Lesson 4. Chases and light to music

By the fourth lesson we already have a solid project: PARs, moving heads, a set of scenes and presets. Time to make all of it move in time with the music. Three subjects today: a deeper look at chases, a proper friendship between the program and sound, and a tour of the effects — including the movement effects for the heads from the previous lesson.

Step 1. The program hears the music by itself

In manual mode you can set the tempo with the TAP button (the T key), clicking in time. But SvetoMaster can catch the beat on its own. Open the menu “Settings” → “General settings” and find the “Tempo source” block — where the program gets the beat from. There are three sources:

Source	When
🎤 Microphone	The music plays in the room through speakers — we listen through the laptop microphone. Always available, but along with the music it picks up the conversation next to you
🔊 System	The music plays on this same computer (a player, DJ software) — the sound is taken directly, clean and free of interference
🎹 MIDI	The tempo arrives as a ready number from a DJ controller, a mixer or a DAW — switch on “Send MIDI Clock” there. The most reliable way: there is nothing to listen to, which means no half/double-speed errors and no delay while the beat is worked out

Fig. 1 — The tempo source: microphone, system sound or MIDI

Press “SOUND” in the header and watch the metronome under the visualizer — it starts blinking in time. Green means the beat is caught and the tempo (BPM) has been worked out by itself. Now everything that runs “in time” — chases and effects — obediently follows the music, and you do not have to tap anything.

Step 2. Chases, deeper

In the first lesson we built a simple chase — a sequence of scenes in a loop. Now let’s look into its settings: open any chase for editing. The main setting is what moves the chase from step to step. There are three options:

Mode	How it runs	When to choose it
BPM	Exactly to the calculated tempo of the music, like a metronome	The default; the best one for the dance floor
Sound	Every beat caught (the kick) moves it one step — the light “jerks” with the hits	A live, driving, ragged rhythm
Manual (GO)	It does not run by itself — you click through the steps with the GO button or the ←/→ arrows	Theatre, precise cues

Fig. 2 — The chase editor: choosing the sync mode

The speed divider. You do not have to step on every beat. Set ÷2 and the chase runs half as fast (a step every other beat); ×2 does the opposite, two steps per beat. One number — and the same chase plays completely differently.

Fig. 3 — The step speed divider (÷2 / ×2) in the chase editor

🎧 For the DJ: ÷2 saves you on fast music when you want smoother changes; ×2 is for busy flickering on the drop.

Step 3. The sound monitor

There is an important fork in the sound monitor:

Mode	What it does	When
By tempo	Averages the beats and keeps the light steady — even if the music goes quiet for a moment	Steady dance music
By beat	Reacts to every hit instantly	A live, ragged rhythm

💡 Tip: catching the kick badly — play with the sensitivity (reacting too little → raise it; catching too much → lower it). And if it is being really awkward, there is a reliable fallback: TAP with the T key, in time.

Step 4. Movement effects

Open the “Effects” tab. In the first lesson we touched the colour ones (rainbow, wave, pulsing). Today we go further down — to the movement effects: they bring moving heads to life.

Effect	What it does
Pan+Tilt circle	The heads draw circles with their beams
Figure eight	The beams travel in a figure of eight
Fan	The beams spread apart and come back together
Pan sweep	The heads swing left and right (in sync or as a wave)

Fig. 4 — The “Effects” tab: movement effects for the heads

Choose “Pan+Tilt circle” — and the heads start swirling their beams around the room, right on top of your scene. No programming, one click.

Turn the music on: the light blinks in time and circles the room at the same time. Two layers play together, and both obey the music.

💡 You can switch on as many ready-made effects as you like on top of a running chase.

💡 One last life hack: like an effect but want it a bit different? Right click → “Save as chase” — the effect becomes an ordinary chase whose steps you can edit by hand (colours, order, timing). That is how the presets become yours.

Let’s sum up

Today we:

taught the program to hear the music — we chose a source, and the metronome catches the tempo itself, without TAP;
went through the three run modes for chases (BPM / sound / manual) and the speed divider;
set up the sound monitor — “by tempo / by beat” and the detection sensitivity;
started the movement effects for the heads and layered them on top of the rhythm chase — two live layers together.

Your project is no longer a static picture — it lives and breathes in time, and it hears the music by itself.

What is next: in the following lesson we take on the running order — we assemble scenes and chases into one complete playlist that carries the show from beginning to end.

Still have not installed SvetoMaster? Download it right now and start from the first lesson!