Star Wars Christmas Display

[cuttime]

I got this off the MOTU Tech Twitter feed. Mixed with DP. Kind of glad I don't live next to this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5dfpe_-Lgg

[BKK-OZ]

Wow.

That just has to be against some sort of law.

[Shooshie]

Isn't that James Steele's house? Oh... sorry. Wrong kind of guitar and wrong soundtrack!



Shooshie

[Phil O]

Maybe it's James Steele's neighbor.

Naw, we would have heard about that!

[James Steele]

Isn't that James Steele's house? Oh... sorry. Wrong kind of guitar and wrong soundtrack!



Shooshie

Hahaha... definitely the wrong kind of guitar... but the soundtrack is cool by me. I love Star Wars as witnessed by the scrolling titles (containing an obscure Star Wars reference) in the beginning of a Christmas message video I recently made with my band:

[Shooshie]

Oops... duplicate post deleted.

[Shooshie]

Just looked at the house lights video again, and I have to admit that it's pretty cool. That comes from having done the MIDI cues for a lot of light shows in the 1990s, before people really knew you could do that with MIDI. We used Intellabeams for our moving lights. That was an early "point anywhere, do anything, any shape, any color" programmable moving light. It was also VERY expensive. We had 14 of them, and I guarantee that nobody trying to raise money for their church would have had them and put them on their roof!

In about 1996, I actually arranged this very music for a slot in our concert, then worked with one of the best lighting designers in Los Angeles/Phoenix/Las Vegas in creating the light show for it. The guy was so good that he didn't rely on Digital Performer for much. He timed his programming basically from the first note, and programmed a couple of minutes at a time in each lighting machine, with only a few cues necessary from me. That was the only song we did that way. The rest used dozens and dozens of cues from DP to move the lights from position to position, precisely with the music. When we changed things later, altering tempos, adding/deleting bars, the light show changed with the music. No problems. But that one song — the John Williams medley — had to be exactly the same all the time, because the lights were programmed within their own sequencer. The freedom it gave to the lighting designer, however, inspired him to create an incredible light show for that song. He had light saber fights, rockets, and all kinds of effects. Beautiful stuff.

To imagine that just 20 years later people would have the technology to do something very similar for their Christmas lights is just amazing.

Click picture to see the whole thing:


Shooshie

[Phil O]

James, you have to pass this message on to your bass player about his choice of beer.

PBR, really? Mark, dude. That stuff is the pits. The only beer worse than PBR is Bud light (in Massachusetts, PBR is regarded as panther piss). There are some wonderful microbreweries in the US that you should check out. Treat yourself this Christmas. Just yesterday I told my daughter, "I bumped into Santa at the Mall and told him he wouldn't be getting milk and cookies this Christmas. If he dares come down my chimney, he'll be greeted with a sandwich made with fine Italian salami and a Harpoon Winter Warmer beer."

I doubt you can find Winter Warmer out your way, but something equivalent is surely available. Chuck the PBR, dude.

Merry Christmas!!!!!!

[James Steele]

Actually, Mark knows good beer as well. That's the cheap swill we sometimes consume of we get together for a not-so-serious jam and budget is a factor. I understand the assumptions, but it's actually not completely the case.

[Phil O]

And from the looks of that video, the cheap swill did the job.

Merry Christmas, James.

Philippe