# Busking ideas for GrandMA



## abomb123 (Mar 2, 2015)

I am used to Hog 3 & 4. I am now moving to Grand MA. How do you guys like to busk (run shows on the fly) with the Grand MA?

I know you can do a play list(Cue list) for Gobos, Colors, Effects and so for. I am look if anyone has good ways to use the command buttons.

Ideas?


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## soundlight (Mar 2, 2015)

Here's a few ways that I often use my executor buttons on MA, just a few ideas:

1) 2-color cue lists. For instance, the red/white cuelist has spots/beams in white and washes in red for the first cue, and then the second cue swaps (washes white spots/beams red). It's a 2-cue cuelist, and the button is a go button. I've got 12 or so of these generally, and they're an easy way to set a color scheme for the whole rig. A couple of my usual combos are red/white, red/yellow, blue/yellow, cyan/mag, yellow/lav, blue/white, &c. &c. I also have 2 cues near these buttons: one is a bump-to-white cue (set as a "Temp"), and the other is a go-to-white cue (set as a toggle).

2) I always put strobes on exec buttons. I have a row of 5 buttons if I'm doing a show with actual strobe lights (A3K or similar) and movers: Strobe Blind, Strobe Random, Strobe Sync; Mover Random Strobe, Mover Sync Strobe. Easy to add some pop & sizzle anywhere.

3) Gobo rotate speeds are always a good thing to put on buttons. That way you can easily pop from fast to slow rotate, or rotate off or anything in between. I generally have a stop rotate and 4 rotate speeds, which works with the buttons being in groups of 5. Don't record the gobo rotate speed in to your gobo cue-list, or just have the rotate speed cues as higher precedence than the gobo cuelist.

4) A congo blue look to go to between songs. This look kills everything else and goes to a congo blue wash of the stage. Very useful for festivals so you can have your finger ready on that button at the end of a song to knock out a pile of effects, colors, and flyouts in one shot.

5) Speaking of flyouts, I have a flyout cue for each kind of mover on a button. So I'll have for instance Beams Fly, Spots Fly, Washes Fly. I set these as temps so I can take them in time or manually with the man time fader.

6) Move effects are good things to put on buttons. I generally like to have a row or 2 of good move effects for different groups of fixtures. Sometimes these will end up in an on-screen button pool vs. putting them on the physical buttons. If you want, you can make a double-wide executor and add a tap tempo as well as having a toggle to turn the effect on/off. Tip for effects: To get an effect on an executor fader or button, hit the [ASSIGN] button, then tap the effect in the effect pool, then hit the exec button you want to assign it to, or one of the buttons associated with the fader you want to assign it to. I only learned about this method less than a year ago after years of going through the fader/button assignment menu list to put effects on buttons/faders...

Definitely to through all of the button functions so you know what they mean. They're very useful.

I have learned so many of my busking techniques from hearing ideas that others have, so definitely ask wherever you can! The MA is unbelievably flexible as far as busking goes.

The faders also have way more functions than just being cuelist faders. You can have group masters, which are very useful for controlling the overall intensity of each group of lights (beams/spots/washes/frontlight/&c), and you can also have Speed Masters which are ridiculously useful. I usually have a speed master for dim/color effects and a speed master for move effects. I've seen some people do a "fast movers" speed master and a "slow movers" speed master to allow them to set different speeds for faster movers (like MAC101s or Sharpys) and slower movers (bigger spots & washes that are too large to be that zippy).

If you have multiple pages of stuff, remember you can "Fix" certain faders to make them occur on each page. For festival shows I'll do this with the group masters & speed masters.


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## chawalang (Mar 2, 2015)

Check out this video by Joe Cabrera and Kat West.


I still program on a Hog but nothing beats a Grand MA still my first console of choice.

Have fun learning the new desk and enjoy the video!


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## abomb123 (Mar 29, 2015)

Thanks for the post guys.


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## GrandMAgnus (Aug 27, 2016)

I was surfing the interwebs, came across this thread and thought I'd pitch in with my setup at the same time as I incorporate a bunch of @soundlight's ideas.

1) Instead of using group masters I tend to create intensity faders for each fixture type where the first cue is always the dimmer set at 100%. On those executor faders I tend to put all my dimmer chases and instead of the standard button assignment I have them set as "flash" on the bottom, "go" right above the fader (to go to the next dimmer chase) and "top" on the top button to exit whatever dimmer chase I'm currently running and have the fixtures return to a static full dimmer state.

2) I then have 3 pools of action buttons on my 3rd screen for all my tilt/pan effects, my positions and the 3rd pool for any extra settings I might not need to set that often during a show.

3) I always have a BPM special master on my 15th executor fader and tend to reserve executor faders 13 and 14 for tilt and pan rate. Most of my effects are synced to those in one way or another, so no matter what's running on stage I can manipulate the general feel from those 3 faders.

4) Like @soundlight I also have my first 5 executor buttons (101 thru 105) reserved for synced strobes, random strobes and blinder strobes. On top of that I usually reserve my 106 thru 110 for bump to white, where each button represents a type of fixture that goes to white no matter what. With that setup I feel I can easily add a bit of fluff to whatever is going on on stage.

5) Now, when it comes to busking colors I probably have somewhat of a unique way of doing things so what I decided to do was make a video of how my setup works and I'll go ahead and share that with you instead of trying to explain it in text:



Thanks for the info everyone and here's hoping more LD's will join in and share their busking workflows!


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