Getinthemix Do Pioneer RB-DMX1

0:00 Transients and maybe in a more complicated version, a bit of frequency

Transients and maybe in a more complicated version, a bit of frequency disbursement. But they're not very unique. You know, they just do what they do. They chug it along. They're not particularly in time. Sometimes they're more in time than others, sometimes not. Pioneer have released a new add-on for their rekordbox software. It's called the lighting section. Obviously, whether you use rekordbox for a controller as like a DJ software or use it as a record music management software, it's got great analysis of tracks built into it. So it's able to analyze your tracks, look at waveforms, look at transients, look at frequencies, look at all sorts of different things to work out the speed of your track, the energy levels in your track and various different bits and bobs. What they've now implemented is this lighting section. So if I navigate to the top here and change their lighting, they load up

What's called a fixture database. Now down the side here, there is a list of hundreds of different makes of lights, you know, everything from Chauvet to ADJ to LEDJ to the cheapest Chinese year's lights you've ever heard of. And not only is there an extensive database in existence, you can submit practically any light to them. You submit the manual, within two weeks, we did it ourselves two weeks ago, they will have a light in the database for you. Now what it does is it pre-analyses all your tracks. And breaks them down into what they call phrases. Now, phrases are essentially sections of a track. Intro, verse, bridge, build up, so forth and so on. It then analyzes your tracks, down here you can see, and breaks it down and designs a unique light show completely based off your waveform. Now, in the fixture library all I've got to do is choose a line, for instance say I want this happy tube, choose a DMX address, for instance 170, drop it on. Now when I go to a light and program in the DMX address,

Once I click on this light, which I'll test with one of the other ones, if I click on it, the light comes on. That means it's working, that means it's being controlled. Now, in the performance section of rekordbox, which is where you do all your DJing and playing to and from, when I launch a track, if I turn the speakers on, you can see the lights going. Now, when it fills up, when it comes out of the speaker section, the lights just start moving around.

3:03 We've got high, mid and low, which is

If there was another track playing, it would now switch to the lights that are designed for that show. So when you switch in between your tunes and a specific one for that show, just to give you a basic idea, inside the lighting section we've got what we've already hooked up with the fixture library, but then we've also got The macro mapping section, and when we go into this macro section they've given us hundreds and hundreds of pre-designed shows. Now if I look at these, they class all these different, they break it down into what they call sections. So we've got high, mid and low, which is basically a referral to the energy level in a track. Is it a slow, romantic dance track? Is it a high energy dance track like we just watched there? Then they break that down into more subcategories. We've got cool...

5:05 On a track-by-track basis, I can go into what's called the macro edito

Natural, which is like green and yellow lights. We've got hot, which is red and yellow. We've got subtle, which is kind of a mixture of different colours. We've got warm, which is lots of yellows and greens. We've got vivid, which is lots of bright dance colours. We've got club one and we've got club two. And for each of these presets I can decide maybe I don't like this up section for dance and I'm going to swap it for this one. Now whenever I have a track that loads that preset, it's going to know that I prefer that one and implement that one across it. Now on a track-by-track basis, I can go into what's called the macro editor. Now I know DMX, for those of us that know how to use it and know what it is, absolutely fine, not a problem, but it is a complicated system at the end of the day. You've got lots of channels to worry about, you've got lots of different lights on different channel modes, you've got DMX addresses, all sorts of different things that you need to get your head around in terms of implementing. Now this breaks it down into a much more digestible system. You've got a section for each light, so here we've got...

A slimline RGB, we've got a tripod profile plus here. Now say if I navigate to a section perhaps just before the drop down here and I highlight this section, maybe I decide right, I want the lights to completely black out before they drop every time I play this tune. So I'll navigate to this section, I'll right click and I'll click delete and that's quite literally as simple as it is for that one. Perhaps I go actually no I don't want to black out, I want it to strobe so I'll navigate to the top right hand corner there, I'll click the strobe button and I'll tell it how much I want it to strobe by. I initiate that effect and I do that the same for each of the lights that I want to do that. And then I click save. That is now saved to that track. Every time I recall that track in any gigs going forward, it knows that that's what I want for that track because that's what the energy levels around that is. Now for those of us that have got time and want to do that, that's a brilliant feature. If you're not into that, it's absolutely fine. It analyses everything for you and bases a complete unique show around your music rather than just your transients and just your lighting.

6:30 These map rows

For those of us that use Pioneer gear already, if you're already on a DJ controller and you're using Sound to Light, it's almost a no-brainer in terms of... It's so much more interesting the shows that it creates than just what your Sound to Light is going to give you. Even if I play on here another track. Inside the lighting section, I can go to these map rows. Say I quite like the look of this scene, click edit. Now I've got, this is based over eight bars, but it's telling me exactly what each of these lights are doing. So the light is going on a red, it starts high, it goes down. Maybe I don't like that, maybe I want to highlight that and make various changes. Maybe that's a strobe, maybe that's a blackout, whatever you want, but we know what your preference is for the light. I can then save that down as a personal macro. And at any point I can implement that in one of your pads. Now obviously there are more sophisticated DMX programs because DMX can get really complicated and control a whole lot.

In terms of why this is so unique, it just makes it so much more accessible from your controller. Those of us that are already using Pioneer gear, it's all here for you. You haven't got to refer to any other machine, you haven't got to use a first item, you've just got to press the buttons on your pad. Most of us will use them if not for creative hot cues like Louis does, with all the mad mashing up, if not just to launch different sections of the tune. Maybe I want to jump from the intro to the breakdown to the drop and this is going to... Using those features, I just switch over to the light section. So I don't know if you can see down here on the DDJ-400 and every other controller, you've got the choice of whether it's a hot cue, a beat loop, a beat jump or a sampler. I don't use beat jump. Beat jump's horrible. It just kind of jumps around, doesn't really do a whole lot. I'll swap beat jump out and they will become my lighting effects. And then whenever I click that, it's going to do the specific lighting effect or macro or scene that I want.

It is a little pricey, you know, they're coming in around £300 but you buy that box once and you never really have to worry about what your lights are doing again in terms of your show. It's doing it all for you, it's always unique, it's always in time and no matter where you go with your songs you know your lights are going to follow it and match it in terms of energy levels, in terms of what they're doing and in terms of how you can control them. I'm not much of a public speaker so I do apologize about that. If you have any questions afterwards, or you want to come in and have a little go, or you want to have a look at how it works, feel free to come over. I've got a question. Of course. I've got an RX2 and I use it without a laptop, which is the beauty of using the RX2. You've not got that barrier. Of course. So now if I want to go for that, I've got to start using a laptop again? There's no way that you can use it without... As far as support goes for that at the moment, you would need to either use it in rekordbox export mode or rekordbox...

12:22 In standalone mode with just a USB in it, it won't do that

The RX2 has an export mode where you can access it and it essentially allows you to access your computer like a hard drive. So you can draw the tracks from the computer to your unit if in that mode it would still use the light so then it can run the light shows off it. In standalone mode with just a USB in it, it won't do that. But they are constantly updating. As I said, the updates keep coming every few weeks. There's a new update for this and they will try and implement it as far as they can. At the moment, in terms of lights, all that's supported is moving heads, power cans, bars, strobes... And a few different effects lights, but not the whole lot of them. As I said, they're really implementing these updates every two weeks or so. There's a new update for the system and they're looking... They've put a lot of effort into this at the moment and it's really kind of progressing well. It's been out for about a year now and only six months ago it didn't support half the lights it does. And there's a lot of... Well we saw it at ProMobile at the conference, but it seemed to have... It was launched, then went very quiet. Yeah.

The marketing on it has been low and that's why we're here today to show you what it can do because we're excited about this product. I mean, when we were thinking about what can we show you guys, what products can we demo around here, we thought about different controllers. Controllers are all fun and games but the majority of the controllers we've got in here have been out for a while. It's nothing new and something like this is just, it allows you to... To come at it from a different angle and not have to worry so much about your luck. I know some of you can use DMX absolutely fine, and some of them maybe you'll use software DMX, sometimes you'll use controllers, but for some people it's just too much to get your head around. And there's not only a wealth of information available, but a great little community around this. So when you go on the forums, you can get access to all sorts of information. There's people there. You submit a support ticket in terms of something you need or a feature that you want, you always get a response.

14:30 Analyse track, analyze

Is it plug and play things? I believe it's a complete... Yeah, you quite literally plug it in. If you've already got rekordbox, you plug it in and I go into performance mode, I highlight the tracks, I right click, analyse, that's it. If that's the extent of what you want to put into it, that's all you've got to do. So the kit will analyse the track and then I don't have to do anything to do with it? That is quite a risk. And if I play a track and I don't like what it does, I can then go back and change it? That's exactly it. And you can not only change it in the mode setting mode but you can do that on the fly as well. But look, it's literally a case of right-clicking on that, analyse track and asking it to analyse for the phrase.

For the last few years I've done mostly audio at events and festivals around the country. In the industry, I'm audio trained but there's a lot of light work, so I've ended up getting into doing lights. I was told by the engineers to program an address into it and a channel mode, and I left it well alone. Didn't understand at all. But something like this means that I have full control over it in a much more hands-on, tangible format. You know, I can really see what it's doing, I can analyze it, I can check something, I can reprogram, reprogram, maybe that didn't quite work, I'll go back to it another time and have a look at it and see what's best for me. And it works around you. It doesn't have to be a complicated thing. It can be really simple, and that's the beauty of it.

All you've got to do, maybe I've got thousands of playlists, analyze them all overnight, leave them just tracking away one night. Yeah, yeah, I can quite literally highlight a whole playlist. What's the shortcut? Command and Alt. We highlight a bunch of them, right click and analyze all your tracks. And then from that point on you have a unique show every time you come to them out. What track you're putting in is a new light show and it's dependent on the part of the song and that's what I love about it. You know if I'm playing this apology tune that I was playing there. If I turn the speakers back on. When I've got this, the crowd can not only see that there's a difference but you know it's quite clear that there's not just hear the prune drops.

If you've got any more questions feel free to come by us after.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.