Fans looking for intensity are never short-changed when they see The National. Raw and powerful, the 2017 Grammy-winning band takes an uncompromising head-on look at the human condition, matching their jagged, complex music with a fearless, never-predictable stage presence.
Providing an appropriately intense visual backdrop for the band on its current global tour in support of its seventh album, Sleep Well Beast, is a 13-universe Michael Brown-designed light show that is being run with a ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium console. The Nashville-based LD, who has been a ChamSys user since 2009, selected the MQ500 for this tour because the power and versatility of the console, particularly its effects engine, allow him to pull together diverse visual elements to match his client’s distinctive sound.
“The National is a unique band,” said Brown. “Their music and performances can vary from very intimate textural moments to all-out eruption. Their frontman Matt Berninger embodies the escapism of a true performer. He can go from contemplative to this madman on stage amidst the dense backdrop of a mixed meter ballad and complex orchestration.”
At the centre of Brown’s design are three 40’ x 8’ video walls. Most of the 320 fixtures in his rig are set up behind these structures. “This show is extremely video-driven with multiple video elements, and that’s where we began with the design,” he said. “I co-designed all the video content with my incredibly gifted video director Ben Krall. I then developed lighting concepts and programmed the show while he worked with the content and composed the live camera elements.”
Brown designed the show with the MQ500 in his Nashville studio with a full media server setup, feeding the signal into LIGHTCONVERSE. He then programmed the rest of the show over two days in Copenhagen, where his lighting and video vendor Litecom is located. The touring show design has three configurations: one to work at arenas, another for theatres, and the third for large clubs. For festivals, Brown and his team are either travelling with their full production setup or augmenting their overhead rig with flown video and floor elements. He uses 10 Art-Net universes to control the lighting rig and three Art-Net universes to control media playback.
Regardless of configuration, the MagicQ MQ500 has been driving Brown’s rig at all stops along the tour. “The MQ500’s effects engine, with its three-colour and four-colour effects, has been everything to me,” he said. “There are several key aspects of the ChamSys platform that I’ve always loved and incorporated in all of my shows. The ability to offset pan/tilt on fixtures has been a huge time saver at festivals over the past nine years. But most importantly, the way that I prefer to construct shows is based on multi-step palette-based effects. Colour is important to my shows. I don’t want to be limited to a high/low value on an editable wave-form. I want an unlimited number of values on an editable waveform. With ChamSys, I can create multi-step colour and position effects that constantly cross-reference my palettes.”
Referencing palettes over an editable waveform speeds up programming significantly, according to Brown, who also praised the MQ500’s user-friendly layout. “The MQ500 is a huge step up, in terms of both hardware quality and layout of the console,” said Brown. “Multi-touch capacitive screens are such a nice luxury. So far, I’m loving the console and feel it’s the perfect size for any kind of show.
“The console is also very good for busking,” continued Brown. “The National doesn’t play to backing tracks, and we’ve played 87 different songs so far on this tour, so there is a situation each night where I have to busk at least two songs.”
Local lighting designer, Shaniel Laloo has had similar success with a Chamsys MQ 500 console, which he used to programme the light show for the main stage at Splashy Fen, the largest music festival to be held in KwaZulu-Natal over the Easter weekend. Subscribe to receive the upcoming edition of Pro-Systems Africa News for full coverage.
