Control Tracks:
SoundSwitch has been designed to look and feel like an audio editing software. As DJs, we believe this is a familiar workflow and is a better interface than the traditional lighting software approach.
The way that control tracks work highlights this. In practice, there are three types of Control Tracks in the workspace and each one lets you achieve different things; Fixture Tracks, Group Tracks and the Master Track are explained below.
The Master Track:
The Master Track makes it easy to create a basic lighting show by allowing you to control all of the fixtures in a Venue Tab from a single Control Track.
For example, if you created a blue to purple fade in the Master Track regardless of whether you are using LED Par Cans, Moving Heads or LED Panels all of your fixtures will display the same blue to purple transition.
Master track information is also standard across all of your venues, which means if you have Scripted a lighting show in the Master Track, for a particular audio track, and you played at a new venue with this same audio track the scripted lighting show would play too, even though you aren't familiar with the lighting rig just yet.
When you create a New Venue all of the Master Track lighting shows you have previously created will automatically be applied to the new venue. This means you won't be starting from scratch and as previously explained you won't be stuck if you have to play a new venue at short notice.
Creative Tip: Try building up a library of Scripted songs over time. Creating Master Tracks for your songs is a great way to do this as it ensures you will always have some custom lighting to use for different performance spaces.
Fixture Tracks
Fixture Tracks let you control individual fixtures by overriding the Master Track.
This is helpful if you want to control fixtures independently of the Master Track. You may want some Par Cans to be a different color or you might want a moving head to rotate differently to the rest; this can all be done via Fixture Tracks.
Group Tracks:
Group Tracks let you organize individual fixtures into groups without having to set them to the same DMX address. This means you can control all fixtures within the group from a single Control Track; in much the same way as the Master Track controls all of the tracks in the workspace, by grouping fixtures you only have to work in the Group Track workspace but the scripting you do affects all those lighting fixtures in the group.
To create a Fixture Group select 'Insert Fixture Group' from the Insert menu which will pop down once you place your mouse at the top of the SoundSwitch page. Once complete you will see a new Group Track in the workspace. To add fixtures to the group, simply drag and drop fixtures from the Fixture Library. Once added you will see they have been assigned the same menu color as the group track, making them easy to identify.
As a point of good practice check that the fixtures added have been assigned the correct DMX address, inside SoundSwitch, before moving on.
You can also Mute and Solo Fixtures by toggling the M and S buttons in the Fixture Track:
Mute/Solo
Creative Tip: You can collapse or expand the Fixture Group by clicking the folder button.