So I volunteered to run lights for a show that my kids were in yesterday. I only had a few hours to get familiar with the Element console and the venue. I was able to program 3 submasters with banks of lights that I planned on using throughout the show. Unfortunately I got cocky and things went awry.
1. During the introduction some people were standing front and center on the stage talking. I selected two channels and ran them up using the wheel (the channels turned red to indicate manual control rather than yellow for submaster control). When I went back to using the submaster fader I assumed that the two channels would revert to being part of the submaster. They did not - they stayed on manual control forever. How do I set the channels back to submaster control? I couldn't find an answer in the manual. This caused me problems for the rest of the show, which led to...
2. In an effort to fix some of the issues I tried to reprogram my submaster on the fly. I remember selecting some channels and pressing Record / Sub / 2 / Enter. It asked me to confirm and I did. At this point a whole bunch of channels unexpectedly came on full, including of course the house lights. I tried a few things that didn't work, so I had to grab the channel list and start selecting/Outing the house lights. After that submaster 2 no longer worked until I changed it to a Subtractive submaster - I'm guessing something had overridden my channels. Any idea what the heck I might have done wrong?
I have to say I loved working with the Element console and I may do this again in the future. Thanks for the help!