Midi sequenced lights

Jetfire

So, our drummers friend (I know, I was shocked too ) has set up a midi enable light show which does all the lights to a click track using midi. I'm a total newb at these things so I was wondering what we would need to do this. I'm assuming the following

Laptop
Lights
Midi controllet

I've really no idea where to even begin so any help would be much appreciated!

ElectroDan

It can be tricky.

We used MIDI and click tracks years ago and with a lot of patience and work you can get really impressive results.

We'd set up in a hall hook up the PC,  Lighting controllers and lights and spend ages (swearing, pulling hair out and) choreographing it all together. We used Cakewalk back in the day and had initially Channel 16 controlling Par cans and three scanners. Also had a controlled switch bank that put on some twisty search lamps.

More recently we had a friend come who used Daslight to control LED floods, scanners and moving heads as well as the ambient lighting and smoke machines. Which could all be set to a click to repeat night after night.

We spoken about going back to click. Not only for the lights but to add brass and some percussion and other special effects. But the buzz of playing 100% live and avoiding the complications has always been a stronger pull. A lot of the bigger venues now have great lighting and even someone controlling them live anyway.

At weddings where the venue has nothing we find that just being well lit is usually enough, although having the ability to change the ambience for certain songs would be cool.