Three words to laser show inspiration - Trans Siberian Orchestra

[mliptack]

I second that!

[dream beamz]

Trust me, it is absolutly possible to choreograph lighting to music. Even if it is live!

Oh, and Merry Christmas everyone!

Thats not my only reason for saying it wasnt live. When someone disconnects their guitar and runs to the back of the audience and somewhat continues to play it but not really but the music doesnt miss a beat. Its not live

I have done lighting in its more primitive days and what I saw yesterday was impossible to do unless predone with the music in advance. When I upload the videos it will make more sense

Oh yeh not to mention I had a good view of all the laptops and saw the waveforms across them. The light guys did nothing but hit a key to start the next track

Either way, if your saying lights in general can be choreographed. Yes, I do know that. As long as you have an order of the tracklist and you get your triggers right, its very possible. But what they did yesterday was not.

[Lampy]

It is possible to use a SMPTE timecode to trigger cues if the show has a click track running. A lot of big shows use a click trick to sync stuff up. Having watched a few youtube clips of TSO I can't say if they play live or not but I didn't see any lighting that couldn't be done live by a good lampy rocking out FOH with a decent lighting desk.

I think the laser dude on that show drops by here occasionally. Maybe he can confirm either way.

[buffo]

When someone disconnects their guitar and runs to the back of the audience and somewhat continues to play it but not really but the music doesnt miss a beat. Its not live

George, you were a lot closer to those guys when they ran to the back of the audience to get on that vertical lift platform... Could you tell if they had wireless transmitters on their guitars? That's what I assumed, based on the way they were jumping around on stage, but I couldn't tell for sure from my vantage point.

I have to say, the whole 1st half of the concert really sucked. Mellow music, *lousy* singing, and nothing that would be considered "traditional Trans-Siberian Orchestra" music. Plus the stupid narrator... Oh my God! Imagine James Ear Jones doing William Shatner doing Vincent Price. And not in a good way (if that's even possible). The guy was over-emphasizing the words so badly I couldn't even tell what he was saying half the time. Hell, it wasn't until the third or 4th break in the music before I realized that what he was saying actually rhymed! (Yeah, it was that bad.)

And the singing? Jez... If they just didn't try to push it, it would have been bearable. But no... They had to go for dramatic effect. Ugh. I wanted to vomit.

Still, once they got past the masturbatory electric guitar solos and the hokey Christmas poetry, and the stupid, mellow songs and singing, things started to heat up. Siberian Sleigh Ride was awesome, as was "A Mad Russian's Christmas". "Christmas Eve Sarajevo" was great, and "First Snow" was performed with real snow machines sending snow out over the audience!

But of course, "Wizard in Winter" just blew everyone away. Lights, lasers, fog, moving trusses, strobes, pyro (including colored flames), HOLY SHIT! Glad I stayed for the second half of the concert.

Overall, I don't know if I'd go to see them again. Probably, but I'd bring an I-pod to listen to for the first half of the show.

Seriously though, the lighting production is worth the price of admission just to see it once. And they do have some very nice pieces to play. But they've got some real crap too. They could have played a 90 minute show and it would have been incredible. Instead, they did a 2 hour and 45 min show that was just OK, but ended on a high note.

And yeah, that solid state RGB laser located at the rear of center stage was *way* too weak. Sigh. But the rest of the lasers were cool.

Adam

[drlava]

Just got back from a Cleveland show. I can say that a lot of it is live, because on the third song one of the guitarists broke something on his guitar and you could hear it sounding bad. He ran backstage and switched it out, without perceptibly swapping cables, so I assume it was wireless. The way they run and jump around, wireless is the only way to go. Up on the truss, those guitarists didn't seem live, but there were players still on the stage for backup.

The drum solo was one of the highlights for me, along with some of the later songs and of course the 6 lasers, and tons of fire! Any time the operators have to cover their control consoles in heat shields during part of the show to prevent meltdown, you know the stops are out.