Music busking

The CSAV desks have some great gizmos for busking but they are not always easy to apply.

Sound2Light could benefit from having the noise threshold a variable setting. The ‘Attack’ parameter is misnamed. It is more of a Delay or Sustain

Effects can be applied live but it would be better if they started at zero depth so you can bring them in smoothly. Some way to beat sync them would be good, preferably using Sound2Light. 

Sequences with Tap Tempo require quite a lot of programming which there isn’t always time for. There may be some merit in being able to crib an effect and translate it into a sequence, which one can then edit to taste and apply Tap Tempo.

  • PS - I have had more spare time to experiment with Sound2Light and I would warn folks that it doesn’t do what I imagined from the user manual. If it did then I would expect feeding the input from a signal generator sweep would fade up playback 1 to 5 in sequence one at a time, and 6 when out of range or absent. If the frequency is held I would expect the playback level to be proportional to the amplitude. This is not what happens. A sweep causes more than one playback to fade up, and, yes, to an extent the higher frequencies stimulate the higher numbered playbacks, but it seems more responsive to the ‘crescendo’ of the input and even if a tone is sustained the playback fades down again at a rate depending on the ‘Attack’ setting.

    The net result of this is that the music it works best on and what it does with it isn’t predictable. It works really well on songs you really wouldn’t expect but if you looking for 5 to follow the high hat consistently you may be disappointed.

  • In spite of the preceding caveat, I have just come back from lighting a Beatles tribute gig and the Sound2Light was terrific. Two 8 way cheap RGB wall wash battens modified with bits of wide angle fresnel rear window stickers to fan the beams in 24 channel mode with subs to bring on in pairs of varying colour. Different sub pages to vary the effect colour. Whatever criticism I have of the description of what it does the algorithm is certainly effective on Beatles tribute music.

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