Weapon of Choice: grandMA Tours the Globe with OneRepublic

(27/03/2014) OneRepublic's headlining Native Tour wraps in the UK after spending last year circling the globe. The tour was programmed and operated from a grandMA2 light platform. The American pop rock band toured Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand last year in support of its third studio album, Native. OneRepublic's tour has continued in 2014 with more dates in Europe and the UK.

On this final leg of the tour lighting designer Chris Lisle has carried over a diamond-shaped theme from last year, which features trusses, video screens and even some of the same fixtures. The show has some big visual moments, so I had to come up with a design to meet that need, he says. The band likes cutting edge, so using the latest technology is important to us.

Programmer Scott Chmielewski notes that, Chris always designs his projects with the artist in mind and tries to keep the focus on the music. It's important for him to make sure that the technology doesn't overshadow the talent but still has the capabilities he needs. This has been a very technology-heavy show, but it was used tastefully and was well in control.

In addition to 12 Clay Paky A.leda B-EYE, 30 Clay Paky Sharpy were an integral part of the lighting design since Day One, Lisle says.

Chmielewski programmed the tour on a grandMA2 light with three active MA NPU (Network Processing Unit). A back up grandMA2 light was also available on the road. He calls the platform his weapon of choice for the past few years. Its ability to continue to build and refine a very powerful and custom toolset for programming is unrivaled, he says. All of the integration of grandMA 3D, grandMA2 onPC and MA NPU makes everything seamless as the ability to previs everything, including Art-Net merging, media and every fixture type, is an enormous asset. Add to that the fact that once the show was programmed, it was one show file on one USB stick.

He notes that the show featured LED nodes embedded into the LED wall. We had almost 5,000 very bright, forward-facing LED fixtures, each DMX-controlled from the console, Chmielewski explains. Using grandMA2's Art-Net merge capabilities, we were able to merge data from the media servers and have both media control and typical DMX control of all the nodes as well as the 5,000 fixtures on the matrix 5x5 blinders.

Lisle calls the grandMA2 an amazing console even more so when you have a programmer like Scott who can unlock all of the tricks within it. The desk is just so powerful. I never heard, it can't be done' from Scott during the programming process.

Chmielewski gives kudos to the team at A.C.T, which is always on for us as we continue to push new technologies from consoles and previs to the newest lighting fixtures. There is no way we would be able to create and achieve what we do without the help of their east and west coast teams.

The equipment was supplied by Neg Earth, UK.

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