ODESZA - LED DRUMS

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing an expert practice their craft, you’ll know how fascinating and rewarding it is to experience.

We had a fantastic opportunity to shadow the Odesza drumline throughout the different phases of their preparation for The Last Goodbye. Throughout the planning and rehearsal stages we were able to grasp what kind of workload the drumline would be handling. Carrying a lot of weight, quick changes, navigating a dark stage with dark masks, pyro, lighting and the powerful energy from the audience.

Understanding the nuances of their performance guided us in our design of the lighting system within the drums. This system needed to incorporate LED in each drum that would be bright enough to illuminate the acrylic shell and stand out in the midst of a very large production. The drum line has to be fully mobile throughout the show so the system would have to be wireless as well, which also introduces a need for battery power.

Our Approach

To begin designing a system like this, we sought out a wireless system that would be robust enough to function inside the body of a drum that would be hit constantly. We coordinated heavily with the people at RC4 Wireless to get a system that would integrate seamlessly with the rest of the lighting package. This system needed to be lightweight, quickly replaceable if broken, and function worldwide in areas with different wireless spectrum regulations. The team chose the RC4Magic S3 DMXpix system for the ability to integrate LED products easily. A single transceiver receives DMX from the MA and converts and transmits a signal to each drum. A receiver in the drum then controls the two LED strips within. With at minimum 12 units on stage divided into two subunits of tape, all 24 “fixtures'' hit their cues without an issue. We’ve been very pleased with the RC4 system!

When it came to fitting a system into an actual drum, we had the mission of integrating LED and control without tampering with any part of the drum’s structure. No drilling, cutting or permanent modification could take place. We implemented a bracket system that was adhered to the interior walls and used ACM to make a lightweight and replaceable surface for the tape and control to attach to.

We sourced fabric zipper bags to hold the batteries that were installed on the drums’ outer rails. Luckily there was at least one hole on each type of drum through which we could feed a cable to power the system.

Lighting it up…

The LED product is IP68 rated neon and can bend at a tight enough radius to fit perfectly in the drums. We have a ring in the bottom of the drum to illuminate the inside and an additional ring facing up through the translucent top skin to illuminate the drummer and their mask. The tape is pixel mappable and has the room for different programming down the road. The LED product in conjunction with the wireless system is capable of syncing timing perfectly across all the drums so the lighting team could really create impact with specificity.

Keeping the choreography in mind, each drum is equipped with a 24V rechargeable battery capable of running the LEDs at full white for up to 6 hours before needing a charge. This allows each drum to move independently with no cable leash. We worked with Motion Music to establish a charging system offstage while also ensuring the ecosystem of the drums was understood between the drummer, stage manager, and lighting director. At the end of it all, the drumline and stage manager only had to insert a battery into the fabric pouch, plug it in and switch it on. The drums then knew to listen to the lighting desk and work their magic for the show.