#LIGHTKEY SOFTWARE HOW TO#

#LIGHTKEY SOFTWARE HOW TO#

How To Get Started with MIDI for Lighting Get Connected and Map Your MIDI Interface AKAI APC-40 MIDI Controller If you do want the full scoop on MIDI, I would highly suggest you read Show Networks and Control Systems by John Huntington. If this sounds over your head – don’t worry! For most lighting consoles and PC software, we simply don’t need to know much about MIDI, because the software we use knows plenty about MIDI!

This is called g eneral MIDI, and it’s what we’re going to work with today. You may be familiar with MIDI keyboards, MIDI DJ or drum controllers, MIDI Time Code and MIDI Show Control.Īll of these subsets of the MIDI protocol can be used with lighting in various ways, but here we’re going to focus on MIDI keyboards, DJ and drum controllers that are transmitting MIDI notes, MIDI CC (Control change), and NRPN (Non-Registered Parameter Number) messages. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and is a protocol that various bits of musical equipment can use to communicate digitally, regardless of manufacturer. In this post, I’m going to share with you what MIDI is, how to get started using it, and how to interface MIDI with popular lighting consoles and software.

Individual users are able to customize and hack together PC rigs like never before, and MIDI controllers are more compatible with lighting consoles than ever before.īut MIDI isn’t always the easiest to setup, and not all pieces of lighting software accept MIDI well. With this change comes immense opportunity. Particularly, in the last few years we’ve seen a big uptick in the amount of quality, PC-based consoles available – to the point that the line between “PC version” and “console” is getting very blurred, or sometimes not even there at all! In the past 10 years, lighting consoles have changed and progressed A LOT!

Lightkey software