Singing Choir

This animated Christmas choir is a large wireframe display element constructed from heavy wire, clear rope light, vinyl-coated garden fencing and PVC pipe. Eleven individually controlled choir members allow the different vocal sections to be animated along with the music.

This turned out to be a pretty sizeable project, and it takes two people to move it around because it's so unwieldy and heavy, but it's been a popular part of my display for quite a few years. I don't use it every year, but because it uses rope light, it's super-low maintenance and fills up a lot of visual space. — Dirknerkle

Materials and Tools

The original project used the following materials and tools:

• Two 50-foot spools of 9-gauge wire
• Clear white rope light
• Vinyl-coated wire garden fencing
• PVC pipe for the supporting arch
• Red, blue, yellow and green incandescent mini-light strings
• Black spray paint
• Dupli-Color Metalcast transparent spray paint
• Black electrical tape
• Outdoor-rated zip ties
• String for measuring the wireframe outlines
• Newspaper or other large sheets of paper
• Digital projector
• Wire cutters and bending tools
• Welding equipment
• A 16-channel lighting controller
• Ground stakes

Safety

The heavy wire used for this project can spring back while it is being bent or cut. Wear gloves and eye protection, and secure the wire while working with it.

Welding should be performed only by someone familiar with the equipment and appropriate safety procedures. Work in a properly ventilated area and keep combustible materials away from the welding and painting areas.

Paint and other coatings should be applied outdoors or in a well-ventilated location in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions.

Developing the Design

I came up with a concept while sitting in the choir loft between anthems in church one Sunday morning, and I drew a little sketch in the margin of my daily service bulletin:

I found a graphic on the Internet that was close to the vision that I had for the choir, so I made a screen capture of that.

I needed a way to enlarge the relatively small graphic to the size I wanted, so I used a digital projector to project it up on a wall. I taped several sheets of newspaper together as my "canvas" so I could outline the elements I wanted to make in wire.

Forming the Wireframes

I used 9-gauge wire from Lowe's that came in 50-foot spools. It's very stiff but bendable and substantial enough to weld, and it's rather inexpensive. I used two spools for all the elements of this frame.

Ping pong tables come in really handy for big projects like this! I laid out the paper, and because I wanted to make each frame out of a single piece of wire, I needed to know how long each wire should be.

I used string and taped it onto the outline of each element and then used each string to measure the length of wire and rope light I needed. The string also provided good practice for determining how I would wire the frames with a single, continuous length of rope light.

After cutting and bending the wire into the shape I needed, I welded each piece together.

Painting the Frames

Because I was planning to resurface the driveway anyway, I painted the frames on the driveway with flat black paint. Painting may not have been necessary, but I think it hides the metal better than if the frames had not been painted. It also seems to help the zip ties grip the frames.

Installing and Coloring the Rope Light

Once the frames were painted, I performed a test fit on the ping pong table and started zip-tying clear white rope light to each frame.

The clear white rope light I selected could be cut every 24 inches. Later, I used black electrical tape to mask areas that I did not want to illuminate.

Because I used clear white rope light, I used Metalcast spray paint to color the various figures. Dupli-Color Metalcast spray paint is usually available from automotive-parts stores and online retailers.

In some cases, masking tape was used to protect sections from overspray. Each element received several coats of spray paint to deepen the color.

I then laid the completed sections on the garage floor for a test. The wire grid beneath the frames served as the base that held all the sections together. Zip-tying the pieces to one another and to the grid made the assembly quite strong.

The grid is vinyl-coated wire garden fencing, commonly available from home-improvement stores.

After five years of use, the Metalcast colors remained vibrant and had faded only slightly.

Support Frame and Installation

I made an arch from PVC pipe, mounted the wire grid inside the arch and zip-tied four strings of incandescent mini lights around it. The four strings were red, blue, yellow and green.

A single 16-channel controller was used for the 11 choir members and the four colors on the arch, leaving one spare channel.

To mount the completed frame, I pound a couple of stakes into the ground and set the PVC arch over them to support the bottom. The upper portion is secured to nearby tree branches with zip ties in three or four places.

Animation and Sequencing

All in all, it gives a nice effect, and each choir member is animated individually.

There are three sopranos, three altos, three tenors and two basses. When the choir is used, I animate the different vocal sections appropriately with the music.

Sequencing it takes a lot of time....

Refurbishment

After eight years of use, I decided to refurbish the colors with Metalcast paint again.

Good as new!

Modern Lighting Options

The original choir was built with clear incandescent rope light and traditional individually controlled AC channels. That method remains practical because rope light is durable, visually continuous and relatively low-maintenance.

Builders creating a similar display today also have several other options:

• LED rope light
• Low-voltage flexible LED neon
• Individually addressable RGB pixel strip inside a diffuser
• Pixel rope or flexible pixel neon
• Seed pixels mounted to wire or narrow plastic strips

Modern pixel-based lighting can provide changing colors and more detailed animation, but it also requires additional planning for data wiring, power distribution, controllers and sequencing.

A modern version could be sequenced with software such as xLights and operated from a compatible pixel controller. However, replacing the original rope light with pixels would substantially change the electrical and mechanical design of the project.

Lessons Learned

• Large wireframe props can become much heavier and harder to handle than expected.
• A full-size projected pattern is an effective way to enlarge a small drawing.
• String provides a simple method for measuring irregular wire and rope-light paths.
• Designing each figure around one continuous lighting path reduces the number of electrical connections.
• Flat black paint helps the supporting structure disappear at night.
• Transparent color coatings can provide durable color while allowing the original light to remain visible.
• A wire garden-fence grid can provide a strong, lightweight base for joining multiple wireframe elements.
• Large props should be designed with installation, removal, transportation and storage in mind from the beginning.

Final Thoughts

This project requires substantial fabrication and sequencing effort, but the completed choir fills a large amount of visual space and provides a distinctive animated element for a Christmas display.

The original rope-light construction has also proven remarkably durable. With occasional repainting and replacement of weathered zip ties, the choir has remained usable for many years.