Show Screens Temp
During a live show, it is important to communicate with the audience. Traditionally, this has meant that a good KJ would spend a lot of time on the microphone, making announcements, announcing the lineup of the rotation, etc. While it is still important for a KJ to build rapport with the audience over the microphone, kJams allows you to do much more to get your announcements across. Most obvious is the Who's Up Next rotation screen that you can opt to display between songs or at any time by using the Video → Toggle Rotation command. With Show Screens, there are many options to display a message to your audience, even if they're out of earshot, on a back smoking patio (if there's a video screen out there), or sitting at the bar ignoring you but otherwise staring at the screen. Show Screens allow you to better control the show and to provide a more satisfying experience to your audience.
Messenger
Messenger allows you to overlay a message as a crawl on top of the video display. You can use Messenger to announce Last Call, drink specials, or anything you like. Messages can be displayed immediately or held for later. The Messenger Rotation option scrolls the next three singers across the bottom of the screen. (This info is taken from your KJ Rotation list.) For more information on Messenger, click here.
ShowScreens
ShowScreens differ from messages in that they take up the entire screen and they stay on the screen for as long as you want.(In other word, you have to turn off a ShowScreen.) By contrast, when you use Messenger, the message crawls along the bottom of the screen and then disappears.
So the deal is, in the Video menu there's a list of predefined messages you can show. To show a message, simply select it from the list, and it’s displayed as a ShowScreen. Note that it will stay on the screen until you deselect it.
If you’re using Producer, you can create your own screens or modify the existing ones. The main ShowScreens you will want to be familiar with are the Message and Rotation screens, as these are the actual templates used by kJams to display screen messages and the Who's Up Next rotation screen between each song. You also may find yourself using the iJams, Tip Your Waitress, and Next Singer screens quite a bit during shows.
Note that each ShowScreen included is just a starting point for what you could envision for visual display between (or during) songs. Some are just sample pieces that you will use to build customized ShowScreens. If you want to hide some of these options that you won't be using during your show, find the actual file(s) in your user Library/Preferences/kJams/Producer Templates, and then prefix the file name with a tilde (~) to indicate that you want that ShowScreen hidden (e.g., ~Big Text.xml)
To learn how to create your own, go to the Producer/Tutorials page, then watch the videos called:
- Composing Text and Pictures, and Fading to Black
- Creating and Editing Comp Templates
- Intro and Outro, and Rotation Templates
In addition to the song meta templates (described in the Xattr page), you can also use [venu] to substitute the current venue name, or [SNGR] to substitute the current Singer.
Additional Customization
If you want customize ShowScreens, click Advanced Custom ShowScreens.
If you're interested in showing meta data for the songs you play, click ShowScreen Meta Tags.