Working practice¶

How the console is meant to be used. The manual doesn't cover this, so these pages draw on general programming practice. The pages are grouped by what you're doing; pages written for busking a rave are marked (rave).

Planning the show¶

Deciding the kind of show and the gear, before anything else.

• Busking vs. cue-list shows: the two worlds grandMA2 serves, what each can ignore, and how to mix them.
• How the hardware shapes the show: console, onPC, wings and MIDI controllers, and designing for the hands you have.

Designing the light show¶

Deciding what the show should look like: a matter of taste, which the console then carries out.

• Busking a rave: energy levels (rave): darkness as the canvas, designing for breakdown, groove, build-up and drop, building a drop, and programming the show as an instrument.
• Colour concepts for busking (rave): free picking, palette grids, colour looks, base and accent, colour in motion.

Designing the show file¶

Deciding how the file is laid out (patch, pools, executors, layers) so it survives changes and can be played: what you work with, as the light show is what the room sees.

• Building and changing a show: patch, groups, presets, cues, executors, and why that order pays off; then fixing changes where they live, adapting to a new venue, and changing the rig after programming.
• Organising groups and presets: pool layouts you can read without looking, and which preset scope for what.
• What goes on an executor: faders for amounts, buttons for events, layers instead of looks, and page structure.
• A forgiving show: designing a show that a tired, distracted or not-quite-sober operator can't break.
• Busking intensity: balance, hits and the baseline (rave): balancing fixture types without limiting the hits, and getting back to the baseline in one move after the drop.
• Worked example: a small rig (rave): 4 washes, 8 bars, 4 beams as a page of executors.

Programming¶

Building looks and routines into that file, and checking them.

• The programming workflow: the select–set–check–store–clear loop, working in passes (focus, colour and balance, timing, notes), and keeping the show clean.
• Choosing the tool for a look: from a look you can describe to presets, effects, chasers, cues, MAtricks and executors, with worked examples.
• Hits: Flash, Swop or Kill (rave): adding light or taking it away.
• Sequences on a busking page (rave): what each executor claims and what happens when it lets go: tracking on or off for chasers, overlapping executors, cue triggers.
• Playing in time: the clock, the tempo, the grid (rave): one speed master as the clock, tap, BPM detection or a typed tempo, musical speed factors, phase, and cues fired by the music.
• Rhythm patterns over 16 beats (rave): patterns like xxxxx--x--x--x-- as chasers or effect forms, fills into the drop.
• Timecode in a DJ set (rave): short programmed routines for the ups and downs, and why seconds drift against beats.
• Inspecting your programming without live output: sequence sheets, output layers, Preview, Blind and MA 3D.

Boxes marked Practice or Interpretation flag advice that comes from general lighting practice rather than from MA; To verify boxes mark open questions to test in onPC.