Hi, could you help me understand why FULL lighting automation software is useful for touring bands? In my ignorance…

Coffee Shops (0-30 People)

No lights.

Pubs (30-100)

There’s often only a handful of lights, and wide disparity in terms of what you get. Support for external lighting controllers isn’t consistent.

Mini Venues (100-500)

You pretty much are limited to what they have, and they may not be set up for external lighting controllers. If you’re playing venues of that size, you don’t have the budget to request the lights in your rider, and you’re probably not bringing your own backline.

Small Venues (500-1000)

Similar situation to mini venues.

Medium Venues (1,000 - 4,000)

At medium-sized venues, you could ask for the lights you need on the rider - that’s expensive. Then, of course, you need a skilled lighting designer to design, configure, hang and focus those lights before the show - and I think you really need to bring your own person to do that. At that point, you’ve hired a lighting designer to take on the road with you, so you would ostensibly want a dedicated lighting control system software package and interface hardware. You’d still probably want a skilled lighting designer to run the show, even if most of the cues are automated - there’s still too much variation for complete automation - the lighting design (if automation is used) needs to be tweaked for every venue, and you’ll still want to run stuff like follow-spots manually.

Larger Venues (4,000 - 8,000)

Your rider specifics the lights you need, and they are there when you arrive at the venue. One person can set them up, but your own lighting will need the help of the house tech(s) to get everything set up in time (hopefully for soundcheck). If you’re running any automation, it still needs to be adapted every night.

Large Venues (8,000 +)

You bring your own backline, and a large crew assembles them. At this point, full automation perhaps makes more sense - I have no experience here other than running everything manually.