Lesson 7. Live for grown-ups

In lesson 6 we covered the minimum of LIVE: scene buttons, Fade, the crossfader, Blackout, TAP. That is enough for an evening — but the concert console has a second floor: banks for the different parts of a show, live overlays (strobe, blinder, smoke), Solo/Mute, instant recolouring of the whole room and a couple of special modes. Today we open Live up completely.

You will need a project with fixtures and scenes (any one from the previous lessons will do). Everything happens in Live mode.

Step 1. Banks — the pages of your console

Picture a wedding: first the guests arrive, then the dinner, then the dancing, and slow numbers towards the end. Each part of the evening needs its own scenes at hand and its own fader assignments. If it is all in one heap, in the dark it is easy to miss and fire “Disco” during the first dance.

A bank solves that. Think of it as a page in a notebook: each page has its own set of buttons and faders. Turn the page and you have a different console in front of you, put together for a different part of the evening. The scenes themselves do not go anywhere — the bank only decides what is shown at hand.

📍 Where: the top of the central area, the Banks row.

How to set banks up, step by step:

First prepare the console for the first part of the evening: star the scenes you need (they become “favourites” and land on the buttons) and assign the faders. Now press “+” in the bank row — a bank is created and it remembers all of that.
Now rebuild the console for the second part (different favourite scenes, different faders) — and press “+” again. That is the second bank.
Done: switch between banks in one click and the whole set changes instantly. The “All” button shows every scene there is, with no bank filter.

Action	How
Rename a bank	A long press on the bank button
Re-save the current state into a bank	Right-click the bank button
Delete	The cross that appears on hover
Quick switching	Ctrl + 1…0

Fig. 1 — The bank row: “All”, the banks, the + button

💡 Tip: up to 10 banks; once there are more than three, numbers appear on the buttons — go by Ctrl+number.

Step 2. Live overlays: Strobe, Blinder, Smoke

In the left column, under the master fader, there are three coloured buttons. These are the overlays (like a sheet of transparent film over a drawing; you lay it on top and the drawing temporarily looks different, you take the film off and underneath everything is exactly as it was). The program remembers the state of the light before the overlay goes on and restores it by itself when the overlay goes off.

What each button does:

Strobe (red) — rapid flashes from every fixture that has a strobe channel. The “disco lightning” effect. Want the flashes weaker or less frequent — right-click the button: an intensity slider from 0 to 100 appears (the setting is remembered).
Blinder (amber) — every PAR and head gives full white into the room at once. “Blinder” comes from blind: it is the classic device on a chorus or a climax, when the room is whited out for a second.
Smoke (blue) — runs the smoke machine at full. Why smoke: without haze the beam in the air is invisible — you only see the patch on the floor. A light haze makes the beams three-dimensional.

💡 A tip about smoke: send it out in advance, some 15–20 seconds before the moment in question — the machine needs time to fill the air, and the beam does not appear instantly.

Fig. 2 — The Strobe / Blinder / Smoke buttons

💡 Tip: piled up the overlays and want a clean slate? “Reset” from lesson 6 — holding it for ~1 second takes off every live overlay without stopping the scene and the chase.

Step 3. Quick colour — recolour the whole room in one click

The Colour block in the centre is a row of coloured circles. One click and every fixture that is on takes that colour, right over the running scenes and chases. Click the same circle again and the filter comes off — the “native” colours are back.

Fig. 3 — Quick colours: the active circle is highlighted

🎧 For the DJ: this is the fastest way to “land on the mood of the track” — an uneasy verse in red, the chorus in blue. The scenes themselves do not change.

Step 4. Solo and Mute

These two words come from audio mixers and they work the same way here. Solo means leaving only one instrument audible and silencing the rest. Mute is the opposite: switching one instrument off and leaving the others alone. Here it is the same, only with groups of light.

Assign a submaster to a group of fixtures (the ⋮ button on the fader → choose the group, as in lesson 6) — and two small buttons appear under the fader:

S (Solo, lights up amber) — only this group is left on stage, all the other fixtures are dimmed. What for: while setting up — “show me the heads only, without anything else”.
M (Mute, lights up red) — the opposite: this group is silenced and all the other light carries on. What for: on the fly — “take the lasers out on the quiet song”.

Pressing the same button again puts it back. And if the light suddenly “behaves oddly”, check whether you have left a Solo or a Mute switched on somewhere (holding “Reset” takes those off too).

Fig. 4 — The S / M buttons under a group fader

Step 5. Blind mode

The situation: a calm picture is on stage and you need to prepare the next one — turn the heads, change the colours. You cannot do that “live”: the room would see the beams crawling about and the colours jumping. What you need is a “rehearsal backstage”.

That is exactly what Blind mode is (the purple “Blind” button in the left column; it is also available in Prog, in the top menu). The word “blind” here is about the room: the room sees nothing. Switch it on and whatever is currently on the fixtures freezes; meanwhile you calmly work the colours and positions, even fire scenes — all the changes are visible only to you, in the visualizer. Switch the mode off and the prepared picture goes out to the stage instantly, in one tidy transition.

So that you do not forget you are “backstage”, the program reminds you: the button pulses purple and a purple bar at the top of the window reads “Blind mode — edits are NOT sent to the stage”.

Fig. 5 — Blind mode: the button is active, the purple banner is at the top

🎭 For theatre: this is the key to clean transitions — while the current picture is running you build the next one behind the curtain and deliver it on cue.

Step 6. Quiet scene and the “Large” button

Two “fit the job” switches:

DJ / Quiet scene (top centre). They show the buttons that are more useful for the job at hand and hide the ones that are not.
“Large” (above the scene grid) — the scene buttons become bigger still: for a dark room and for working out of the corner of your eye.

💡 Tip: the chosen mode is remembered — a DJ will not have to hide the theatre panels every time, and vice versa.

Step 7. Putting it all together into a workflow

A typical evening with the “full” Live:

In advance: a “Background” bank, a “Dancing” bank, a “Slow numbers” bank — each with its own favourites and faders.
As you go: switch banks (Ctrl+1/2/3), scenes on the buttons, accents with Flash and the Strobe, the climax with the Blinder.
The track has changed mood — quick colour in one click.
Something needs fixing unnoticed — Blind, fix it, come back out.
Between songs — hold Reset: the console is clean and the show goes on.

Let’s sum up

Now you know Live in full:

banks — console pages for the parts of a show (Ctrl+1…0, right-click to re-save);
the overlays Strobe (right-click for the strength) / Blinder / Smoke — over everything and without a trace;
quick colour — recolouring the room in one click;
Solo/Mute on groups — isolate or silence;
Blind mode — preparing light in secret;
Quiet scene and “Large” — a view for theatre and for a dark room.

What is next: in the following lesson we bring order to a big project — your own fixture groups, favourites, search, saving the project and the auto-backup that will save your work.

Still have not installed SvetoMaster? Download it right now, and let’s carry on!