grandMA3 Runs in Live Mode for Third Eye Blind’s Summer Gods Tour
September 6, 2024
Rock band Third Eye Blind has completed the fourth edition of their Summer Gods Tour, covering much of North America. Clay Joiner, associate lighting designer at New York City-based Live ReDesigned, which is known for crafting unforgettable experiences, served as the tour’s lighting programmer, utilizing grandMA3 in an unconventional live mode. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of MA Lighting products in North America.
The summer tour kicked off in June in Airway Heights, Washington, and wrapped up on 3 August in Houston, with dates at Red Rocks and the Fontainebleau, Las Vegas in between.
“My friend Chris Denholm designed the show and asked me if I’d program it,” says Joiner. “We were looking for a joyous, summer, seductive feeling and the ability for the band to move around on stage and interact with the audience. We wanted them to feel the energy of the band and to make sure the band didn’t feel robotic as can happen with a timecode show. They needed to be more organic yet still hit all the right vocal notes and guitar strums: at least 50-100 cues for every song in the cue stack. There were more than 2,000 manual cues in 70 minutes with an acoustic set in the middle.”
In programming the show it was Joiner’s goal to “push for all the same things you get in a timecode show while having a manual show. grandMA3 gave us the freedom to streamline the process of a manual show and still have all the elements you expect from a timecode show.”
Joiner used two grandMA3 full-size desks for the tour, which were provided by lighting vendor Solotech. Grey Nicholson served as the lighting director and board operator.
Joiner cites grandMA3’s Phasers effects and chasers and Selection Grids as “hugely” important to the manually-driven show. “We were able to manipulate the order of the fixtures on the fly on the grid, something we didn’t realise we’d need until we used it,” he points out. “We could fire intricate Phasers and effects in one cue, creating very dynamic and beautiful looks way better than we could with grandMA2.”
grandMA3 also “made dealing with lots of pixels easier,” he says. “On some of the bigger shows we had thousands and thousands of pixels in pixel strips and grandMA3 enabled us to quickly manipulate specific sets of pixels. grandMA3 also made it easy to grab and manipulate groups of pixels in our Robe Tarrantulas and Flares.”
Joiner easily ported the Tarrantula fixture profile from grandMA2 to grandMA3. “I stored all the presets to the fixture type, imported the profile and grandMA3 Show Creator pumped out all the presets flawlessly. Once we had the colors, strobes, and zooms, we could store them and take them out at will.”
In addition to lighting, grandMA3 controlled Pangolin lasers through a profile that also was previously built and ported over to the new software. grandMA3 also drove a pair of MDG theONE atmospheric generators through cue stack. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of MDG products in North America.
"TheONE is the industry standard,” says Joiner. “I love its ability to go back and forth, giving us a hazy atmosphere to make things feel full visually then switch to very smoky for some really big moments.”
He notes that he has “only used grandMA3 on shows this year. It has greatly improved my quality of life and made programming faster. For the Third Eye Blind tour, grandMA3 allowed us to run a manual show on the most modern piece of equipment out there. That’s super cool!”
“grandMA3 software is one of the platform’s best advances in a long time,” says Live ReDesigned chief creative officer Nick Whitehouse. “It’s the future of lighting software.
“We were one of the first to use grandMA3 for Carrie Underwood’s Las Vegas residency, and we had full support from ACT to make it work,” adds Whitehouse. “ACT and MA Lighting have been outstanding partners for us.”
“ACT made it easy for me to move from grandMA2 to grandMA3 and has responded immediately when any issues arise,” says Joiner. “They are always there to make sure my shows succeed.”
