Quick Tip Tuesday: Speed Groups
Looking for a quick way to give your musical show a tighter look? Try using Speed Groups. The basic idea of a Speed Group is to link the playback speeds of multiple Chases and/or Effects. With the speeds linked, not only do they begin playing back at the same rate, but adjusting the speed of any member of the group (or the master control) adjusts all members of the group. This way, if the band happens to speed up or slow down, you only have to make one adjustment to keep your whole rig in line.
Assigning a Chase or Effect to a Speed Group happens in the Edit Menu for the object. In the Chase Edit Menu, you will see an option that is labeled Individual Speed above the choices for the different groups. When editing an Effect, you will see a button, marked Speed Group Individual. Touching this will open a small menu, which will allow you to choose a group or set the Effect back to Individual.
Although you may see your Chase or Effect initially jump to match the current speed of the group, you shouldn’t think of it like a preset speed. Once your Chase of Effect is a member of the Group, you can adjust the speed as per normal. The addition being that you’re actually adjusting the speed of the Group.
While adjusting the speed of any member of a Speed Group is a viable way of adjusting the whole group, you can also assign one of your executor faders as a master control for the group. Simply open the Assign Menu for the desired Executor, touch Special Master, and choose the desired Speed Group from the list.
Using Speed Groups to control multiple parameters during the same song adds quite a bit of utility to the Rate adjustments of Chases and Effects. For instance, you might set your Pan/Tilt chase to follow the beat of the song exactly, but you might like your Strobe Chase to subdivide the beat. So, while both are set to follow the same Speed Group, a Rate of 4:1 on the Strobe Chase will multiply the the speed for that chase.
Quick Tips are exactly what the name should imply. We’re adding these to our blog in an effort to help programmers and operators of all levels. If you’d like to suggest a Quick Tip, drop us a message on this blog, or on our Facebook page, or even via Twitter.
Tags: grandMA programming, tips, Training
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 at 9:59 am and is filed under MA Series 1 Consoles, Quick Tip Tuesday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.