Music show lighting on a budget

"atmosphere" you can't see it, but it's oh so important. 

There is a reason why, no matter what the budget, when you have a shit music show, like just about everything on TV, you need a big light show.  It's to stop the audience loosing interest.

For a live show on a budget getting the lighting right is all about what sort of show you have and what sort of music are you playing. Sometime less is more.  

A good rule of thumb is that if everyone enjoys the show and raves about the music then you have the lighting right. ie They enjoyed the show and the lights were a good fit for the music.  Audiences don't want to analyse what they see and hear the way musicians and artists do. They just watch and listen and if something is wrong or doesn't look or sound right they will just start wondering about the hat on girl in the second row or where they left their keys or something like that.  If it all fits they will remain engaged and will be enjoying themselves.

So if you aren't going to hire a lighting crew including designers and operators you are going to have to keep it simple. I mean you wouldn't play the same bass line through every song and you certainly wouldn't let some computer program add random harmonica solos to your carefully rehearsed numbers. It's the same with lighting. If it's not tailor made for the song - keep it low key. 

Preset lighting sequences are like that monotonous bass player.  But the real money saver, automatic sound to light, is like that random harmonica player. It will work once or twice (badly) and ruin everything else.  Different songs need different treatments. 

So if you have a few lights and no way of operating them for the show, just place them, decide on colours and that is your light show. Any more than that, uncontrolled sequences, or sound to light will be poison to your performance unless you are very discrete in their use. ie Some slow fading things and the like.

But we are musicians. We don't want to be discrete. Well then you need two things.

You may already have them, Number one: Someone who can press a few buttons between numbers/songs. Number two:  A basic DMX desk and a few cables. You can still use preset sequences and sound to light but you will have a lot more control over what actually happens. More on this later maybe.