Changing colors with scenes

Beam for Live
1

Now that I have Beam kind of working, I was wondering about colors. I can easily see how to change a color with the color picker. What if I wanted group 1 to have a red color on the first scene and a blue color on the second scene. Is there any way to do that without have a different instrument for each color?
I would also love to be able to module the hue with the LFO device instead of just one of the color channels.

2

Both of these are something that Ableton makes possible out of the box:

  1. Make a clip, set the automation to the desired color values for each of the relevant color components (R/G/B or H/S/L):

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  2. Use the Ableton’s LFO Max for Live device (Audio Effects → Modulators) mapped to the hue parameter:

    image

Let me know if this does the job.

3

Ahh! Thank you! I didn’t think of that. I definitely am looking for solid color changing, i already knew how to make it move. I appreciate your fast and through reply. I will try this out.

It is possible to just modulate the hue instead of doing R,G and B separately?

4

You are welcome!

It is possible to just modulate the hue instead of doing R,G and B separately?

The conversion between HSL to RGB happens inside of the Max for Live devices, so the hue is a parameter only known to Ableton, but not to Beam. This means:

  • You can still modulate it using any standard Ableton means, such as automation (as in the example 1 of my post above) or using a Max for Live modulator device to modulate a mapped parameter (as in the example 2 of the post above).
  • You cannot use the Beam LFO device to modulate it. That device can only modulate “modulations” that are specified in the fixture profiles of the fixtures present in the selected tag. The advantage of this method is that the device itself is only a user interface, while the “number crunching” happens in Beam internally. This makes it more efficient than the first method (where every value needs to be sent to Beam via OSC, at high speed).

So use the Beam LFO device wherever possible and use the native Ableton means of modulation where this is necessary for creative reasons.