Running your lights from a footswitch while you play

A band with no lighting operator has one real problem: nobody has a spare hand. You cannot reach a laptop mid-song, you cannot read a screen while singing, and the person who could operate the lights is the person playing bass. The workable answer is a foot pedal that steps through a cue list you wrote in advance, and it takes about a minute to set up.

Why can't you just run the software while you play?

Because operating lighting software is a two-hand, eyes-down job and playing is not. A laptop at the side of the stage means the lights change when somebody happens to be free, which is almost never the moment the song changes. The usual result is one static look for the whole set, or a sound-active mode that flashes on the drummer's hi-hat regardless of what the song is doing.

A footswitch changes the unit of work. Instead of operating lights, you write the show once at home and then make a single decision on stage: now. That decision fits between a snare hit and the downbeat, and it fits in a foot.

What is MIDI learn?

MIDI learn is a binding mode in which the software listens for the next control you touch and assigns your chosen action to it. You pick the action — next cue, previous cue, blackout, recall a specific scene — press the pedal, and the binding is made. It exists because looking up which note number a pedal transmits is a job nobody should have to do, and because the same pedal often sends different messages in different banks.

Two kinds of control bind to two kinds of action. A switch or pad sends a discrete message and binds to a discrete action such as GO. A knob, fader or expression pedal sends a continuous value and binds to a continuous control such as a master fader. HitLight captures the next press for a discrete binding and the next movement for a continuous one, so you cannot accidentally bind a fader to your GO button by nudging it.

Bindings belong to the show, not to the laptop. Open the same show on a different Mac with the same pedal plugged in and the bindings are still there.

How do you put "next cue" under your foot?

1. 1

   Plug the footswitch into the Mac that drives the rig

   MIDI input is handled by the machine running the lighting engine, which is the Mac connected to your DMX interface. A phone or a browser tab cannot take the pedal on its behalf.

2. 2

   Build the cue list first

   A pedal bound to next cue does nothing useful until there is a list to walk through. Write the cues before you bind anything — you will understand what you want the pedal to do much better once the show exists.

3. 3

   Choose the action, then press the pedal

   Select GO — next cue — as the action to bind, put HitLight into learn, and step on the switch. That is the whole binding. Repeat for BACK on a second switch if your pedal has one.

4. 4

   Bind blackout to something you can find in the dark

   Blackout is immediate and takes the rig to zero at once. Give it a control you can hit without looking, and make sure it is not adjacent to your GO switch.

What is the pedal actually walking through?

A cue list is an ordered series of scenes that you step through live with GO and BACK. Each cue holds a look — colour, intensity, position, whatever the scene contains — and stays there until the next GO. That is what makes it the right structure for live music: the show waits for you rather than the other way round.

Two options per cue change how much footwork a song needs. A per-cue wait holds a cue for a set time, and auto-advance moves to the next cue on its own once the wait elapses. Together they let one press cover a whole section — step in at the chorus, let the cue run its two colour changes automatically, and be back in manual control by the time the verse returns.

• One cue per song section, not per song. Intro, verse, chorus, breakdown, out. Five presses per song is comfortable; twenty is not.
• Put a dark cue between songs. It gives you an obvious landmark if you lose your place, and it makes the next cue land harder.
• Number cues to match your set list and tape the set list to the floor. The pedal has no display and neither will you.
• End the list with a house look so the final press leaves the stage lit for packing down rather than dark.

When should you use the timeline instead?

Use the multi-track timeline when the show runs to a clock rather than to your playing. It lays scenes on parallel tracks against a time axis and plays them automatically, which is exactly right for a backing-track set, a theatre piece with a fixed running order, or an installation that has to repeat unattended. It is exactly wrong for a band that jams the last chorus twice.

The two are not exclusive across a set. Plenty of bands run cue lists for the live numbers and keep a timeline for the one song that runs to tape.

What should you rehearse before the gig?

Rehearse the pedal, not the lights. The lighting was decided at home; what is untested is whether you can hit the switch in time while playing, and whether you can recover when you miss. Run the set once with the rig up and your instrument on, and you will find the two or three cues that are in impossible places.

• Press GO deliberately once, in each song, standing where you will stand. Pedal placement matters more than anything in this list.
• Practise a double-press recovery. Step on GO twice on purpose and use BACK to get home. Do it until it is boring.
• Test Blackout at the venue, before doors. Press it, watch the rig go dark. Every venue, every time.
• Give someone offstage the iOS remote. It follows show status, fires cues and virtual-console widgets, and can issue Stop or Blackout — a useful second pair of hands that does not need to understand the show.
• Decide what happens if the pedal dies. Usually: the current cue holds, and somebody clicks GO on the laptop. Knowing the plan is the whole point of having one.

Do cheap USB MIDI footswitches work on a Mac?

Yes. Class-compliant USB MIDI controllers are driverless on macOS, so a generic footswitch works as soon as it is plugged in, with nothing to install. Because HitLight binds by listening rather than by model, it does not need to recognise your specific pedal — an inexpensive two-switch unit binds the same way a large controller does.

Two practical notes. A pedal with a latching switch sends a message on press and another on release, so bind it while watching what actually fires and swap to momentary mode if the unit offers one. And put the pedal somewhere your own cable cannot drag it, because a footswitch that has slid half a metre during the second song is a footswitch you will be hunting for with your foot during the third.

If the terms here are new — cue, scene, GO, universe — the DMX glossary defines each in a sentence. Schools and theatres covers the same cue-list workflow for a volunteer operator sitting at the back of a hall, and mobile DJs covers the version where the lighting follows the music instead of a written list.