Post #83807 by mriddle on Wed, Mar 31, 2004 9:28 AM

If all you want to do is have the lights come on and off to the sound, that's a piece of cake. I was in a cheesey rock band in the mid 80's and my guitarist rigged his microphone through a small box that turned on and off the lights to his voice...or any audio signal. If I'm uderstanding you correctly, it shouldn't matter if you have the audio on 2 mono tracks or stereo with that type of setup. You should look at stage lighting not audio. As far as audio programs go, you don't need to spend $100's on sequencers or editors like Cubase or ProTools if that's all you want to do. There are shareware programs out there that do it. Check Zdnet.com Even ProTools offers an 8-track FREE version at their site (www.digidesign.com).

Now, if you are planning on doing much more control than lights on & off, that will step up the gear needs and cost quite a bit. There are lighting systems that can be controlled via MIDI. That means you can use a sequencer software like Cubase or something cheaper and literally "record" your light show like you would record a keyboard into the sequencer via MIDI. Then you can playback the MIDI commands to the lighting rig. You will need to use a set of MIDI commands called "MIDI Show Control". Your lighting rig will also need to have MIDI input on the controller box and be able to recognize MIDI Show Control commands.