Guide to Composing with Glade
The Glade Controller allows you to create your own sequence of light movements across the twenty-eight stems of Glade.
It can look a little complicated at first, but you really do not need to understand everything before you start. Add a movement, play it, change a few things and see what happens. Most of the controller makes much more sense once you begin using it.
Getting started
Open the controller and create a new project, or open one you have already saved.
If you are going to compose with music, I would suggest adding your music at the beginning. Choose Add Audio and select the track from your device.
You can also compose without music.
The score runs along a timeline, with the play-head (the vertical yellow line) fixed in the centre. As the music plays, the score moves past it and each lighting event happens as it reaches the play-head.
The main tracks
Most compositions can be made using the three main tracks:
Background is useful for the underlying character or atmosphere of a passage.
Foreground is generally where the more noticeable movements and gestures sit.
Texture can be used for smaller details and additional activity.
These are not rigid rules. They are simply a useful way of organising the score, and you certainly do not need to use all three.
There are also Source and Arpeggio tracks, which I will come back to under Going deeper.
Adding a movement
Choose a behaviour and add it to one of the tracks.
Each block on the timeline represents a lighting event. Depending on the behaviour you choose, this might be a sweep through the lamp, a bloom, a shimmer, a drifting movement, a cluster of lights or something much simpler.
Drag the block along the timeline to change when it happens. Drag its ends to change its duration.
Play the section and see what it does.
This is probably the quickest way of learning the different behaviours.
Essentials and more advanced settings
Each behaviour has a small number of essential controls which determine its basic character. These are the settings I would start with.
They include things such as brightness, speed, direction, spread or the point from which a movement begins.
The controller also provides more detailed Refine settings. These give you finer control over the behaviour — the shape of a fade, the amount of randomness, the spacing between events and other settings specific to that particular movement.
You do not need to adjust everything. In fact, I would avoid doing so at first. Often changing one or two settings is enough to completely alter the character of a movement.
Working with the timeline
You can zoom into the timeline when you need to position something precisely, and zoom back out when you want to see the shape of a longer section.
Blocks can be moved, resized, duplicated and deleted as the composition develops.
Movements on different tracks can overlap, allowing several things to happen at once. I normally find it easier to get one idea working first and then add another layer if it needs it.
Play the score often. Watching a short section repeatedly while making small changes is generally much easier than trying to construct a whole composition before seeing it.
Creating a beat track
If you are working with music, you can create a beat or pulse map. This allows lighting events to be positioned and repeated in relation to the rhythm of the music rather than simply by time.
You do not have to do this. For slower or more freely composed movements, placing things by eye and ear may be all you need.
To create a beat map, play a section where the pulse is clear and use Tap Local to tap along with the music.
For music with a very steady tempo, one good set of taps may be enough. With live music, however, the tempo often changes slightly as the piece develops. In that case you can add further tap sets in the Middle and towards the End of the piece.
When you are happy with the taps, choose Build Tempo Map.
The controller then uses those points to estimate the musical pulse between them.
Once the beat map has been created, you can use it to place events on beats, repeat movements at musical intervals and build more precise rhythmic sequences.
It is there as a guide rather than a rule. There is absolutely no need for everything to happen on a beat.
Repeating and developing ideas
A movement does not have to happen only once.
Blocks can be duplicated and placed elsewhere in the composition, or repeated in relation to the beat track.
Returning to something that has happened earlier can give a composition structure. It does not need to return unchanged — altering the brightness, speed, direction or another setting can be enough to make it feel related without simply repeating itself.
Saving your work
The controller saves your work in the browser while you are using it, but I would not rely on this as your permanent copy.
If you have made something you want to keep, export the project file and save it somewhere sensible. You can then open that file again later and continue working on it.
Giving different versions clear names is useful once you start experimenting.
Going deeper
You can make a complete composition without using anything beyond the main tracks and behaviours. The following tools are there when you want more control.
Source tracks
The Source track allows you to create and edit a behaviour that can then be used repeatedly elsewhere in the score.
Think of the Source as defining the movement itself rather than defining every occasion on which it happens.
This becomes particularly useful when working with Arpeggios.
Arpeggio tracks
An Arpeggio takes a Source behaviour and triggers it repeatedly across the lamp.
Rather than manually placing a separate lighting event for every stem or every beat, you can create a sequence and control how it unfolds.
Arpeggios can follow the pulse map, repeat every chosen number of beats, and move through the stems in different ways.
You can also shape the sequence itself — for example changing its brightness or the intensity of the Source behaviour as the sequence develops.
This allows quite detailed rhythmic movements to be built without having to place every event individually.
I would leave Source and Arpeggio alone until you have spent a little time with the basic controller. They make much more sense once you find yourself wanting to create a movement that repeats or travels through the lamp in a more precise way.
A few thoughts on composing
There is no correct way to compose for Glade, and I would rather not give you too many rules before you start.
A few things I have found useful:
Give movements time to develop.
Darkness is part of the composition too.
A single light can sometimes be more powerful than twenty-eight.
Repetition can be useful, particularly when something changes slightly each time.
If you are working with music, you do not need to respond to every beat or musical event.
Start simply. You can always add more.
Play with it. See what develops.