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might be a dumb question. I would like run our lights from midi
Or I send biab fhur a light controller say bass for one color piano another or just change with the beat. any ideas
John

Not dumb - you need a controller that can accept MIDI - DMX is sort of the de facto standard for doing this.

Just google DMX MIDI Control and be prepared to do some reading.

Quote:

Just google DMX MIDI Control and be prepared to do some reading.

That is about the best advice. I've been running my lights from my MIDI sequencer for quite a few years and it can be quite a bit of work depending on how complex you want your light show to be. Your MIDI sequencer is going to send commands to a light controller that is going to convert those commands to DMX and send it out on a channel to a dimmer box on your light standard that is going to contol lights that are plugged into it (in some cases you will be controlling a unit directly from the controller desk without the intervening box e.g. fog machine). It is too complex of a processes to give you complete instructions here so a good bit of research and reading on your part is in order. Your controller desk will come with a MIDI implementation chart that will explain what all of the midi controller commands will make it do.

If you already have a lt desk that controls the dimmer packs what you'l do is program scenes into the desk and use MIDI commands to call up these scenes.

thanks guys. theres alot to learn. In the past 50 years how things have changed. I'm turning 55 in a few days so been playing for 50 years now. biab has brought my level of music up a bunch. Never have had a piano player before or sax. Any extra instuments like fiddle part I had to do myself. If we had 2 lead players I was in heaven. Now I'm part of a duet or sometimes a single. We use harmonizers plus live harmony. I was hoping to just run biab into the lights and let them change with different sounds. Is there a way to record a midi track in baib then as the song plays it could make the light changes. Maybe what I want to do is still yet to be invented
John

It is actually not that hard. I embed commands in the Solo track which is set to Midi ch 5 to run the harmony box, it sends the box a triad and the box catches the chord and uses that for harmonies. Other commands can be inserted to change the lights. The other option is to have a box that stores a scene and to use a line in to change the scene on the beat. So for example you have 10 scenes, choose #1 either manually or on auto, and that scene is purples and blues. It then changes to the beat. The next scene might be a different one with reds and so on. It is possible to trigger all kinds of things.

A visit to a lighting store for ideas will show you what can be done. They have all kinds of new cool led lights that are meant for one or two man shows with controllers. Par cans, the old standard we used with gels and ganged on stage to create scenes have given way to just a few led lights that can be programmed to be any colour you want.

I'm sure you'll soon be able to control the stuff with your phone from Paris while you are in Rome. LOL.

thanks John. We just found and just started you using it though our harmanizer. with me playing more lead using my gutair for the harmizer wasn't the best. When I played the fiddle I didn't have anything to run for harmony. can I then just run then to my light controller after the harmizer? I havn't had time to check it out yet
.John

If your Harnonizer as a MIDI THRU jack, that would be the way to daisy chain, from there to the light controller.

Sometimes that can be accomplished simply by setting up the two devices internally such that one is using 1 or more MIDI channels only and the other is using the rest. Then, of course, you must set up your software such that it sends the correct MIDI data to the correct channels.

MIDI THRU is powerful because it just makes an instant echo of the data received on the unit's MIDI INPUT port and sends the same data immediately back out on the THRU port. The data does not pass thru the inner workings of the first device at all, which means there isn't any lag time or latency to doing it that way.

--Mac

Quote:

If your Harnonizer as a MIDI THRU jack, that would be the way to daisy chain, from there to the light controller.

Sometimes that can be accomplished simply by setting up the two devices internally such that one is using 1 or more MIDI channels only and the other is using the rest. Then, of course, you must set up your software such that it sends the correct MIDI data to the correct channels.

MIDI THRU is powerful because it just makes an instant echo of the data received on the unit's MIDI INPUT port and sends the same data immediately back out on the THRU port. The data does not pass thru the inner workings of the first device at all, which means there isn't any lag time or latency to doing it that way.

--Mac

I KNOW this is against the Midi Spec but I did this for years and never had an issue. A plain old "WYE" cable made with 3 Midi connectors works just fine if you have no through.I made a little box to do this.

Well, the wiring inside the box for MIDI THRU is exactly the same thing, John, as I think you know, it is a hardwire parallel connect to MIDI IN. Same.

--Mac

Thanks for the help. I'm starting to understand things some. as for anwser comes more questions. 1st I am running into my harmonier straight from the headphone jack. Is this giving me midi channel 5 as you was talking about. Or is there a usb to midi cable I'm supose to be using. My harmonizer only has 1/4 jack nornally used for a gutiar in. I am running a 1/8 stereo cable in and the a mono cable out. It sounds good but I must be losing the stereo in biab this way. See what youy guys think
thanks John

Headphone jack is not MIDI at all. Your harmonizer is able to use Audio and interpret the chords from that.

--Mac