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Be prepared before you travel

When you go to New Orleans you got to go see The Mardi Gras.

Well, well, well, I finally got to take my first trip to New Orleans recently and it was for Mardi gras! For me this trip was not only a unique experience but to try to understand more about the element of music I work with every night when I’m out on the road. New Orleans is known for their sacred music from down south and its there in the city is where it can be truly understood watching the parades and seeing all the plethora of musicians all over the streets. It is virtually impossible to walk down the streets of that town and not hear music.

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ZZ Top

Lighting designer Chris Stuba tells the story of how he was once riding around in a car with legendary bandleader Billy Gibbons. It was early in his tenure as the designer for ZZ Top, and Gibbons wanted to talk to him about an upcoming tour. So he drove to Stuba’s house in Houston, where they both live, and picked him up. They were driving around, talking about the upcoming tour, when a ZZ Top song came on the radio. It was one of those moments when time stands still, and Stuba’s thoughts turned inward. “I grew up listening to ZZ Top, and here I was, driving around with the man, listening to his music on the radio,” Stuba recalls.

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The Evolution of Brightness

I recently programmed the lighting for Gospel Superfest, a nationally syndicated television show aired on gospel cable channels. For the past couple of years, the executive producer has been increasing the use of video in the show by adding video walls and plasma screens to the stage. This year, however, he asked Set Designer and Show Technical Director Rene Lagler to incorporate video projection into the design, and the result was impressive. My quest to find out how it was accomplished and what equipment was being used led me on a little backstage investigation of my own.

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Slaying the Beast: A Modern Tale of Timecode

In the deepest and darkest regions of your console, a demon exists that some will never dare to battle. In a place where many fear to tread, it has been cursed and reviled by many would-be heroes. In the beast’s lair, the measurement of the fourth dimension takes on an uncanny accuracy oth-erwise unknown to many humans. The periods known as Hours, Minutes and Seconds are joined by a unit of diabolical accuracy known as the Frame.

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Chauvet Elan

Chauvet’s new Élan fixture

Now that LEDs are dropping in price a little, we’re finally seeing some products come to market that take advantage of low-heat, long-life LEDs without breaking the bank. Chauvet’s new Élan fixture aims to bring LEDs to the masses by incorporating a three-color LED bank into an other-wise standard club lighting effect. Let’s see how they did it…

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Latin Grammys Get Lucky in Vegas

Latin Grammys

 

An integration of set, lighting and video technologies created a flashy, pulsating design worthy of the Las Vegas Strip.

The 8th Annual Latin Grammy Awards got a dose of Vegas pizzazz. Not that the live award show needed any spicing up, as it is arguably the hottest night in Latin music, attracting audiences with its passionate, pulsating performances from today’s top artists, including Ricky Martin, Regaetón recording artist Daddy Yankee and Dominican singer/songwriter Juan Luis Guerra — the night’s showstopper, winning a record five awards, including Album of the Year. This year’s show reached a record 12.6 million viewers nationwide; in several major markets, it was the number one program in its time slot. “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” need not apply here.

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