Hybrid Night: Theatre then DJ

What it's for — Some nights start as a show that runs to a clock or a call and turn into a DJ set: a fashion show into a club night, a keynote into a party, a ceremony into a dance floor. This page explains how the Theatre and DJ halves share one app, how to hand the night from one to the other, what a second laptop changes, and the manual-GO backup pattern you fall back on when something stops working.

Read this first: what CueSync gives you and what it does not

CueSync has no "Act Two" switch. There is no hand-over button, no cue that moves the night from one engine to the other, and no clock shared between the two halves. What exists is a set of separate engines that can live in one show file, and one rule that keeps them from driving the rig at once: while the Theatre show is playing, the DJ engines hold back. Everything else on this page is a procedure you follow, not a mode the app enters.

That is enough to run a hybrid night, and it is why the safest hybrid nights are built around a few plain habits: stop or pause the show on purpose, fire a known state first in the new half, and keep a manual fall-back you have rehearsed.

The engines on one laptop

All four can send to the same rig, which is why the rules below exist. A single .cuesync file can hold a Show Editor show and a Cues list together.

Which edition gives you which screen

Act One needs Show Editor and Run Mode, so it needs Theatre or Production. Act Two's beat-driven half needs Auto Pilot, so it needs DJ or Production. Only Production has both on one machine. The Cues list and Cue Pads are in every edition, and that is what makes the manual-GO backup show run anywhere.

What Space does on each screen

Space is the most-pressed key of the night and it means different things by screen. Check the screen before you trust it.

Two consequences. A DJ playing local audio who presses Space to fire a cue pauses the music; fire from a pad or the GO button. And Run Mode's Space never fires a Cues-list cue, so to fire one from Run Mode use the mouse, or go to Cues first. GO is the show's whenever the main window is on Run Mode: Space in a pop-out of Cues, Cue Pads, Home or another screen answers for the show, while a Show Editor, Track Prep or Local Audio pop-out never fires a GO.

What a playing show does to everything else

Show Control has three transport states, and only one of them, Playing, holds the rest of the app back.

Read the Paused row twice. Pausing the show at an interval releases the DJ engines. If a track is armed and playing during a pause, Auto Pilot fires. Keep Auto Pilot switched off (its enable toggle in the status header) until the DJ half has begun.

Nothing in the pad path reads the show's transport, so pads fire during the show as well. That is a feature for a hand-held effect and a hazard for a stray press.

The two DRY switches share one gate

Theatre's DRY and the Cues screen's own DRY RUN toggle both switch off the same output. Leave the Theatre show in DRY and the Cues list, the pads and Auto Pilot send nothing too. Leave the Cues screen in DRY RUN and the Theatre show's cues are suppressed too. Neither is saved in the show file. Look at both before doors and again before Act Two.

Handing over from Act One to Act Two

Before doors

1. Build both halves in one file. The Theatre Parts in the Show Editor. The Cues list, pad bank and Auto Pilot profile for the DJ half. Auto Pilot's profile and the pad banks are saved in the show.
2. Analyse the DJ tracks in Track Prep (Production or DJ) so Auto Pilot arms quickly.
3. Set the timecode priority for Act One. On the Timecode screen, the Theatre preset puts MTC and LTC above a Pioneer deck; the default puts the deck first, and a deck joining the network can take over a chased show mid-act. Auto Pilot and the Cues list take their beat from the decks, Ableton Link or the internal clock, not from timecode, so this only matters to the Theatre half.
4. Decide whether Act One ends with Stop or Pause (below), and write it on the cue sheet.
5. Run Flight Check and read the per-output lines.
6. Rehearse the hand-over itself once, on the real rig, drilling it the way you would drill a backup: the last Theatre cue, the Stop, the first DJ cue.

At the hand-over

1. The last Theatre cue goes. Make it an absolute look: a GrandMA3 Sequence cue with a cue number, not Go+, so the stage is in a known state.
2. Stop the show, or pause it. Stop (double-press, or Esc twice) sends nothing to the rig, and does not turn off what the show left up. It resets the show to the top: every cue back to pending, the playhead at zero, the crash-recovery snapshot cleared. It also stops previews and the local-audio transport unless that transport is sounding the show itself. Press Play afterwards and the show re-arms from the top. Pause keeps the position and every fired marker, and it releases the DJ engines, as the table above says. Use Stop for a one-way night. Use Pause when the show must come back (an encore, a return to the stage) and keep Auto Pilot off in the meantime.
3. CueSync holds no output state to hand over. Whatever the last cue set stays set on the desks. The first DJ move should put the rig in a state you chose: a pad or a Cues-list cue that fires a Look. A backup show can do this with a cue such as DJ Transition (a grandMA3 cue, a Resolume clear, a Pixera timeline swap), fired by hand.
4. Move to the DJ screens. Cmd+5 for Auto Pilot, Cmd+2 for Cues, Cmd+3 for Cue Pads. Check the Auto Pilot pill has left STANDBY: it reads RUNNING once beats arrive, ARMED for a track still waiting for its first beat, or IDLE with no track armed.
5. Set the DRY switches to what you mean.

The panic controls across the hand-over

Auto Pilot also pauses itself after two manual GOs within three seconds when Pause on Manual Go is on, which is its default. One stray press does not pause it.

The fall-back ladder: the manual-GO backup show

Take a night whose Act One is a Theatre show and whose Act Two is a DJ set, with a backup show that drives grandMA3, Resolume, Pixera and QLab by hand. Go down one rung at a time; each keeps more of the show than the one below.

Build the backup show as a plain Cues list: every trigger Manual, every action broadcast, and no tracks, Parts, timecode or Pro DJ Link. That is why it runs on any edition and does not depend on a deck. Run it from Cues, Cue Pads or Home, never from Run Mode or the Show Editor, where Space means something else. Give it a first cue, for example 0.1 SAFE, that puts every system in a known state; a panic route (Cmd+Shift+B, a PANIC ALL pad, and a panic cue that sends each system its own panic verb); and a recovery route, a RELEASE pad that fires a cue restoring each system, because Cmd+Shift+B's own release lifts only the grandMA3 Grand Master. Write down what each system must already hold before the backup show fires.

Two laptops, one licence, one rig

• Registrations and live machines are different numbers. A solo licence has two device registrations and one live machine at a time: a primary and a backup, where the backup is a standby. A team licence has three registrations and three live machines. A theatre laptop and a DJ laptop that must both drive outputs at the same time therefore need a team licence.
• A machine needs to be the live one only when it sends to the rig. Editing, prep, analysis and cue authoring are not limited, so you can build tomorrow's show on a laptop while the booth machine is live.
• A standby machine waits for the live one to let go. Its outputs stay disconnected with a sticky red notice: "<machine>" is the live machine for this licence, so this one is on standby. Quit CueSync on that machine and this one can connect straight away — or within <n>s on its own if it has stopped responding. Quit CueSync on the machine you are leaving.
• A running show is not interrupted by the hand-over rule.
• A show saved on another computer opens with its network outputs held. When you open the backup show on the spare laptop, a notice lists the outputs that are not connected yet, each with the address it would dial, and Connect turns them all on (or you switch each on from Outputs). MIDI outputs are not held. If the show has no unsaved changes when you press Connect, that answer is remembered on this computer for that exact file, so a relaunch reopens it connected; a newer copy of the file asks again. Open each fresh copy on the spare laptop and press Connect during rehearsal, not on the night.
• The licence is separate. A paid licence works offline for seven days (a lifetime licence for thirty); past that it goes Read-Only, where GO reports the licence is in ReadOnly mode, so no cue was sent and nothing reaches the rig. Sign in on both laptops while online before the day.
• What travels in the show file and what does not. Cues, groups, pad banks, outputs, MIDI maps, Auto Pilot profiles, the Palette's scenes and the phrase corrections travel. The pixel wall, settings, credentials (a QLab passcode, a grandMA2 login), audio files (the file stores a path) and the contents of the systems it drives do not. Export Settings on the primary, import on the spare, and re-enter the credentials.
• Same CueSync version on both.

Use cases

Each is an illustrative rig. The hand-over steps are the ones above.

1. A 20-minute fashion show into a DJ set

1. On a Production laptop, in the Show Editor, make one Part with the runway music. Tap the TC role chip to Master so CueSync plays the audio and generates the clock, or to Follower if the music comes from another machine with timecode.
2. Add LX and VX lanes, route them, and add the show's cues as Timecode cues with absolute actions. Make the last one a look the club half can start from.
3. Build the DJ half: analyse tracks in Track Prep, enable Auto Pilot, and set up a Cue Pads bank with a house-lights pad and a Blackout pad. In the Cues list add a Manual cue that fires the club look.
4. Rehearse: run the show in Run Mode in DRY, then REHEARSE+, then check both DRY switches.
5. During the show, stay in Run Mode. With a track armed, the Auto Pilot pill reads STANDBY.
6. After the last runway cue, press Stop twice in Run Mode.
7. Press Cmd+2. Fire the club-look cue by hovering its row and pressing the play icon (that fires it whatever is next), or with the GO button if it is the NEXT cue. Then Cmd+5.

You should see the Auto Pilot pill leave STANDBY and read RUNNING once the decks deliver beats, and the Cues list's next cue advance.

2. A conference keynote into a party

1. Build the keynote as Manual cues in one Part: house to half, presentation look, blackout for a video, house up. Number them as the stage manager's script does. Route the lanes.
2. In Settings → Show Control keep GO fires the standby stack on.
3. Build the party as a Cues list and a Cue Pads bank. If the DJ plays local audio, plan to fire from pads, not Space.
4. Keynote: in Run Mode press Play. Every Manual cue sits at STBY. The stage manager calls the cues; press Space for each.
5. When the keynote ends, fire the house up cue, then Stop.
6. Fire the party's opening cue from Cues (hover its row and press the play icon). Turn Auto Pilot on and load the first track.

You should see the Run Mode running order stop advancing after the Stop, and the Cues screen mark the party's first cue LIVE.

3. A wedding

1. Segment the night into Parts: processional, first dance, speeches, then the party. Use Manual cues for the planner's calls, with a QLab GO for each piece of music and grandMA3 looks for the room.
2. Keep Auto Pilot switched off until the party begins.
3. Between segments, Pause the show instead of stopping it, so the position and fired markers survive. While it is paused the Cues list's automatic triggers are free to fire, so leave the Cues list on Manual triggers until the party.
4. For the party, Stop the show, switch Auto Pilot on and load the first track.
5. If a family member asks for a song out of order, use the pad bank, not the Cues list's next cue.

You should see the show resume from where you paused it in the earlier segments, and Auto Pilot fire nothing until you enable it.

4. What to do if the DJ link drops mid-set

1. Notice it. Beats stop arriving. If the master deck vanishes, CueSync records Master deck N disappeared — AutoPilot will not arm new tracks until master is reclaimed. As a warning it goes to the notification history (Cmd+Shift+H), not to a pop-up, so do not wait for it.
2. Pause Auto Pilot in its status header, or press Cmd+Shift+M. Auto Pilot fires from beat events, so left running it would start firing again the moment beats return; pausing it is rung 2 of the ladder below.
3. Fire the room from Cue Pads. The desks hold whatever they were last sent.
4. If the fault is CueSync or the show file rather than the link, move down the ladder: the backup show on the same laptop, then the spare.
5. When the link is back, press Resume in the Auto Pilot status header, or Cmd+Shift+R for Resume All if a panic state is also latched.

You should see the pads fire and Auto Pilot stay paused until you resume it.

Tips & gotchas

• There is no hand-over. The only automatic rule is that a playing Theatre show holds back Auto Pilot and the Cues list's automatic triggers.
• Pause is not Stop. Pause lets the DJ engines fire. Stop resets the show, and pressing Play again re-arms it from the top.
• Stopping the show stops auditions. A Stop during a local-audio track that the DJ is playing (not the show's own audio) stops it. Stop the show before you start the music.
• Space on the Cues screen is not always GO. A playing or paused local-audio track takes it.
• A latched Blackout during Act Two reaches a loaded Theatre show. Its timecode firing is held and a banner says so; release the blackout to clear it.
• Freeze does not hold the show. To stop a Theatre show firing, use Hold TC, Pause or Blackout.
• The two DRY switches share a gate. Check both.
• A spare cannot drive the rig while the primary is live, and it is not a hot standby: quit the primary first, or wait a couple of minutes.
• Pixel wall and settings are per machine. A spare comes up dark unless you carried the settings across.

Before show use

Protocol status follows the Protocol Reference: four integrations have been run against the real program or hardware, and the rest are built to the manufacturer's published interface and have not. Rehearse the hand-over on your own rig before show use.

Related

• Theatre Show Workflow — Act One from prep to paperwork
• DJ Set Workflow — Act Two from prep to the last track
• Run Mode — Transport, Hold TC and timecode recovery
• Auto Pilot — The fire plan and pausing it
• Cues and Cue Pads — The manual-GO half
• Local Audio — Playing files without decks
• Preparing the Show Machine — Before doors on either laptop
• Timecode — Source priority and the Theatre preset
• Desk Verification — A pre-show checklist for your own desk
• How CueSync Works — The mental model