It's About Time! 

Welcome to your May 2007 edition of the PlanetChristmas newsletter!  It is published regularly and covers relative topics for the Christmas decorating enthusiast. 

Here's what you can read about in this month's newsletter:

• 4th of July Show

• Goodies for PLUS Attendees

• PLUS2007 Hands-On Labs

• PLUS2007

• Blink Off

• What's New

• PlanetChristmas Radio

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4th of July Show?

Watched a great video on the Animated Lighting website... a product they call Animated USA and it's a large flag done in lights and sequenced to patriotic music.  My parents always have a big 4th of July party for family and friends and I could just imagine this thing on the side of the barn flashing to the beat of Stars and Stripes Forever.  Way too cool.  Then it got me to thinking about Christmas 2007 (my mind works in mysterious ways...)

Have you ever considered using major celebrations during the year as a way to experiment with new lighting effects for your Christmas display?  This is actually part of the "crawl, walk, run" mantra where you start small, grasp the basics and build upon your experiences.  The 4th of July is a great time to try something new in lighting and if it works, migrate the idea to your Christmas display.

Start with some basics by getting out your patriotic colored Christmas lights.  Here in the states, it's red, white and blue.  Pick some bushes in front of your house and add the lights.  If you think about it, decorating for the holiday this way is a whole lot cheaper than buying fireworks.

If this is the year where you jump into computerized lighting, what a perfect time to synchronize your first tune to the lights.  Patriotic songs are the ones all the bands march to in parades.  The music has a steady beat and thus easy to match the lights to the action.  Go to your favorite music site and search for "Sousa, Stars and Stripes Forever."  If you have a problem with marching bands, try Lee Greenwoods "God Bless the U.S.A."  Either song will make Americans swell with pride.  If you live in another country, choose a tune that will do the same for you.

Synchronizing lights to music requires practice, practice, practice.  Depending on how many channels of lights you have, each music minute can take one to eight hours to coordinate the lights to music.  How do you start?  Remember crawl, walk run.  Let's tackle the basics.

Pick a tune you really like.  The shorter the better.  Never forget your viewers have a limited attention span.  If the song is much longer than three minutes, find another one or use music editing software to cut the overall length.  The tunes mentioned above are each a tad over three minutes in duration.

Now listen to tune in a quiet place.  Listen to it again, and again and again so you know the major transition points in the song.  You'll hear stuff you've never heard before.  Every artist will add some nuances to make it their own.  Bottom line: get to really know the song.

The most critical part of synchronizing lights to music is recording the beat or click track.  Have no idea what the beat is?  There are programs out there that will attempt to find the beat for you.  If you don't have a musical bone in your body and/or never taken a music class, now is the time to find someone that has rhythm.  It really is important to have this base beat track in place.

Depending on your sequencing vendor, use the appropriate tool to create the beat track.  You typically play the song and click your computer mouse for each beat.  One trick is to click the major beats and later go back and have your sequencing software divide the time between major beats into minor ones... usually 2, 4 or 8 (again, that musical training comes in handy about now.)  Once the beat track is made, you can start blinking the lights.

Your sequencing software will create a grid based on the beat track you created.  You can think of the grid as a big computer spreadsheet.  Across the top are points in time with the beginning of the song at the far left.  Down the side of the grid are lines for each light channel you can control.  Let me suggest beginning with 16 or fewer channels to keep things easy.  As you look at the grid you can visualized any point in time for the music and what each light channel will do.

A typical song will have several hundred beats and if you have 16 channels of lights, you could easily have well over 1,000 cells in your grid.  Don't worry, once you get the hang of things, you'll sometimes wish you had a bigger grid.

Depending on your vendor, pick the first channel and click the grid at different points in time to command the lights to blink on and off (or whatever effect you desire).  Play back the music, watch your grid scroll by and see the lights blink corresponding to the cells you toggled.  Slick, huh? 

Let me highly suggest you refrain from blinking a lot of lights constantly.  It takes a huge amount of time to program your musical grid and don't forget the short attention span of your viewers.  On your first tune, start with slow fades at key transitional points of your tune.  Go in and add some fast flashing at key areas but quickly get back to the slow transitions.  Your viewers will be amazed the lights are changing with the music, no matter how slow it appears.

I guarantee after you finish sequencing the first tune you'll immediately say "I can do better!"  You're right and you will do better with practice and lots of trial and error.  Do something for the next holiday and use it to learn how to do Christmas tunes better.

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PlanetChristmas Tip of the Month  

LED (Light Emitting Diode) strings for Christmas are "environmentally green."  They use 80% less power than typical incandescent lights, last 50 times longer and are nearly indestructible.  If you think about it, you can also use cheaper and less powerful light controllers if you have a computerized display.  The bad news is last year LED strings cost about five times more than those standard light strings.  Every year I think there will be a major price drop the next year and I'm proven wrong.  Looks like LED pricing will stay about the same for 2007 as years past.  Rumors include some nasty patent litigation going on among the manufactures keeping the price high.  So where's the PlanetChristmas tip of the month in all this?  If you see a good deal on LED lights for Christmas, buy them.  You're not going to see a major price decrease in October when the major stores start rolling out their decorations.

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Rudolph's Rumor Run

This is a new addition to the PlanetChristmas newsletter.  Got any juicy bits of gossip you want to share with the PlanetChristmas community?  Send a tip to newsletter@PlanetChristmas.com

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Goodies for PLUS2007 Attendees

Rumors are rampant about some of the stuff PLUS2007 attendees will be receiving... not to mention all the knowledge they'll be taking away thanks to the expert instructors.  (I'm betting the picture to the right will end up on a t-shirt.)  It's not too late to sign up... though you better hurry because the current discount coupon is about to expire.  See the info at http://www.plus2007.com.

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PLUS2007 Hands-On Labs

Something different at PLUS this year is the option of participating in hands-on labs.  Although these classes require a small fee on top of your registration, you'll get real experience and guidance from the pros.  We have a build-your-own mini-tree class where you get to take your lighted tree home with you; the wireframe lighting class where you light a custom frame and take it home; a soldering class where you learn how to solder, build a small kit and take the finished product as well as your soldering station home with you and finally a blowmold restoration class where you get to take some of the special tools home with you.  Want to learn more?  Go to: http://www.plus2007.com/Education.htm and scroll down the page to get more class information.  If you are already registered for PLUS2007, log into your account and sign up for the classes by going to http://www.plus2007.com/Registration.htm

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Newsletter Suggestion? 

Have a suggestion for a main topic or want to write an article for a future PlanetChristmas newsletter?  Send me an email: csmith@planetchristmas.com  If you know someone that really should subscribe to your newsletter, send them to http://planetchristmas.com/lists/?p=subscribe

Next time: look forward to more Christmas decorating tips. 

Chuck Smith of PlanetChristmas