Well simple question, hard to answer. And many people have different opinions. But I think number one is, the music must become one team with lasers. If you skip some important noise in the song or if your effect doesn’t really fit the speed and “strength” of the music sequence, your show will become shit.
Following the music
I think we follow all important changes of the music in the laser show
And I see it quite often on Facebook groups – people are usually happy, the laser show actually works. I can understand that, especially if your software crashes several times while preparing for the “big moment”. That’s why usually there’s no time to adjust the effects to really “feel” the music. Anyway I think, this was not the case for our show.
Complicated effects
The next important thing – usually the more complicated effect, the worse it actually looks. It’s a lot different to see the effect running on your monitor and then to see it on the laser. That’s why I usually stick to the simplest shapes you know – line, wave (great), circle…
Animations
I’m sure, the way you animate the shapes is where you should spend your creativity. It is important whether the line rotates or just moves up and down. E.g. my convention is to use rotation for the bass-parts of the music, because I think it fits better. I use beams for silent part of the music, because well – I save the “big” effects for “big” music sequences. I use waves and their increasing amplitude and speed for sequence changing (e.g. silent part for the music goes to bass part). And there are many more conventions I personally use. But you’ll have to find your own “set” of tricks you like to use when creating new shows.
Latest event animation in Moncha is very simple, but quite powerful to create new ways of animating scenes.
Bass is the boss
I also think the greatest laser show sin is to not follow the bass. If the music changes from bass part to silent part and your lasers are still running like crazy – you’ve lost. And I see it especially on live shows when you sit behind the computer and choose the effects in real time. Well, if your software is so complex and flickers and blinks with 1000 information you simply can’t follow (and maybe even the air-plane pilot could not), well – you don’t have a chance to catch all the music changes.
But for the pre-programmed laser shows, there’s no excuse to not catch important parts and changes of the music. And this is what makes people scream and feel the freezing in their back – when the silent sequence of the music changes to bass/”big” sequence and your laser is a guide of this change – when you can feel like the music is actually holding hand with the lasers. Simply to said/write, hard to do…
Moncha show time line displays your music wave file in the background – to make it easier to follow the bass sequences.
I believe we catch all important music changes in the Pakistan show. And that’s because we had the right tools available. But what makes the show different is how the scenes work on different lasers.