Decades ago, Steven Wilson used to create private home recordings and let them out to the public, passing them off as long-lost relics of Britain’s psychedelic era. Fomenting a campaign of subterfuge and misdirection, Wilson adopted the seemingly meaningless moniker Porcupine Tree (PT) for his studio inventions and even credited fictional characters with having performed on “the band’s” early releases.
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Natural beauty, deftly lit, and singular acoustics are why the Volcano Room is among the most memorable of music venues. From the moment audiences and artists arrive, they realize this is something special. It may be the only venue that needs tour guides to get the 600-person audience to their seats. The Volcano Room is actually 333 feet below ground in the Cumberland Caverns of McMinnville, TN, and it is the home to the popular Bluegrass Underground radio and television series.
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“I believe we are long overdue in honoring Eric Pearce,” says production manager and Parnelli Board Advisor Kent Black. “A lot of people can directly or indirectly trace themselves back to Eric and Showlites — in fact, a lot of people who have fallen off the ‘Showlites Apple Tree’ went on to have successful careers.”
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“Anyone should be able make an impressive show with 400 lights,” says Larry Schmidt of Tallahassee, FL-based Production Support Group. “I like to see the tech-nician that can make an eye catching, innovative show with 80 lights, 60 lights, or even just 24!” Thus encapsulates the spirit of the Hometown Hero Regional Lighting Company honors. We like to think that while we can’t all be big, we can all be exceptional, serving our regions with an inspiring dedication to quality and customer service.
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I have always been a big believer in finding the right product for the right situation — especially when it comes to control. You don’t want to be in a position where the console can’t adequately leverage all the functions and firepower of a big lighting rig. When that happens, instead of unleashing your creativity, your console is constraining it.
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In this industry, it takes something unique to get designers excited about a lighting fixture. In fact, it’s usually only once every couple of years that something inventive and different enough comes along that elicits that collective “Cool!” from designers. Well, it seems it has happened again. This time, it’s not a typical lighting fixture with more output, more gobos, better color mixing, etc., that is causing the stir; it’s the MagicPanel 602 from Ayrton. What is it that makes this product unique you ask? Let’s take a look.
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The NFL and college football seasons are finally in full swing, the beer is cold, the easy chair is comfy and life is good. Every year, television game coverage continues to advance, with new technologies, higher quality images and better graphics that combine to make our sports viewing experience pretty special.
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The worlds of Live Event Production and Studio are vastly different creatures. What we see as the norm on the road, they see as completely abnormal from their air-conditioned cush-domes. We do share some things — killer deadlines, the need for super-high-performance gear, long hours. I’ve seen “studio” types get thrown into road situations and just completely fall apart from the exposure to chaos. Likewise, put a roadie in a studio, and you’ll have no problem picking out which “one of these things is not like the other.”
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The recent video boom has spawned a number of applications that allow you to do pretty much anything with anything. Warping, mapping and multiple layer playback, exotic even a few years ago, are fairly commonplace. But as app designers pack more of these advances into their software bundles, users are yearning for an easy way to arrange and play back some simple files. As a believer in using the right tool for the right job, I was pleased to try out Millumin on a recent gig. I found it to do exactly what I needed.
Read More »This is a placehoder.
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Have you ever had a problem with your rig or cable? One of the first things I check for is Air-Gap Impedance (AGI) — in other words, to make sure I plugged everything in properly! You don’t need a specialized gadget to check for an unplugged cable. But once that’s done, and you’re sure everything is plugged in, what if you still have signal issues or faulty cables?
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