Choreography...a How to For Dummies edition?

[George Simmons]

Why not set up a prop in the Visualizer (or the animation) and play around with sequencing the CCBs manually?  Not much you need to learn since you already know the S3 software, and it would give you the opportunity to figure out how RGB channels in general work.  I think you might find that a useful foundation for whatever software you might ultimately choose to use for sequencing your RGB stuff. 

[SteveMaris]

Why not set up a prop in the Visualizer (or the animation) and play around with sequencing the CCBs manually?  Not much you need to learn since you already know the S3 software, and it would give you the opportunity to figure out how RGB channels in general work.  I think you might find that a useful foundation for whatever software you might ultimately choose to use for sequencing your RGB stuff. 

Exactly what I am doing right now.

My hats of to you and other RGB'ers. I am getting a headache doing this sh%#.

I suppose it will get easier eventually...

[friskybri]

Apparently my inner Yoda isn't the same without the voice.   But at least George got it.

Brian your yoda is very good.    I have always been impressed with your work.    Most on here shows suck ass.   Very few has been like yours and George Simmons           I look at heart and feel the music.  Connect with the people watching and not to many hit that. 

[Orville]

Seeing RGB's are a different type thing, I've been thinking about that, just trying to figure out the ins and outs of setting up RGB stuff in S3.   So this RGB stuff is definitely going to be a new learning experience for me.

[Klayfish]

OK, so I set up a very crude drawing in the visualizer.  It's actually on a blank background, because for whatever reason I'm having trouble importing a picture to it.  I'll fix that shortly, but the drawing is good enough for now.  They're laid out to my channels, etc... 

 

I wanted to start my sequencing with a non-Christmas song, for practice.  Then I'm going to dive head first into Christmas stuff.  Last years' big non-Christmas song was Call Me Maybe.  I did that in 16 channel.  The runner-up favorite seemed to be "Lights" by Ellie Goulding, so I want to try that song.  I've downloaded the song and ran it through Audacity.  Listened to it several times, trying to get a mental image of what I want.  How often do you have one group of channels sequenced to the beat and another group sequenced to the lyrics?  My 32 channels are broken up into 3 groups.  I'm getting a mental image of having one group do the primary beat, one group do the background beat and the third doing the lyrics, then during the refrain having them all work together (hope my description makes sense).

[George Simmons]

I don't know the difference between primary beats or background beats, or upbeats or downbeats, or any of that musical sort of stuff, so I'll leave that to others to address.  My only advice is to make sure that however you use your display elements that the viewers will be able to follow along.  You know exactly what you are thinking, but if the viewers can't follow your train of thought, you run the risk of it degenerating into what I refer to as viusal gibberish. 

 

If you have someone who'll give you an unvarnished opinion, I say take advantage of that.  In my case, Sharon doesn't hesitate to let me know what she's thinking.  Naturally, I love it when she says complimentary things, but when she simply says "it looks like $hit" that tells me that my ideas didn't translate very well and that sequence, as is, never makes it to the public arena.

 

As for lyrics, I've never really enjoyed trying to sequence to lyrics.  (That's a big reason why I use so many instrumental songs.)  In songs with words, I've mostly just ignored the singing - under the presumption that the singer(s) themselves were singing along to the beat - and I just focus on the music.  In cases where I have worked with lyrics, I've mostly used my poles (or other vertical display elements) as VU meters for the voices.