Music between shows

[Guest guest]

Pre LOR I have always played random xmas music outside my house. Mp3's on a computer to an amp and speakers This is my first LOR year. I have an intro then 3 sequenced songs. This is about 13-14 minutes. I plan to follow this with an animation sequence for 45-46 minutes. Therefore my "show" will play approx. every hour.
Is this the correct approach?

Is there a way to play random music during this 45 min., even if it cuts off the song when the intro starts?
All suggestions appreciated

Would enjoy hearing a wider variety of music in between "The Show"

Thanks!

[Guest guest]

I have heard of people doing "Static" Displays between their shows, Ones that don't have any blinking lights. In previous threads i have seen people say every hour and others have said they think that is too little, and that it should go once every half an hour. I personally will have a continuous Animated display.

Your thinking is correct if you want a ~15 minute show and ~45 minutes in between.

I am not sure of a way to randomize the music in Between if there is a way, don or dan probably know.

What songs have you sequenced?

I have Sequenced
Intro - THX sound that breaks down and Tex comes on and fixes it
TSO - Wizards of Winter
TSO - Christmas Canon
TSO - Revenge of the Sugar Plum Fairy
TSO - March of the Kings/Hark The herald
Amy Grant - Breath of Heaven
Jars of Clay - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

[Guest guest]

robogeek wrote:

I am not sure of a way to randomize the music in Between if there is a way, don or dan probably know.

It can be done. Though I recall someone last year saying it wasn't truly random. I don't recall anything else about it. (The information should be on this forum, as it was during the holiday season last year when I think I read it.)

Short version (And someone can expand on this if they want.)

1) Program regular show, with normal sequences.
2) Program 'random' show, with musical sequences with 'all on' for events. (Be sure to select the 'Randomize' option in the musical tab.)
3) Create Schedule
a) 6:00p-6:15p - Regular
6:15p-6:30p - Random.
c) Repeat as needed.

[Guest guest]

Thanks for the info, Don. I didn't think of it that way.

[Guest guest]

I am using DirEttora this year. I don't have all bugs worked out, but it will do exactly what you want. It allows you put in as big as a play list as you want, and it will randomize the music exactly during the time periods you want. (It's configurable up to the second!) Yes, you just cut off the song every hour, etc.

I know there is a free version, but I'm not sure what it can do. I am using a beta, so get on http://mixtime.com and request a free beta which will do what you want.

Here's approximately how my setup works:

GOAL: Play 30 minutes of random music before the LOR show, start the LOR show, play 30 minutes of random music after the LOR show.

1. At 4:30pm, direttore automatically loads up 20 random songs and starts playing them.
2. At 4:49pm, direttore adds a "the show starts in 10 minutes" when the current song finishes playing, and then continues with music.
3. At 4:54pm, direttore adds a "the show starts in 5 minutes" when the current song finishes playing, and then continues with the music.
4. At 5:00:02pm Direttore stops the music in the middle of the song. (It takes LOR 2-4 seconds to load up and start the first song, so I play the music a few seconds after 5pm.)
5. I don't have my shows timed yet, but say i know the last song ends at 10:02:32pm. Then I tell Direttore start playing at 10:32pm and 32 seconds. Since LOR and Direttore run on the same computer, they sync to the same clock. It works perfectly!
6. At 10:02:32pm, the remaining songs of the original 20 in step #1 play. When the playlist is over, direttore stops playing.
7. At 4:30pm the next day, the same process repeats, and Direttore randomly selects another 20 songs to play.

There is no reason you couldn't use direttore and program in the exact times you want music for your static display. You just have to know exactly when you want the direttore music to start and stop, and it will work great for your application.

A side note, as with all software, it will take you a while to learn and understand the program. IT IS BETA. YES, IT CAN CRASH SOMETIMES. Also, there is a dialog box that comes up when you open the program. If you reboot, Direttore will not start playing until you click OK on the dialog box.

[Guest guest]

I was the one that had the "not exactly random" issues last year. As long as your show is enabled it will be "random". If you disable the shows for any reason and then enable them again it will start playing again in the same "random" order. Typically though, once you enable your shows for the season , you shouldn't have to disable it unless you are tweeking it.

You will need to set up your entire play list up as musical sequences and just not assign any lights to them. Put them all in the musical tab and set them to play randomly. Put your lighting sequences in the animation tab or background as neccessary.

The problem I had with it is that I was trying to do 10 minute blocks of random music between shows and occasionally it would get a long song just before a scheduled show and run right past the allotted time making it skip the show. I actually ended up choosing my music song by song for every section between shows.

If you are doing a 45 and 15 minute block, you shouldnt have that problem.

[Guest guest]

Time to check out a new program. Sounds like the route I am looking for.

Thanks everyone for the input.

[Guest guest]

One more note I forgot. Direttore is designed to play 24/7. The way you tell direttore to stop playing is to make a music file of pure silence, and tell direttore to play the file. For example, I have a mp3 of exactly 1 minute of silence. If I want direttore to stop playing from 6pm-6:23pm, then at 6pm I schedule the silence track to play 23 times. Simple.



If you have trouble figuring out how to make it work for your application, drop me a PM and we'll see if we can't figure it out. It may get annoying, but I have no doubt we can make it work how you need.

[Guest guest]

This sounds like it could create a conflict in the computer with two programs trying to play music at the same time. Even though one of them would be a blank music file , you could get unexpected results like random noises or choppyness......choppyness??? is that a word?

[Guest guest]

No problems yet, but it hasn't been thoroughly tested. I just tested it long enough to confirm the two programs won't fight with each other.

[Guest guest]

contactmike1 wrote:

A side note, as with all software, it will take you a while to learn and understand the program. IT IS BETA. YES, IT CAN CRASH SOMETIMES. Also, there is a dialog box that comes up when you open the program. If you reboot, Direttore will not start playing until you click OK on the dialog box.

I was following until I read the crash part. Ouch... my computer never crashes except... the mayor shows up... it will crash... a famous ball player is on your driveway and you are chatting... your show will crash... you are getting interviewed on TV - yep, crash... it will never do it when its not important...

Not that I have a crashy computer, I found out too much dust was blanketing my CPU and fan and a good cleaning cure the problem but you get the idea about crashes... you dont want any.

Why not just schedule do nothing in light LOR sequences and schedule in a long complicated schedule.... even do Jinglebells1, jinglebells2, etc sequences and just copy but rename so you can run them again and again in a one time preplanned 6 hour show? Might be way easier then scripting or REXXing multitasking softwares and expecting each of them to behave themselves reliably all night.

[Guest guest]

Joseph Ayo wrote:

contactmike1 wrote:

A side note, as with all software, it will take you a while to learn and understand the program. IT IS BETA. YES, IT CAN CRASH SOMETIMES. Also, there is a dialog box that comes up when you open the program. If you reboot, Direttore will not start playing until you click OK on the dialog box.

Directtore will crash sometimes, but it does not crash the whole computer. Worst case is you lose the randomzied christmas music between shows. It just depends on if you can tolerate coming home and finding the direttore music not playing occasionally.

The reason why I'm trying this for this year is because LOR can't schedule in what I want to do. It's harder to stay on schedule as LOR will finish files before flipping over to the new schedule. Plus, I really don't feel like creating sequences for 100+ songs when I can make one LOR file and have another program do the audio.

So, yes...this system is very experimental and not for everyone. I'll try to remember to let you know how it works out. I just personally felt the LOR scheduler could not do what I wanted, so I searched for an audio program that could be configured with very exact times.

Is Dan listening? Dan, we would LOVE to have jukebox capabilities from LOR! Maybe in LOR3? LOL. Who knows, maybe we will be able to do something like this with LOR2. Dan hasn't announced what it will do yet.

[Guest guest]

I have used the basic CD player in windows and the event scedualer in windows, worked perfectly last year, dont know what I will do this year though.... If LOR could stop playing a sequence mid-way then that would be helpfull because then we could have our songs and then at show time it would not interfeer with the show.



--Daniel L

[Guest guest]

Thanks again for all of the input. The program looks pretty cool. Time to start learning. I think you want the same thing as I do, more music. I do not do radio as my house is pretty popular and gets alot of foot traffic. The people all seem to enjoy the music. I like to play a wide variety of music over the season. I don't want to try and program every song I want to play.
Thanks again everyone

[Guest guest]

Daniel wrote:

I have used the basic CD player in windows and the event scedualer in windows, worked perfectly last year, dont know what I will do this year though.... If LOR could stop playing a sequence mid-way then that would be helpfull because then we could have our songs and then at show time it would not interfeer with the show.



--Daniel L

Daniel,

How did you stop the CD player using the event scheduler? Or did you time it so the whole CD would play once and then the CD player stopped automatically?

[Guest guest]

Under system tools their is a program called "Scheduled Tasks". That program can start and stop other programs automaticly. If you click on a schedualed items properties. click the "Schedual" tab, click "advanced" in that box yoiu can set the turn-off time by seting at time (00:00 am/pm) Or setting a time limit (34min). The only thing you will need to get CD player to open is the command line, I havent used this in a while and I am on XP right now and it doesnt have cdplayer :{. I think it is somthing like p, s or play. Ill need to look it up! But if you do everything right then you should have a cd player that plays between songs. I used another not-so-good computer to do just the cdplayer, it worked good, but somtimes the times ran togeather and the CD music ran a little with the Light-O-Rama songs! It was not a big deal B/C the music was really low and you couldent hear it playing under the louder music. This year if I do it then yes, I will use the same computer and set the times better!


--Daniel L

[Guest guest]

Hey Brian Mitchell - I am interested in your method for this season. If there is a way to have musical and animation playing at the same time, that might work. I have the MP3 Controller and my idea was to purchase 4 SD cards and play them throughout the week. One card Mon. & Thurs., one card Tues. & Fri., etc.

Example:

15 minutes of musical sequences and 1 hour and 45 minutes of random music with animation running at the same time. I have not figured out how to accomplish this - someone mentioned to create all sings as musical sequences and generically create animation in that sequence (TOO MUCH WORK!). I do not want to play the same random music every single night, twice a night. It may get old fast, the same music.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Bill Jr.