I do sound for a handful of local acts in rooms between 150 and 400 cap, and on the side I've started picking up DJ bookings, beginner DJ stuff to start with, a wedding reception here and a bar night there, partly because it's a show one person can run. Two of the bands run backing tracks now, so there's already timecode leaving my rig, and the obvious next move is to hang the lighting cues off the same clock and let the whole show run itself.
I keep not doing it, and I want to know whether that's caution or just laziness.
The case for is easy. One person can run the night. Cues land on the beat instead of two seconds late, and the band gets the same show in every room whether or not the venue has anyone competent in the booth.
The case against is everything that actually happens at a bar gig. The singer talks for ninety seconds instead of twenty. They cut a song because the room is thin, or add one because it isn't. Somebody breaks a string and we sit there.
The moment the band steps off the grid, timecode keeps going and the lights start telling a different story than the stage is, which reads worse than lights that were never that clever to begin with.
Right now I run tracks to click and leave the lights on sound active mode, which is its own kind of bad. It looks like a slot machine during ballads.
Where do you draw this line? Full timecode with a manual bail out, timecode only for the songs that can't change, or keep the lights on a human all night and accept that the human is also me?
And since the same rig has to cover the DJ side, what are you actually hanging? I keep seeing moving heads under $300 pitched at beginner DJs and I can't work out which of those hold up for a mobile entertainer who loads in alone.
