ChamSys magic creates Tanzanite lightshow
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Aside from the procession of jam band stars that appeared there from 25-28 January, the stage served up an array of beams and washes in ever-changing colours, thanks to a multi-faceted lighting rig that Matt ‘Jonezy’ Jones drove with a new ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium console.
“Some of the artists brought their own LDs, but we handled the majority of acts with the MQ500,” said Jones. “We had a diverse range of bands like Endoplasmic, Railroad Earth, Truth Cartel, Masego, and Breaking Biscuits (a side project by Break The Silence and Disco Biscuits), to name a few. There were 77 fixtures on our rig, and we ran them a lot of different ways, using seven different universes via Art-Net. Our goal was to give every band its own look and avoid repeating ourselves over the course of the festival. I busked the entire time – and yes, the MQ500 was great for busking.”
Jones programmed the show on his MagicQ MQ80 with LightCoverse, then transferred his work to the MagicQ MQ500 Stadium. “I have been a long-time ChamSys user, and this was my first time working on the MQ500,” he said. “I absolutely loved having the second screen on the MQ500. It gave me more real estate to put things on. So, I could have my groups/layout on one screen and my palettes on the other. This made accessing individual fixtures much easier, which is great for busking.”
Given the importance of busking at a festival like Gem and Jam, Jones placed a priority on the convenient layout of his console. “When you are in the middle of it, you want everything within easy reach,” he said. “There were just a lot of thoughtful features in this desk. The addition of more faders, as well as the new set of execute buttons above the playbacks, were tremendous. Having the new execute button grid in the middle of the desk was a great idea. It was a great place to drop all my positions.”
(Jim Evans)
