Disco Lights

Music and lighting just go together, don’t they? Is there anywhere that music is enjoyed where the experience wouldn’t be enhanced by good, imaginative lighting? So far in this series, however, I have mostly considered situations where the audience is passive, such as concerts or theatrical presentations. But clearly there are other situations where music is enjoyed and lighting would improve the experience. And one such is the disco. No one seems to use the word ‘disco’ much these days, but it neatly encapsulates the whole history of ‘a good night out’, going right the way back to the 1960s. The full term ‘discotheque’ translates from Greek as ‘record storage’. Well, that doesn’t seem too exciting and, as we know, one of the purposes of lighting is to add excitement — that’s one way of reasoning, anyway. Another way of reasoning is to look back before the 1960s when, believe it or not, dancing was already very popular. In that era, the music would have been provided by a live band. A good band is already exciting just from having the musicians there in the flesh ready to provide entertainment, and when they start with their posing and posturing a good time is inevitably going to be had by all. But suppose for some reason the band didn’t turn up? The crowd are there, ready to jive and jitterbug, but there’s no entertainment. Well, there would be nothing for it but to bring on the record player and play some tunes. Clearly this would be a mediocre experience compared to a live band. I don’t suppose anyone can explain exactly why, but the disco as a form of entertainment took off wildly. It has certain advantages over a live band; firstly you can have any number of bands, not just one or two. Secondly, records have the advantage of being produced. Compare this to a bunch of musicians going through the motions for yet another night and being rewarded with peanuts. Thirdly, enterprising producers can create new styles of music that work well in the disco setting — that would be disco music then. Perhaps there is no single reason disco took off the way it did, and although styles may have evolved and the word itself temporarily fallen out of favour, disco is firmly entrenched in our modern lifestyles.

To understand the requirements for disco lighting we have to understand the difference between disco and staged entertainment. Clearly it is matter of a shift of balance between the stage and the audience. In a conventional concert, everything that is interesting takes place on stage, and the members of the audience are merely passive consumers. Yes, the performers might encourage the audience to clap or to stand up, but that’s about as far as it gets. The audience are spoon-fed with entertainment and they go home whistling the tunes. But in a disco, the crowd are there to be active. I’m not even going to call them the audience because that is far too passive a term. To put not too fine a point on it, the crowd are there to take part in courtship rituals. Imagine that said in David Attenborough’s voice and it will seem more credible. So, the audience at a disco are there to be active and this will involve dancing. In theory one could pipe the music in through loudspeakers so that there is no stage area and no particular axis of orientation of the crowd.

However, in practice the norm has evolved that there will be a DJ visibly changing the records. On a small scale this will be one man and a laptop. On a large scale it will mean a raised stage, a pair of conventional turntables, a specialised DJ mixer and a huge pair of headphones. Either way the DJ is a performer of sorts, but not as central as a singer, for example, performing to a seated audience. Also, the way that DJing has developed is that the DJ has to take his attention from the audience to cue up the next record. Compare this with a musician who has practised to a high level of skill and is able to communicate directly to the audience. It doesn’t matter how much skill the DJ has in matching beats, he or she has to put their attention into that, at which time communication with the audience is lost.

Doing something new with lighting often impresses a crowd more than doing something genuinely impressive. A simple mirror ball or light rope would suffice to keep audiences entertained when they first appeared in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Photo: Ewan Topping/Flickr

Since the DJ, in general, has a less important role in terms of performance than a concert performer, lighting the stage area is consequently less important than in a concert. If you’re not going to light the stage then you have two alternatives: one is to light the audience, the other is to make the light sources an entertainment in their own right. Remember that there is a difference between lighting objects or people, and using direct light from light sources to achieve an effect. The first thing you can do is have a few coloured lights for the audience to see. OK, this sounds a bit bland but coloured lights are amazingly popular, despite their simplicity. So, a guy playing records in the local church hall is merely a guy playing records. But if he has some coloured lights, he’s a DJ playing at a disco!

It wasn’t far along the disco timeline when some bright spark had the idea of making the lights flash in time to the music. If this is a large-scale concert with a lighting console and operator, the operator can do all the flashing that is necessary by purely manual means — that’s why consoles have flash buttons. But where in concert lighting flashing is kept as a special effect, in early disco lighting you would want the flashing to go on all the time. No problem — all you need is a cheap microphone and a little bit of transistor circuitry feeding a triac dimmer. Sophisticated models split the frequency band into three; you could have one set of lights flashing in time to the bass, another set flashing to the mids and another set to the highs. You know what? It’s only lights that flash in time to the bass that look any good. The other frequency bands just look random, but at least they change and that’s what is important.

Another staple of the early period DJ was the rope light. Clearly we are in Christmas tree territory here, but that is only until we wire the individual lights in three or more circuits. The first light would be on circuit one, the second on circuit two, the third on circuit three, then back to circuit one and so forth. When the circuits are switched on and off in sequence, the lights will seem to march down the line. This is a bit of an optical illusion but it looks good if you’ve never seen it before, and back in the 1960s and early 1970s a lot of people hadn’t. So our typical early-period DJ had static lights, sound-to-light and rope lights to play with. What else? Well how about saving something for the climax of the evening? Something really spectacular that will knock people’s socks off. The first time I saw this was at a Pink Floyd concert. Nowadays it’s nothing special, but in 1973 in the Earl’s Court arena the entire audience was entranced by that mirror ball!

Mention moving lights to anyone today and they will think of the twin-axis yoke system popularised by Vari-Lites. This is a very versatile design capable of all kinds of lighting effects from the subtly artistic to the mildly vulgar. There’s nothing around today that compares with the supreme vulgarity of disco lights in their heyday. Of course, we will consider vulgarity in the right context to be a good thing, and I can’t really think of a better example than the Clay Paky Astrodisco from the early 1980s. Basically, the Astrodisco consists of a single lamp surrounded by an array of lenses. The Astrodisco 3, for example, has a central lamp surrounded by a circle of 12 lenses pointing outwards. If that was all it was it would give you twelve beams of light, but that wouldn’t be vulgar enough for the 1980s so it would be better if it could rotate. Well it can. The circle of lenses is capable of a full 360-degree rotation. Fine, that will illuminate all four walls of the room with moving light. Not only that, the plane of the circle of lenses can swing up and down. In fact, the Astrodisco has so many degrees of freedom it looks absolutely crazy in action in itself, never mind the lighting. Clay Paky didn’t stop there; they went on to create the Astroraggi, the name of which probably has a resonance of some kind or other in Italian. This has literally dozens of beams and, as helicopter-style lights go, is towards the extreme edge of the spectrum. Clay Paky didn’t stop with the Astroraggi, either. There’s the Astrospider too, otherwise known as the Tarantula. This one has four rotating heads, each with seven lenses, and the whole unit can spin round. Give it a bit of colour and you have an amazing effect. Of course, Clay Paky weren’t the only company making these devices. Look up Coemar and Cooperluz for more, or the Fabtronix Rolling Box — you could probably make one of those in your shed.

Moving into the modern era, as I said earlier, moving-head lighting instruments are now virtually standard equipment in concert lighting rigs, but only a few years ago people were asking the question, moving head or moving mirror? The moving-mirror lighting instrument, sometimes known as a scanner, looked like it had the potential to be the principal choice in moving lights. The scanner works by directing a light source at a moveable mirror. So, instead of moving the entire light source and lens, as in the moving head, all you have to do move is the mirror. Since the mirror is much lighter than a lamp and lens unit, it can move much more quickly. For many traditional lighting design purposes, however, it doesn’t really matter how quickly the mirror can move. In many cases moving lights are used so that they can be positioned remotely, then they are left static for the run of the show. The benefit is in the reduced time — and, therefore, cost — of rigging and focussing. The advantage of the moving head over the moving mirror is that it has greater flexibility in terms of beam positioning. However, in disco lighting the main priority is to generate mood and excitement. So, although a moving head might have massive artistic flexibility, the scanner can dance and dazzle like nothing else.

I think we can see already that one staple feature of disco lighting is that the audience demands novelty. Whatever is new is bound to be interesting. Ten points on the novelty scale will equal at least seven and a half points on the spectacular scale, any day. So, when your thoughts turn to disco lighting, it’s likely that you will want to browse through a catalogue simply to see what is new. And you won’t have to go far to find a disco catalogue; this kind of equipment seems to be amazingly popular. One of the starting points in your disco kit will be a few LED luminaires. It is perfectly possible to view the LED PAR can as a simple one-for-one replacement for a traditional PAR luminaire. (As a reminder, the PAR or parabolic reflector lamp comprises lamp, reflector and lens and fits into a simple PAR can housing.) Although manufacturers could have simply replaced the filament lamp of the conventional PAR with LEDs, most have taken the opportunity to add some control electronics as well. A typical LED PAR can will be capable of DMX512 control from a lighting console. This is disco, however, and you don’t want a console or operator; the unit will, as standard, have several automatic modes. Typically you will find that it can strobe, cycle through the colour range and do sound-to-light, all within a compact and inexpensive unit. Alternatively, you could buy a Terralec LED Devil. This comparatively inexpensive unit has three optical discs and six lenses, and can flood the room with beams of LED light, also offering automatic programmes, dimming and strobe. From the same manufacturer is the Lounge Bar Laser. This combines an 80mW red laser, a 30mW green laser and what the manufacturer describes as a ‘water wave’ LED projector. Proving that the mood of a disco doesn’t have to be one of wall-to-wall excitement, the Lounge Bar Laser is claimed to be capable of a ‘soothing cloud effect’; I think I’ll have one for my living room. Don’t forget the importance of laser safety — both to your audience and your staying out of jail.

I can’t end this section without mentioning that good old staple, UV light, which, as you know, makes certain chemicals fluoresce. Interestingly, I’ve never heard anyone go, “Oh it’s that damned fluorescent effect again,” they just enjoy it. Of course it’s embarrassing when you’ve washed all your clobber in new MegaBrite detergent and you’re glowing bright purple all the way up and down, but your mates will enjoy it, and you’ll probably get over it eventually. I also can’t end this section without mentioning strobe lights. OK, so it’s a hoary old cliché, but people do enjoy it. Don’t forget to put up warning notices, though.

I fully realise that, for many performing musicians, talking about the disco scene is tantamount to colluding with the enemy. I know where my sympathies lie, but clearly the fullness of time has demonstrated that disco has its place and looks set for a solid future. So it’s no use complaining that DJs are doing real musicians out of jobs. No, it’s far better to take a close look at what they are doing and steal the best bits of their act! One of the clear features of disco is that it is audience-centered, so even if there is a DJ on stage, the fact remains that the audience has come to have a good time among themselves. What we can consider is designing lighting that doesn’t just illuminate one end of the room and say, “Here’s a great spectacle, and it’s all happening up on this stage.” On the contrary, the incorporation of certain elements of disco lighting can help the audience become more a part of what’s going on rather than passive spectators. If you can get your audience to clap along, that’s fine. If you can use a radio link and walk out among the audience, that’s fine too; you’re increasing active involvement. Creative lighting design can help too, and a lot of the hard work has been done by designers working in the field of disco. 0

Disco Lights

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