Lake Zurich Light Show 2012

[djcollin]

It's a little bit long, but I think it gets better as it goes on. Sorry about the shaky video-an hour before the show the camera we had prepared failed, and had to ask a friend to record it on their phone.

Feel free to comment with criticism or questions.

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Thanks!
-Collin

[urthegman]

Hey Collin, Let me start off with first saying Great job!!!! I love the unique elements and use of Aethers(?). As far as using as much club music as you did, I love ALL music just as much as the next guy, maybe more!!!  Some Nights is my daughter and my own personal favorite right now!!! That being said and in my own personal and humble opinion, I felt  like you used more club music (too much more?) than you did Christmas songs. While it is YOUR display and you are obviously free to use the music you like, whether you like it or not you DO have an audience and as a DJ I'm sure you play what the crowd wants to hear. I would think that people driving around looking at Christmas lights would expect to hear Christmas music at a Christmas light show. I am sure you know your audience MUCH better than I do. Again this is just my opinion and I DID use 2 Led Zeppelin Christmas mashups, Spiralings "Do You Hear What I Hear?" and the parody "I'm Santa and I Know it" which to me let's you use popular music and still have it be about Christmas. The only other thing I would add is the lights on the upper gutter, I don't know if they were out on the right side or you ran out of lights, but I would continue all the way across in the future if you didn't plan to in the future. I hope you don't think I am being overly critical, if it was me I would want to hear what someone was truly thinking and I think I did that???

[PJNMCT]

agreed (constructively).

[Gary]

Collin, I love the use of the DJ lights. What is the make and model of them? What is the weather like where you live... that is, do you have to worry about rain and snow on your DJ lights? I was thinking of doing something similar on my place, except mounted on my house and projecting on the driveway.

P.S. I have a mix of Christmas and non-Christmas songs as well. I personally like the mix of Christmas and non-Christmas songs at the same time, but my wife said "unacceptable"    and insisted on only Christmas songs before Christmas (with an exception of "relaxing" songs like Life in a Northern Town in my first year as I didn't have very many songs sequenced). So, instead, I have announcements telling people to come back after Christmas "for the good stuff", so to speak. However, I feel like it's a lot of sequencing time gone to waste, as there are far less people coming to watch after Christmas. Oh well.

[tbone321]

I guess that the question that I would have what exactly is the point of playing non Christmas songs during a CHRISTMAS light show?  To me, it just kills the spirit and meaning of the show and makes Christmas just an excuse to put llights on the house and make them blink. 

[fyb2000]

I guess that the question that I would have what exactly is the point of playing non Christmas songs during a CHRISTMAS light show?  To me, it just kills the spirit and meaning of the show and makes Christmas just an excuse to put llights on the house and make them blink.

What's wrong with that? I don't force anyone to watch and listen to the show that I put out there. I do have Christmas songs, but I would not fault anyone for setting up a light display on their house, spending months to prep it up and offering it for others to enjoy.

[tbone321]

I didn't ssay anything was wrong with it and I'm not faulting anyone.  I was just wondering what the motivation was for puting non-christmas songs into a Christmas display. 

[fyb2000]

Maybe to them it's a festivus display light show...

[chrisatpsu]

with a Mega Pole?

[fyb2000]

of course, one cannot have a festivus display without one of those. Lights are of course optional.

[Gary]

I didn't ssay anything was wrong with it and I'm not faulting anyone.  I was just wondering what the motivation was for puting non-christmas songs into a Christmas display.

My motivation is for variety. And one person at work told me that by December 25, she's Christmas songed out as on every radio station plays a lot of Christmas music during December.

Also, a lot of Christmas songs just don't work very well for Christmas lights. When choosing songs to play, I listen to them and try to visualize what playing musical instruments can be repeated as "light" instruments (i.e. typically my arches or star for beat, poles for notes, gutter lights for guitar, etc.). While I don't try to visualize every song's instruments in my head and analyze it to death, I like to have at least a decent starting point... but a lot of songs don't offer it.

There are just so many more non-Christmas songs to choose from that just "work", in my opinion.

[djcollin]

I didn't ssay anything was wrong with it and I'm not faulting anyone.  I was just wondering what the motivation was for puting non-christmas songs into a Christmas display.

There are just so many more non-Christmas songs to choose from that just "work", in my opinion.

That was kind of our thought too. We quickly got tired of programming the Christmas songs-the TSO style songs start to sound the same after a while to me. The show only ran once like this as more of an exhibition/party for our friends to attend so we included more music that we would enjoy. The rest of the season was Christmas music.

Collin, I love the use of the DJ lights. What is the make and model of them? What is the weather like where you live...

Thanks! We used 2 Chauvet Vue 6.1's mounted on a traditional DJ-light tripod. Being away at college, we had to program everything blind, including the DJ lights, so we had no idea what it was going to look like until the day of the show when we put them out and ran with an audience. I think it was amazing how well they turned out, but that's just me.
We live near Chicago so the weather is pretty intense.

Thanks for the criticism/comments/questions everyone!
-Collin

[Gary]

Thanks! We used 2 Chauvet Vue 6.1's mounted on a traditional DJ-light tripod. Being away at college, we had to program everything blind, including the DJ lights, so we had no idea what it was going to look like until the day of the show when we put them out and ran with an audience. I think it was amazing how well they turned out, but that's just me.
We live near Chicago so the weather is pretty intense.

So were the Vue 6.1's up all season, or you had them only that night when it wasn't snowing/raining?