Beat Wizard

[Gilford]

Can someone help with the beat wizard? I am wanting to turn on a channel every beat. What do I put in the blank of this many beats and in the blank with beat offset. I cannot seem to get what I am wanting. Do I Apply and Exit or Apply and then Exit.

Thank you so much. I am really frustrated with the Beat Wizard.

[DownTown]

Gilford -

I share your frustration with the beat wizard. I have never been able to get results that are useful to me out of that wizard (I'm a tapper wizard kind of guy...). But, many others have, so I will direct you to this tutorial so you may be able to sort out what you need to do to get good data out of it:

http://lightoramasequences.com/content/view/15/32/

Hope that helps you out.

D.T.

[George Simmons]

Hi Gilford - I'm not sure I qualify as an expert, but I've had pretty good success with the beat wizard. My advice is to stick with it and practice until you get a feel for it and what it can do for you and I believe you'll find it a valuable tool. One of many. Personally, what I use it for is to insert timings in the sequence for each beat. Then, I do different things with the timings, depending on the speed of the music, the part of the song I'm in, and what particular element of the display I might be programming... further subdividing each timing into seven sections for the seven-segment arches for sweeps, for instance...

I don't personally use the option of turning a channel on with each beat very often. I find that in the time it takes me to instruct the beat wizard what I want it to do, I can do it manually - especially simple on/offs which is about the limit of what the beat wizard can program automatically.

When you say you're "wanting to turn on a channel every beat", could you be a bit more specific? Are you referring to one channel or many? Turning the same channel on with each beat would result with it being on constantly the entire length of the sequence.

You can use the beat wizard to turn different channels on sequentially if that's what you want by using the offset option you asked about. You can select which channel(s) for the beat wizard to turn on/off. If you've got, say, four channels that you want to cycle through in order, turn on the first one every fourth beat. Then, turn on the second channel with an offest of one beat, the third with an offset of two, and the fourth channel with an offset of three. That will give you a repeating chase sequence.

Hope that helps a little.

[Gilford]

Thanks so much George and D.T. Seems to be more trouble than its worth. I will take your advice George and play around with it. I am wanting to place a "mark" on a particular channel just as a reference for each beat. I have always tapped out the beat but thought that the Beat Wizard would be more accurate.

Thanks to the two of you for the reply.

[Brian Mitchell]

I create a track called Beat. It has one channel. I run the beat wizard and have it turn on the beat channel every 2 beats. This gives me a checkerboard of the beat for the entire song. I cut and paste this channel several times in my main track so it is always visible as a reference as I scroll up and down my channels.

[JimCanfield]

Gilford wrote:

Thanks so much George and D.T. Seems to be more trouble than its worth. I will take your advice George and play around with it. I am wanting to place a "mark" on a particular channel just as a reference for each beat. I have always tapped out the beat but thought that the Beat Wizard would be more accurate.

Thanks to the two of you for the reply

I place a mark for every beat and what I do is after I select the times I create a new freeform grid, name it, select the track I want the marks on, and check the box next to INSERT A TIMING INTO THE TIMING GRID FOR EACH BEAT. I then apply and exit. I find that works nice since I have a mark for each beat and works wonders for me. I do not know how I survived without it before!

As I re-read your post you are not able to place a mark on just 1 channel, unless you make a track with just 1 channel. I have a track with all my channels called beat where I can play with it there. The nice thing about this new software is the ability to select which timing you want on which track with the option to change timings at will.

Hope I helped and not hindered!

[Gilford]

I do bascially the same thing. I mark the beats on a channel to use as a guide. However this is done with the Tapper Wizard and not the Beat Wizard. I thought the Beat Wizard would do this more accurately.

Thanks for the reply.

[JimCanfield]

Hmmm, not sure what to say, the beat wizard has always been accurate 4 me. Now do you break the song up according to beat and tempo? You cannot have the whole song run at once. You will need to break it up where it is slower or faster. By doing that you will see the wizard detects different amount of beats. I find it also helps to start the wizard on a strong beat as well.

With the wizard working so well for me I want it to work as well for everyone else.

[Gilford]

In a previous post you said you place a mark at each beat. That is exactly what I am wanting to do. How do you get a mark for each beat? I don't care if it is for just part of the song. No problem there.

[JimCanfield]

Technically I don't do it, the beat wizard does it for me. I just select the part of the song I want to mark and the beat wizard places them for me. If I find the beat is a little off I just change the time that it is anyalizing by a tenth of a second at a time. Sometimes it takes a little tweaking to get it just right; but if I start with a strong beat and have the same beat/tempo the beat wizard has been quite accurate for me.

If you want to place a mark manually for each beat then you would have to use the tapper wizard.

[bob]

I'm not sure what you mean by "place a mark at each beat". By "mark", you might mean "timing", or you might mean "lighting effect"? By "each beat", you might mean any number of things (each "one" in "one-two-three-four", each number in "one-two-three-four", etc.). Anyway:

First, to answer your question about "Apply and Exit", "Apply", and "Exit":

"Apply" makes the Beat Wizard do what you currently have it set to do (such as insert timings), and the Beat Wizard remains open after doing so.

"Exit" closes the Beat Wizard.

"Apply and Exit" makes the Beat Wizard do what you currently have it set to do, and then close.

The idea is that if you want the Beat Wizard to do several different things, you can set it up to do one of them, then "Apply", set it up to do the next, "Apply", and so forth, until you're done, at which time you would "Exit". Or, if you're only doing one thing with the Beat Wizard, set it up to do that, and then "Apply and Exit". "Apply and Exit" is just a little shortcut, equivalent to hitting "Apply" and then hitting "Exit".

For your other questions, perhaps the best way would be just to play with it a little, and see what it does:

Choose a song with a steady beat, and which you would naturally count along "one-two-three-four-one-two-three-four" (as opposed to "one-two-three-one-two-three", for example). Build a new musical sequence from it. Don't insert any timings, and give it at least eight channels. Start up the Beat Wizard.

Make sure that "Insert a timing into the timing grid for each beat" is checked, and that "Turn on a channel every so many beats" is unchecked. Click "Apply and Exit".

You'll see that it has inserted a bunch of timing marks, but no lighting effects. Play the sequence; if the Beat Wizard did a decent job with this song, then you should see that the timing marks are in time with the beat of the song.

Now click "Undo" (getting rid of those timing marks), and go back into the Beat Wizard. This time, turn "Insert a timing..." off, and "Turn on a channel..." on. Click "Apply and Exit".

You'll see it has inserted a bunch of "on" events, but no timing marks. Again, play the sequence. You'll see that the "on" events are in time with the beat, and they come every fourth beat. For example, maybe they come every time you count "one" in "one-two-three-four", or perhaps every time you count "four".

The reason they come every fourth beat is because under "Turn on a channel every so many beats", "this many beats" was set to "4" (the default).

Now click "Undo" (getting rid of those "on" events), and go back into the Beat Wizard. Check both "Insert..." and "Turn on...", and click "Apply and Exit".

Now it has inserted both timings and "on" events. Again, the timings are in time with the beat, and the events come every fourth beat.

Go back into the Beat Wizard (don't hit "Undo" first). Check "Turn on..." (doesn't matter what "Insert..." is). But this time, select the second channel in the dropdown box (under "Turn on..."), and change "with beat offset" from "0" to "1". Click "Apply and Exit".

You'll see that now both the first and the second channel turn on in time to the beat, but at different times. For example, if the first channel comes on whenever you count "three" in "one-two-three-four", then the second channel comes on whenever you count "four". Play the sequence and see.

Now go back into the Beat Wizard, check "Turn on...", select the third channel, and set "with beat offset" to "2". Click "Apply" (not "Apply and Exit"). Note that the Beat Wizard remains open. Now select the fourth channel, set the beat offset to "3", and click "Apply and Exit".

Now the first four channels are chasing each other to the beat. Play and see.

So that's the meaning of "with beat offset" - it controls which number the channel will be turned on at when you count along.

Brief side note: Let's say you had a sequence that you'd naturally count along with "one-two-three-one-two-three". Then in order to do something like the above, you should also change "this many beats" from "4" to "3".

Now let's try some different tempos. Go back into the Beat Wizard. In the "Tempo" section, select "Use a faster related tempo", and leave its dropdown box at "2x Faster". Check both "Insert..." and "Turn on...". Change "this many beats" from "4" to "8" (because we're counting beats twice as fast as we did before). Select the fifth channel, and click "Apply". Select the sixth channel, change the beat offset to "1", and click "Apply and Exit".

You'll see that the sequence now has twice as many timings as it did before. It's as if you're counting along twice as fast - "one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and". And look at the fifth and sixth channels - they're each on for half of whenever the first channel is on.

Go back in to the Beat Wizard. Select "Use a faster related tempo" again, but this time set it to "4x Faster". Uncheck "Insert...", and check "Turn on...". Change "this many beats" from "4" to 16. Select the seventh channel, and click "Apply and Exit".

Now the seventh channel is on for the first half of whenever the fifth channel is on. But no new timing marks were added for that (because we unchecked "Insert a timing...").

Go back into the Beat Wizard. Select "Use a slower related tempo", and leave its dropdown boxes at their default values. Check "Turn on...", and select the eighth channel. Change "this many beats" to "2". Click "Apply and Exit".

Now the eighth channel is on whenever either the first or the second channel is on.

A couple other little hints for playing around with it: Try the Preview section. Specifically, try it with various different tempos (from the Tempo section). Note that you can control how many boxes the Preview section uses by clicking on the radio buttons under a box. Choosing the right number of boxes should get the preview lined up with how you are counting along ("one-two-three-four" or "one-two-three" or "one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and" or whatever).

Also, note the "Time Range" section. This is useful in at least three situations:

(1) Maybe different ranges of the song have different tempos; in this case, using the Beat Wizard on the whole song probably won't work well. Instead, apply it individually to the different parts of the song.

(2) Even if the whole song has the same tempo, there could be portions where the Beat Wizard gets confused, and misses some beats, or inserts things that aren't on beats. In such a case, you might want to avoid those sections, or to try those sections individually.

(3) Maybe it's just that you only want to use the Beat Wizard in a certain range of your song.

Hope this helps.

[JimCanfield]

WOW Bob, that is so cool! Never thought of the offset beat before, your explination was very helpful.

[Gilford]

Thanks so much Bob-----

[kzaas]

That was a great tutorial on the "Beat Wizard". I've used it alot for most of my sequencing but mainly just for a "Beat Channel". I've never thought of using it the Bob explained it and I've always done it for the whole song, which did cause timing problems due to tempo changes.

This will be of great help in future new songs. Thanks Bob

Ken

[Bartman]

Bob, just stumbled across this and you have explained the "Beat Wizard" the best I have seen. I now have used it to cut down the seq time by more than 1/2.

WOW...Thanks a million (lights that is...)


Bart