Working with Groups

Now it is time to have a look at groups.

Groups Pool

Since we are going to make some groups it would be practical to be able to see them.

It would be nice to have it at the same screen (since there is enough room). So you need to make the Channel Sheet one line smaller and then press the new empty space on the left side.

Again you are presented with the "Create Basic Window" pop-up. This time you need to access the Pools tab. Here you find the Groups button - press it. Now you got some empty group buttons right at your fingertips.

You could store this as a new view or store the existing view again.

The first group

All the odd numbers in our light plot have a warm color and all the even ones have a cold color.

We are going to make some groups with those colors. The first one is all the warm colors from front of house (FOH). Press: 5 + 7 + 9 + 1 1 Please . Now you have selected channels 5, 7, 9 and 11. Then press Store followed by the first available group button. Groups cannot contain any value so we do not need to assign any.

Before you do anything else, use your keyboard to write: FOH Warm - this automatically allows you to label the latest "touched" element. Should you have touched anything else (buttons, screens, anything) before typing, you can use a different method to name things (for instance groups).

The function is called "Label" and you access it by pressing the 'Assign' key twice. Do that and then press the first group button again. Now you have the option to change the name, delete it, or type it for the first time. When you are happy press Please.

Look at your Channel Sheet. Here you can see that the numbers 5, 7, 9 and 11 have the yellow color, meaning that they are still selected. We are done with those four channels, so press the 'Clear' key once.

11 more groups

All right, now you know everything you need to know about making groups. We need 12 groups. All the information you need for making the groups is displayed in the following table. You have already made group 1, but the rest is a nice little exercise.

Group number:	Channels:	Name:
1	5 + 7 + 9 + 11	FOH Warm
2	17 + 19 + 21 + 23	LX1 Warm
3	25 + 27 + 29 + 31	LX2 Warm
4	33 + 35 + 37 + 39	LX4 Warm
5	1 + 3 + 13 + 15	Box Warm
6	All uneven numbers	All Warm
7	6 + 8 + 10 + 12	FOH Cold
8	18 + 20 + 22 + 24	LX1 Cold
9	26 + 28 + 30 + 32	LX2 Cold
10	34 + 36 + 38 + 40	LX4 Cold
11	2 + 4 + 14 + 16	Box Cold
12	All even numbers	All Cold

 

When you are done, your group pool should look something like this:

 

On the next page we will make the first cue.