

Busking
Our goal is to finde a good setup on the FLX-S 48 for busking and use the buttons/faders on playbacks most effectively. I've read a LOT about busking (about "Nooks" setup and many others) and watched the video about "mixing playbacks and running the show" (a lot of good insight here). It should be possible to have some good colors, some positions for the MHs and some FX (intensity, color, position) with the option to change parameters like size of the FX, stop the FX altogether or sync the chase to BPM.

As there are two pages of 48 playbacks each, I'm planning to use a tablet with OSC later to get some more access to the playbacks on the second page later, but all the most important stuff should be accesible from the first layer. 48 playbacks seem to be a lot, but when you're thinking about different positions, gobo-selections (2 wheels), Prisma, Zoom, Focus, different FX it's not so much anymore and I try to wrap my head around this (trying to find the best possible solution).

My idea is to use the grid of 8x 6 playbacks as the basic structure, so you can grab each section easily. Maybe putting colors on the playbacks 1-6 (cuelist with 2 steps of two colors each - for example side orange and back blue in the first cue and vice versa in the second cue). So in this case the button does all the work. But how can I still use the faders for my advantage? Would be great, if I could put some intensities (maybe the fresnels) on them, but IF that is possible, I didn't get it yet (it would mean that the faders would control different fixtures than those on the cues in those playbacks). Or could those faders at least blend smoothely between both cues? Other good ideas to make good use of those?

Or the other way round: I would like to use some faders to control different parameters (maybe the size of the FX). I probably could use the button on that playback to control a cuelist with the same parameter (so maybe some cues with speed values). But maybe I would like to use the button for something completely different (maybe switching the hazer on/off). Probably this wouldn't be possible?

Your Setup for Busking on the FLX-S48?
How did you make good use of the buttons/faders of your FLX-S desk?
Maybe you already found a nice busking-setup and could share some of your solutions or thoughts?

Some details about our setup (for those interested)
We do have 6 fresnels in front (Desisti 2kW), 16 simple 500W-halogen-floods to light up the stage and 3 1kW-floods mounted at the ceiling. That's the theatrical lighting (and that had been all for a long time). Over the years we had the chance to get some stuff here and there: We now have 16 PAR56 on two slightly slanted trusses further back on stage together with 2 FOS Scorpio BSW moving-heads and 2 more of those FOS-MHs on MH-towers (movable). The backwall can be illuminated by two Lightmaxx 9x8W RGBW washes and we have 4 more of those that we often use to light up the walls and the ceiling at the front next to the stage. Four new Eurolite LED-spots (RGBWA) can be used very flexible (with wireless DMX) and we do use two Lightmaxx CLS-3 on the left/right side on stage. At the back we can use two ADJ moonflowers and we got one strobe fixed centered at the ceiling of the stage.

EDIT: Attached you find a overview of the stage and its fixtures (not yet updated to the newest version, but maybe it helps to get the idea).

Bühnenplan - DMX Adressen.pdf

[Davidmk]

There are probably more busking tricks than there are people in this forum but a, non-exhaustive, list might include...

Only use playbacks for the intensities of fixture groups, do the rest in the programmer. Practically limitless but difficult to keep track. Look up programmer time if you go down this route.

Whether using the programmer or not, use palletes for LED colours, positions, beam & shape. Much easier to amend and makes them easy to apply when busking in the programmer. 

Record cue stacks and use go cue no. (hold the go button, type cue no. - on an external keyboard since it is S series -  release the  go button). Economical with playbacks but looking up the cue no. takes time does mean you can go from one cue directly to the next.  It's in the manual with S48 selected but the text only refers to FLX so not sure it works @Edward Z88 will advise I'm sure.

Use colour mixing for LEDs. Always a good choice but don't try to use playbacks or programmer for LED colours if you've set up colour mixing.

Don't record full "looks", instead for (e.g) moving heads have some beam, shape, position & effect options on different playbacks so you can mix & match.

Don't forget you can have playbacks that control a single parameter (like pan, tilt, zoom, etc.).

Get into OSC sooner rather than later. I used to use midi (on FLX) but OSC is more flexible, uses less playbacks and available on S series. If you want more help with OSC contact me by DM.

There are remote switches on FLX  but these can also be triggered by ctrl/F1 to ctrl/F8 on the keyboard.  These don't appear in the S48 manual so not sure if you have them or not. Again @Edward Z88 will advise.

All I can think of quickly but I'm sure you will get other's offering their take on the subject.

My own set up uses 18 playbacks as follows...

1 thru 6 contain cues setting LED PARs fixtures grouped by location and odd/even to one of 13 colours.

7 is the same 13 colours but for a small number of LED moving head washes. 8 thru 10 are positions, zoom settings and P/T effects for these mh washes.

11 is colour wheel settings for DS (non LED) moving heads, 12, 13 & 14 positions, gobo & P/T effects for these fixtures.

15 thru 18 are the colours, gobos, positions & effects US non LED mh's

On another page I have the intensities for all the above fixtures, grouped similarly and a few LED colour effects like rainbow and sparkle.

Finally, a tablet running TouchOSC (full one, not MK1) and a control surface I designed and coded myself to trigger the cues. This is customisable and I am willing to share it with a few people (because I couldn't support a big userbase). I'd have to write a user manual though.

Have fun!

[Hummel]

Thanks David, a lot of food for thought from your in-depth knowledge!

We started by creating full "looks", but we're heading into busking, to make live mixing possible, so yeah - mix and match is what we're after. I'm aware of putting parameters on faders, but we will need to find the best way for this. For example: Probably "inhibit" makes most sense for things like pan/tilt so you could manually "offset" from the last position of the MHs, but would you need to put the fader centered to do this "offset"?

When you're talking about busking in the programmer, do you mean kind of programming live (selecting fixture group and working with palettes)? I could imagine this to work quite well with the MHs only for example - but much more difficult if you need to mix and match different fixture groups. We will of course prepare palettes with positions, colors, gobos etc.

Getting to a dedicated cue within a cuestack holding the go button and selecting a number on an external keyboard sounds like a good idea. Still OSC could give much easier direct access to those dedicated cues, I suppose. I'm gonna make contact per PM about that.

I don't know, if I'd like to use color mixing for LEDs or if I'd rather prefer some good preselected colors or color-combinations (as some mixed colors do not look very good on those LEDs). Mixing with RGB might also be more useful for the more experienced?

Thanks for sharing some details about your own setup. So essentially you have a lot of cue-stacks for colors, color-combinations, positions, gobos and P/T-FX on playbacks on one page and intensities on a second page. And you probably use OSC a lot to access dedicated cues.

[Davidmk]

Ooh, lots to reply to there but I've got a busy morning. Come back to you later.

[Hummel]

Some first ideas for a busking-setup - see pdf attached.
Comments/suggestions/helpful advice welcome!

First Ideas - Busking FLX-S.pdf

[Davidmk]

10 hours ago, Hummel said:

Probably "inhibit" makes most sense for things like pan/tilt

Not how I do it and I don't think it would operate as you think it would. An inhibit is normally used with intensities and acts as a top limit on their values. For example, in my set up I have 4 playbacks each setting the intensity of a group of PARS. I could add a fifth one controlling the intensities of all the PARS but if any of the others were at a higher level then that is the value that would be used. However if I made the 5th one an inhibit then the value of that would become the maximum intensity for all the PARS and taking it to zero would black them all out, regardless of the values of their group playbacks. An inhibit applied to, say, a zoom parameter would have no effect at full but, if lowered, would reduce that parameter to zero. Possibly useful but probably not what you had in mind.

The way I do it is this...

I like to have two moving heads on each performer to act as spotlight and back light. I don't have enough to do all of them but I can usually cover the front line. Lead singers have a tendency to move around so I set theirs to the minimum size and as far down stage as I think they will go. Having an FLX with UDKs I save all these "default" values on a UDK (fixed, latch and no release) - you don't have this luxury. You could use the custom fixture defaults or, if like me you don't want to mess with these, a playback (you can just use one for all defaults you want for a given show).

Having got this base position, & size I then select the lead singer's moving head, zoom it out to maximum, refocus it and save to a playback (making sure I only record Beam parameters for that one fixture). In the playback fader controls I select  Beam.

Then I position the fixture as far upstage as I need and record that (only the pan & tilt parameters) and select Position in the playback fader controls. Note that this usually involves both Pan and Tilt - it is possible, but messy, to put tilt on one playback and tilt on another (your default position needs to be to one side and you must record only Pan on your pan playback and Tilt on your tilt playback. It isn't easy to use (as the pan fader goes up and down when your brain is thinking left and right) and I've found a combination of zoom and tilt is usually enough.

[Davidmk]

11 hours ago, Hummel said:

do you mean kind of programming live

Yes I do. Lots of people do this and make great use of groups & pallettes to make it easier - even I do it sometimes. What I don't like is that you only have one programmer and you end up with a mixture of stuff where it is difficult to separate the ingredients. Well worth trying out for yourself if only to discover what you like and don't like about it. Then you only need alternatives for the things you don't like.

I don't think S series have blind mode, if you do have it then take a look at that as well.

One thing you can do, busking in the programmer, when you achieve a state you might want again, is record it to a playback. With careful use of record options you might even be able to separate out just the ingredients you want.

When I use the programmer it is for a particular, restricted, reason (e.g apply an effect to a group of fixtures) and when I'm done with it I clear the programmer ready for the next time.

[Davidmk]

11 hours ago, Hummel said:

OSC could give much easier direct access to those dedicated cues

It does its "the best thing since sliced bread", I already replied quickly to your PM. I'll elaborate there in a bit.

[Davidmk]

6 hours ago, Hummel said:

Some first ideas for a busking-setup

Not sure I fully understand all of that but, going on my - potentially flawed - interpretation...

Looking at your Colours playbacks I have two possible interpretations

1. They fade between the colours named. I hope I'm wrong here because that would be a messy version of RGB mixing using more precious playbacks.
2. These are repositories for cues that give colours in the ranges specified. This is better and not a rubbish idea however there are disadvantages. Firstly you are using 6 playbacks where one would do, for music you don't need a lot of colours and they don't need a lot of subtle shades and a single playback can be manageable. One of the strengths of using a cue stack is that cues replace each other. If have a cue active in PB25 and then activate a cue in PB26 it will override the one in PB31 (LTP remember) and if you release PB32 then it will return to the one from PB25. Not too bad but consider what happens when you've had a lot of colour changes and haven't released any of them, will you know what will happen if you release the latest one? I can't remember what happens with fade time either I have a feeling it fades sometimes, not others.
3. Neither of the above. I didn't understand, maybe you need to enlighten me.

My interpretation of and comments on the rest will have to wait.

[Hummel]

1 hour ago, Davidmk said:

The way I do it is this...

I like to have two moving heads on each performer to act as spotlight and back light. I don't have enough to do all of them but I can usually cover the front line. Lead singers have a tendency to move around so I set theirs to the minimum size and as far down stage as I think they will go. Having an FLX with UDKs I save all these "default" values on a UDK (fixed, latch and no release) - you don't have this luxury. You could use the custom fixture defaults or, if like me you don't want to mess with these, a playback (you can just use one for all defaults you want for a given show).

Having got this base position, & size I then select the lead singer's moving head, zoom it out to maximum, refocus it and save to a playback (making sure I only record Beam parameters for that one fixture). In the playback fader controls I select  Beam.

Then I position the fixture as far upstage as I need and record that (only the pan & tilt parameters) and select Position in the playback fader controls. Note that this usually involves both Pan and Tilt - it is possible, but messy, to put tilt on one playback and tilt on another (your default position needs to be to one side and you must record only Pan on your pan playback and Tilt on your tilt playback. It isn't easy to use (as the pan fader goes up and down when your brain is thinking left and right) and I've found a combination of zoom and tilt is usually enough.

Will need to try this.

1 hour ago, Davidmk said:

Yes I do. Lots of people do this and make great use of groups & pallettes to make it easier - even I do it sometimes. What I don't like is that you only have one programmer and you end up with a mixture of stuff where it is difficult to separate the ingredients. Well worth trying out for yourself if only to discover what you like and don't like about it. Then you only need alternatives for the things you don't like.

I don't think S series have blind mode, if you do have it then take a look at that as well.

"Seperating ingredients" seems to be quite impossible within the programmer. But it may be useful for making some changes. No blind mode on the FLX-S AFAIK.

1 hour ago, Davidmk said:

One thing you can do, busking in the programmer, when you achieve a state you might want again, is record it to a playback. With careful use of record options you might even be able to separate out just the ingredients you want.

Just found the part about "snapshot palette" in the online manual: https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/palettes/recording-palettes
Will try this.

1 hour ago, Davidmk said:

It does its "the best thing since sliced bread", I already replied quickly to your PM. I'll elaborate there in a bit.

OSC seems to open a lot of options and I'm curious about those possibilities.

1 hour ago, Davidmk said:

Not sure I fully understand all of that but, going on my - potentially flawed - interpretation...

Looking at your Colours playbacks I have two possible interpretations

1. They fade between the colours named. I hope I'm wrong here because that would be a messy version of RGB mixing using more precious playbacks.
2. These are repositories for cues that give colours in the ranges specified. This is better and not a rubbish idea however there are disadvantages. Firstly you are using 6 playbacks where one would do, for music you don't need a lot of colours and they don't need a lot of subtle shades and a single playback can be manageable. One of the strengths of using a cue stack is that cues replace each other. If have a cue active in PB25 and then activate a cue in PB26 it will override the one in PB31 (LTP remember) and if you release PB32 then it will return to the one from PB25. Not too bad but consider what happens when you've had a lot of colour changes and haven't released any of them, will you know what will happen if you release the latest one? I can't remember what happens with fade time either I have a feeling it fades sometimes, not others.
3. Neither of the above. I didn't understand, maybe you need to enlighten me.

My interpretation of and comments on the rest will have to wait.

Color-playbacks (on 25-30) are meant to be two cues on each playback with complementing colors for different parts of the stage (bi-color-designs). The first cue would for example have the back wall in red, and the stage washes in blue. The second cue will switch colors vice versa. You could have just one cuestack with all those color-combinations combined, but it's not so easy to go back a step in the cuelist (Shift + "GO" + another "GO") to change colors at the right time (maybe the start of a chorus) or even change back and forth in sync to the beat.

On 31 there would be a cuelist with single-colors for all LED-fixtures.

On 37-42 I'm thinking about manual fader (2 way) to fade between two positions of the MHs. You can't use the buttons to switch to those positions though (GO button is disabled by default).

[Davidmk]

3 hours ago, Hummel said:

complementing colors for different parts of the stage

Now, my take on this is to divide each group of LED PARS into odds (fixtures 1, 3, etc) and evens (2, 4, etc) and have separate cue stacks for each. That way I can have them all the same, two similar (e.g red & orange) or two contrasting (e.g. Red & blue). Somewhere else (not under OSC control) I have an intensity chase between odd & even that I control by tap tempo (FLX MFK again I'm afraid but I think it can be done other ways). It effectively becomes a 2 colour chase that way.

[Davidmk]

3 hours ago, Hummel said:

thinking about manual fader (2 way) to fade between two positions of the MH

I see but if you have a selection of positions in cues with times for position fades you can achieve a similar result between any two of them. OK the time is fixed but I suppose you might use snap to cue (it's no use to me, our MHs are flown and heavy - if they move too quick it takes a while before the bar stops swaying)

You can use a normal fader playback to fade from "wherever they are at the moment" to "somewhere else" and back again though.

[Davidmk]

3 hours ago, Hummel said:

snapshot palette

Not tried this. I usually just want a very specific selection of stuff however, if you are busking in the programmer and want to capture a "look" it would be more efficient than using a playback.

[Davidmk]

3 hours ago, Hummel said:

OSC seems to open a lot of options and I'm curious about those possibilities

It sort of does and doesn't. All I'm doing with it really is using it to give single key access to go cue. TouchOSC lets me put a label on the button and give it a colour so I can find it quickly and it lets me line up several go cues to execute (almost) at the same time. Each button can execute the same go cue in multiple playbacks and, although I can't change which on the fly I can switch them in and out. There's something like 2000 lines of code in it. I used to be a computer programmer so it wasn't too hard to pick up the new language but it still took me a few weeks to write and I still regard it as a trial version.

[Hummel]

Quite impressive and very well structured! So you can select different parameters for all of your fixtures and "GO" all at once. Nice.

If I'm gonna be using OSC, I'd be happy if it just gives me some buttons to select different cues directly (a color, a position...).

FIrst layout inspired by your picture to gain access to colors for wall and side seperately or all the same. (The last three rows are just placeholders right now). And those are just nice looking buttons without any OSC-messages yet.

[Edward Z88]

Hi @Hummel & @Davidmk

Apologies that I am a bit late to the party on this topic, but this is a great thread - loads of good tips and workflows. I'll add the following:

On 10/27/2023 at 6:48 PM, Hummel said:

Our goal is to finde a good setup on the FLX-S 48 for busking and use the buttons/faders on playbacks most effectively. I've read a LOT about busking (about "Nooks" setup and many others) and watched the video about "mixing playbacks and running the show" (a lot of good insight here). It should be possible to have some good colors, some positions for the MHs and some FX (intensity, color, position) with the option to change parameters like size of the FX, stop the FX altogether or sync the chase to BPM.

As well as the "Mixing Playbacks and Running the Show" video, check out this video too if you haven't already...

On 10/27/2023 at 6:48 PM, Hummel said:

but IF that is possible, I didn't get it yet (it would mean that the faders would control different fixtures than those on the cues in those playbacks). Or could those faders at least blend smoothely between both cues? Other good ideas to make good use of those?

On 10/27/2023 at 6:48 PM, Hummel said:

Or the other way round: I would like to use some faders to control different parameters (maybe the size of the FX). I probably could use the button on that playback to control a cuelist with the same parameter (so maybe some cues with speed values). But maybe I would like to use the button for something completely different (maybe switching the hazer on/off). Probably this wouldn't be possible?

A playback's fader and playback's button cannot be split into separate playbacks. The fader and button are simply two controls for the same data on the playback.

On 10/28/2023 at 2:06 AM, Davidmk said:

Record cue stacks and use go cue no. (hold the go button, type cue no. - on an external keyboard since it is S series -  release the  go button). Economical with playbacks but looking up the cue no. takes time does mean you can go from one cue directly to the next.  It's in the manual with S48 selected but the text only refers to FLX so not sure it works @Edward Z88 will advise I'm sure.

If you press and hold a playback's GO button, you can then type the cue number you wish to go to on an external keyboard, and then let go of the GO button to go into the cue. If you are going down the OSC route, this would be a more elegant solution of jumping to a cue.

On 10/28/2023 at 2:06 AM, Davidmk said:

There are remote switches on FLX  but these can also be triggered by ctrl/F1 to ctrl/F8 on the keyboard.  These don't appear in the S48 manual so not sure if you have them or not. Again @Edward Z88 will advise.

FLX S48 consoles do not have remote switches (and therefore do not have the Ctrl+F1 - Ctrl+F8 hotkeys).

On 10/28/2023 at 9:00 AM, Hummel said:

For example: Probably "inhibit" makes most sense for things like pan/tilt so you could manually "offset" from the last position of the MHs, but would you need to put the fader centered to do this "offset"?

"Inhibit" is an "Intensity Mixing" option in a playback's settings, and therefore is not applicable to parameters such as Pan & Tilt. To achieve what you are after, you could use "Fader Controls", to configure a playback's fader to crossfade to/from the recorded position parameters for example.

On 10/28/2023 at 8:19 PM, Davidmk said:

I don't think S series have blind mode, if you do have it then take a look at that as well.

FLX S consoles do not have Blind mode.

On 10/28/2023 at 8:58 PM, Davidmk said:

what happens when you've had a lot of colour changes and haven't released any of them, will you know what will happen if you release the latest one? I can't remember what happens with fade time either I have a feeling it fades sometimes, not others.

If a playback is released over a time, values will crossfade back to the previous playback's values. Playbacks can be released over a time using cue release macros, or Programmer Time.

On 10/28/2023 at 10:18 PM, Hummel said:

OSC seems to open a lot of options and I'm curious about those possibilities.

More information here...

https://www.zero88.com/storage/downloads/c4034f20-af9a-4531-b8f6-f8c2c5330fc4/ZerOS-&-OSC-(“Open-Sound-Control”)-v2.0.pdf

On 10/28/2023 at 10:18 PM, Hummel said:

On 37-42 I'm thinking about manual fader (2 way) to fade between two positions of the MHs. You can't use the buttons to switch to those positions though (GO button is disabled by default).

The "Manual Fade" options in Playback Settings > General > Fader Function, can be used to manually crossfade intensity values between cues. Attributes will continue to use their cue fade times when the Fader Function is set to "Manual Fade". As cues are advanced by the playback's fader movement in "Manual Fade" modes, the GO button is temporarily disabled.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

[Davidmk]

5 hours ago, Edward Z88 said:

Inhibit" is an "Intensity Mixing" option in a playback's settings

I never wanted to use inhibit on anything other than intensity so it comes as no surprise (or dissapointment) that it isn't possible.

[Davidmk]

5 hours ago, Edward Z88 said:

If a playback is released over a time, values will crossfade back to the previous playback's values. Playbacks can be released over a time using cue release macros, or Programmer Time.

I really should research these, makes me wonder if I'm doing something the hard way through lack of knowledge. 

[Edward Z88]

1 hour ago, Davidmk said:

I really should research these, makes me wonder if I'm doing something the hard way through lack of knowledge. 

When releasing a playback from a cue release macro, the playback will release over the fade down time of the cue releasing it…

https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/cues-playbacks/cue-settings/cue-macros

[Hummel]

Edward, thanks for joining in and sharing your experience and knowledge. I will watch the webinar you recommended.

I'm thinking about using the "Manual Fade"-option for positions of the MHs and got a question about that. If I'm not using the 2-way, but the 1-way-mode and have only one cue on each playback, would that mean, that I could raise any fader with a position on that playback and the MHs will fade from whatever the position before was into the new position and go back to the previous position when the fader is lowered again? So no need for the 2-way-mode in this case, right?

[Edward Z88]

6 minutes ago, Hummel said:

Edward, thanks for joining in and sharing your experience and knowledge. I will watch the webinar you recommended.

I'm thinking about using the "Manual Fade"-option for positions of the MHs and got a question about that. If I'm not using the 2-way, but the 1-way-mode and have only one cue on each playback, would that mean, that I could raise any fader with a position on that playback and the MHs will fade from whatever the position before was into the new position and go back to the previous position when the fader is lowered again? So no need for the 2-way-mode in this case, right?

The functionality you’re describing here is what enabling “Position” under “Fader Controls…” would achieve. “Fader controls” can be found in Playback Settings > General.

The “Manual Fade” fader function options are used for manually controlling intensity crossfades in cue stacks. 

[Davidmk]

8 minutes ago, Hummel said:

I could raise any fader with a position on that playback and the MHs will fade from whatever the position before was into the new position and go back to the previous position when the fader is lowered again

Yep, that's right. As I said...

On 10/29/2023 at 1:46 AM, Davidmk said:

You can use a normal fader playback to fade from "wherever they are at the moment" to "somewhere else" and back again though.

And Edward said...

7 hours ago, Edward Z88 said:

To achieve what you are after, you could use "Fader Controls", to configure a playback's fader to crossfade to/from the recorded position parameters for example.