Disc Jockey Equipment & Lights

In my previous article I mentioned that as a DJ you’d want to purchase lights that are DMX capable. What is DMX and why is this an issue? Here’s the quick, non-technical answer.

I’ve mentioned that there is typically more than one way to control an effects light. One way is simply to let it react to the sound it hears. This isn’t a bad idea. It can give you some nice results. And some lights have footswitches or hand controls that let you change the colors, make them blink, or point them in different directions depending on what sort of light you are dealing with. The snag is that these methods have some drawbacks.

First, you’re may have located some of the lights some distance from your station. If the action needs to pause for a bit, how are you going to disable those lights temporarily? Second, if the lights are manually controlled, you are limited to placing them no further away from you than the length of the cord that came with them.

And maybe you’d like to coordinate the lights into programs you can control directly from your DJ station. Enter DMX.

If your lights are DMX capable, you just wire them together in “daisy-chain” fashion with the first light in the chain hooked to a DMX control board. The cables look just like your standard XLR microphone cables, but you are often advised to buy cables specified just for DMX purposes.

Each light is given an address that corresponds to controls on your lighting control board. At first glance it appears a bit complicated, but the principle is that when a signal is sent from the control board, that signal needs to arrive at the right light and activate the right feature. There’s no reason for me to go into this here because the instruction manual that will come with your light board and individual lights will thoroughly explain all of this. Just get the idea that your control unit sends signals down the wires and each lighting fixture will either react or not react to that signal depending on how it is set. It’s really easy to do once you get the hang of it.

The beauty of this system is you can design elaborate lighting scenes and run them from your board including having your board fire off those scenes in sync with the sound. And you can cut all the lights at once with the push of one button if you want.

Yeah, but what about stringing wires from fixture to fixture if some are on the other side of the dance floor? Simple! Wire the ones that are close to you together and into your board, and use a pair of wireless DMX transmitter/receiver units to send the signals across the room to your other units!

Almost forgot – you can usually control your fogger with your DMX board, too!

We’ll look at control boards and programs next time!

Craig

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Let me be honest. Ever since I discovered lighting effects for DJ work, I’ve become a lighting fanatic. I’m assuming here that you are just beginning to explore DJ lights. Given that being the case, let’s start with some basics and go from there.

Most all DJ lighting units are sound activated. That means you can just plug the unit into an outlet, point it in the desired direction, set it to respond to sound, blast the music, and let it run. However, you need to put some thought into this first.

Keep in mind that many lighting fixtures get extremely hot, so be careful that no one gets burned. We’re talking about a blistering hot device plugged into house current, so safety must come first. Since you will probably decide to suspend some of the lights, be entirely sure that you employ every possible safety precaution to make certain they don’t fall on someone’s head. And don’t overload power outlets! It is horrible to fire up your equipment for the first dance, flip on your lighting units, and have the whole thing work great for five seconds before a breaker trips ending the show. Power your lights properly from multiple circuits then turn it all on for a while before the event gets started.

When you position your lights you need to make sure every light that is set to respond to the music can hear it properly. This is rarely a problem, but it does mean that snuggling the thing away behind your speakers might not be the best idea.

What ones to use? I love the various “intelligent” lights or scanners. You can thrill your crowd with laser lighting effects. If you’re not afraid to spend some money, some of the “moving yoke” lights are will knock your socks off. There’s no reason to discuss these now because you can examine them and watch little movies on the internet of how they work in action. If you don’t know where you can find these, do a search for “Chauvet Lighting”. Chauvet has a lot of videos of their lights in action on their webiste.

I would make this one strong suggestion: Be sure any lights you buy are DMX lights. DMX refers to a way to control the lighting units from a remote programmable control board or software program. As a result you can run all your lights from a remote light control board or a device that hooks up to a computer. This does mean wiring the units together or using wireless control boxes, but the results can be amazing, and sooner or later, you’ll want to try this out.

Want to be part of our discussion? Then you need to be at my blog, Discovering and Shopping for DJ Lights.

A deeper look at DMX next time. For now, go check out what’s out there – and have fun!

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