Home's lights set to music
Computer whiz makes Christmas lights dance
This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press on Friday, December 16, 2005.

By TITUS GEE
Valley Press Staff Writer

For Rick Williams , Christmas starts with the Griswolds, America's favorite superlative for holiday extravagance.

"As soon as we turn on the lights, we go in and put on 'Christmas Vacation.' That's how the holidays begin for me," Williams said.

In the 1989 movie "Christmas Vacation" (for the "pop-culturally challenged" among us), Chevy Chase plays Clark Griswold, the holiday enthusiast whose 25,000-bulb Christmas decorations force the power plant to start its backup nuclear reactor.

Some might say Williams plays Clark Griswold in real life.

Last year Williams' two-story house at 41465 Manzanita Drive in Quartz Hill boasted 20,000 lights, and stacked up a $700 electric bill. This year he scaled it back to 8,000 lights.

"I'm going for the clean look," Williams said.

Of course he added a computer system that synchronizes the lights to flash along with the music he broadcasts from the front yard. Passers-by can listen from the curb or tune their car stereos to a low-power FM station. A sign on the street lets them know what station to tune in for the music. A laptop computer mounted on the wall of his garage tells the lights when to flash.

The system, manufactured by a company called Light-O-Rama, electronically manipulates 16 separate channels, allowing Williams to program each string separately. He uses rhythms and colors to represent different elements of the music. Bulbs on the bushes beat out the percussion part. Colored floodlights represent background vocals. The melody plays out on a row of custom-built, large-bulb lights along the roof.

If there is "a piano playing, I'll pick out each individual key," he said. "I'll use color for tone qualities … so it's a real visual effect, rather than 'Wow, look how many lights he has.' "

Williams buys the melody lights, that line the roof, in 300-foot spools. ("I could get spools up to 1,000 feet … ") He used about 3,000 feet of extension cords and spent three solid weekends meticulously stapling each light twice, so they would stand out from the eaves at a uniform angle.

Creating the synchronized musical displays took much longer. Since October, Williams has spent weekends, evenings, even his lunch breaks programming the lights to match the music. He works with flashes as short as one-tenth of a second, and he can set the intensity of the lights anywhere from 1% to 100%, depending on the feel he wants. Williams focuses on two or three seconds of music at a time, so a four-minute song might take six to eight hours to program, he said.

The result is nothing less than remarkable. In a quiet section, the yard might go dark except for a lonely melody row, but as the symphony swells, the complexity of the dance can be thrilling. Twinkling icicle lights capture the feeling of shimmering chimes. Snowballs hung in a tree pick up the ringing of bells. Each voice stands out from the music as the eyes fall on its counterpart in lights.

Williams' songs run the gamut from nostalgic classical hymn arrangements to the electrified holiday jamming of Trans-Siberian Orchestra and the grooving strains of "Boogie Woogie Santa Claus."

Williams' 8-year-old son, Chris, programmed a display using "Linus & Lucy" by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi, the theme song for Charlie Brown and his pals in the Peanuts cartoon specials. Williams said his son's timing was spot on, but dad still couldn't resist tweaking it a little.

Chris cried foul when he saw the result.

"Somebody's been messin' with my song, Dad," the boy said.

"That was me," said Williams.

"You should put it back," Chris said. "It was perfect."

The moment drew attention to the artistic nature of what may become a unique niche in pop artistry.

The combination of lights and music in Christmas displays stands on the brink of discovery as an artistic expression.

Williams' interest predates his discovery of the latest technology.

The computer technician had planned to build a computerized system when he found the Light-O-Rama products at PlanetChristmas.com, a Web site for Christmas lights enthusiasts. The site showcases yard displays that put to shame even Griswold's fictional hyperbole. Some use as many as half a million lights, as well as glowing inflatables and animatronics.

A few spend most of the year preparing to "turn on" the day after Thanksgiving, Williams said.

The efforts of these tinseled titans have drawn national attention in recent weeks.

A video from another PlanetChristmas house has been making Web waves on the online sea since Thanksgiving - one of the few displays, even on the site, that integrates music and lights. The oft-downloaded clip spurred an investigation by Snopes.com, a Web site that tracks down urban legends, to see if the display was real or a digital manipulation.

The video shows a large house decked out in white and blue lights that dance to every nuance of the song "Wizards in Winter," by Trans-Siberian Orchestra. According to Snopes, Carson Williams (no relation), an electrical engineer in Mason, Ohio, created the display and the video that has been posted, e-mailed and linked so often that some sites have taken it down to avoid Internet traffic jams. The clip actually shows last year's display, but the popularity of the video landed Carson Williams on NBC's Today Show Dec. 5, drawing attention to the most visible of holiday niche hobbies.

But fame turned into misfortune for the Ohio Williams family, according to a local news report from Ohio. Within a day of the NBC appearance, Carson had to shut down his display because of the traffic overwhelming his suburban street.

Back on Manzanita Drive, Quartz Hill's king of Christmas cool has heard no complaints from the neighbors, many of whom stop their cars in the street and tune in the music on their radios, he said. On a recent night, one man came across the street in his slippers to experience the display and chat with its creator.

Williams told him about all the displays featured on PlanetChristmas.com, then commented (without a trace of self-deprecation), "Some of these people are really into this."

Next year the light maestro's "clean look" may well rival the most dedicated among them.

Williams plans to upgrade his system to 48 channels. Sixteen of them will control a 12-foot Christmas tree bearing 40,000 lights.

Williams already has a set of 2-foot candy canes that will dance around the perimeter of the yard, and he plans to mount two snow machines on the roof, to add drama to songs like "Winter Wonderland."

He will probably begin hanging lights in October and might add a Halloween display along the way.

"I'll put twice as much effort into it next year," Williams said. "We'll start on that after the first of the year."

tgee@avpress.com