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Sequence music


lstewartff

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On average how long are most sequences? and where can I get music to start making sequences for myself?

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Most songs that I am interested in sequencing are in the 3 to 6 minute range. 

Sources - ITunes, cd's. 

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1 hour ago, lstewartff said:

On average how long are most sequences? and where can I get music to start making sequences for myself?

A lot of us use an audio program called audacity, it's a free download. If you have iTunes it's as simple as creating an AIFF copy of the song you wish to sequence , then drag and drop it into audacity and export it to your lightorama audio file.

I've done sequences that range from 90 seconds to close to 8 minutes, it doesn't really matter how long of songs you choose other than your viewers might get bored if the same song keeps dragging on.

On a similar topic a lot of newbies ask how long a typical show runs, for me it's usually 15-18 minutes per show. My show starts at 5pm and runs every half hour till 10:15 on weekdays and 11:15 on the weekends. If you anticipate that you're going to be having significant traffic coming to your display it's good to have a gap between shows to allow the traffic from the first show to leave and traffic to arrive and get staged for the upcoming show. Some run their displays non stop and some even allow the viewers to choose which song they want to see, it varies a lot. Welcome to the addiction...

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When I started this crazy hobby at the start of this year, people kept telling me music for LOR had to be 128kbps Constant Bit Rate mp3 to work best. Is this still the case?

If you don't already have it Audacity download there's also a link to the LAME mp3 encoder you'll need, on that page.

You may also want the QM Vamp Plugin but make sure you get the older version 1.7 (this plugin allows you to create timing marks for beat or bar or note-onset etc).

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The audio files do need to be Constant Bit Rate, but at least when playing a show on a computer, the data rate can be higher speed than 128K rate. Mine runs 160K, 192K, or 256K rate. If using a director to run the show, it may be different. The source for me is either my own CD library or Amazon.

Sent from my Droid Turbo via Tapatalk, so blame any typos or spelling errors on Android

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I used an older DC-MP3 Director unit for 3 years using 192kbps and CBR with no issues at all.  Thought I had read the newer G3 Directors can handle all the way up to the 320kbps rate, but won't swear to it, don't have one to test that on, so really don't know if they can or not.

As far as song length, I have some that are a little under 30 seconds to barely under or at 1 minute{mostly used for intro's and such}, others may range from 1-1/2 minutes upward to about 5 minutes, although I try to keep most songs under 3 minutes, there are some that I use the full song, many I edit down so I can have more music in the show.

It all depends on the song I'm doing as to what the length of it may be, if it's one of the more popular and possibly most recent songs, I try to sequence the entire original song with some very mild editing {usually just taking out the silent parts at the very beginning and end of the song}.

I take out the silent parts because sometimes that silence between 1 song ending and the next one starting is too long a gap with nothing happening, so this way I remove that and my songs transition into one another a bit more smoothly, along with keeping the lights dancing to the music.

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