The Philosophy of Sequencing

Pull up a cup of your favorite beverage and get cozy with the sequencing tab, because as far as I can tell (with my ~2 weeks experience in the hobby) this is where you're likely to spend most of your time.

At a very basic level, sequencing is the act of making the lights you've defined change color and/or brightness in a pleasing pattern. This is probably what attracted you to the hobby in the first place; sure all that wiring of props and building of controllers is impressive, but at the end of the day, those aren't super impressive without the blinky flashy.

One thing to note: sequencing is an art form, and I'm not just speaking metaphorically. As a sequencer, you are taking a certain medium (usually music) and an instrument (thousands of lights which can turn colors on demand), and enhancing the experience in some way. Different people can take the same layout and same song and come up with completely different shows, each highlighting some aspect of the artist.

Another thing to note: sequencing takes LOTS of time and LOTS of practice. Just as with any art form, as you learn how to control the instrument, you will find new ways to express yourself. What may have been a simple color wash when you first started out may morph into a ripple effect on top of a video of the certain color with some sparkles thrown in. Experimentation with the various tools will lead to experience, but experimentation (and experience) takes time. There are ways around that, which I'll touch on near the end.

So, what eats the time? "I'm only doing a show for a four minute song; how long could it take?" Of course, this answer varies. On the pragmatic side, it will take as much time as you give it. Using model grouping, and timing tracks (which I'll cover later; tldr they highlight the beats/measures/bars/notes of a song), it's not impossible to have a show sequenced for a song within ten minutes. However, this display is going to be very broad strokes; think doing a paint-by-number with a roller. This will work, and if you have a lot of lights, it may be impressive, but it won't necessarily be good or remarkable.

For a well-designed, good show you'll have to get into details, and adding details is going to take time. Going back to the paint-by-numbers analogy, we started with the "just use a paint roller" analogy. To get into the details, we start using finer and finer brushes. Maybe your first stab is like slopping patches of paint where they're supposed to go, but the picture is more recognizable than the starting state. Spend more time with a small brush, pay attention to the lines, and the picture is fully realized. Go even further, adding details which weren't specifically called for, and the painting starts coming alive.

The same concept applies to sequencing. It's really simple and fast to make all the lights flash patterns in time with the music; there's even a function in xLights which will just fill in a sequence for you. However, if you want the various elements to do different things, in sync with other elements, but complementing each other while using a pleasing color palette, changing that palette in order to emphasize the mood of the music... well, that will take some doing. There's a lot of fiddling with various different effects to make them just right, to have them hit the timing marks perfectly, to get just the right color combinations. The challenge comes in trying to not get too perfect, which is basically impossible.

However, the payoff is when you get everything together and it looks amazing. Put aside the little errors that you find, because every artist is their own worst critic. This is a very uncommon art form, and it is going to wow people, regardless of how perfect (or not) the show is. Enjoy the final result, the fruits of your labor, and come up with ideas for your next sequence, the next song. After all, there's always next year!

At the end of the day, if you get 100 people looking at your light show, a very small handful are going to want to look at, or even be capable of appreciating, the symmetrical way in which you spliced all the wires, the fact that you were able to save at least three solder points on each of the stars because of the clever way you did the power injection, etc. However everyone will be able to see, and came by to see, the show; the lights turning colors, fading in and out, turning on and off, in sync with music, they will enjoy it, and you will make their lives a bit better.

They want the same as you: the blinky flashy.

With the next post, we'll go back to our regularly scheduled programming, not this philosophy crap. I promise.