Good songs to do with light o rama

[Guest guest]

Im sure most fo you are sick of hearing this question...

What songs are fun/good to do with LOR?

What songs are good for a first timer to do?

A link pointing to a list or topic in theses froums would help me also.

[Guest guest]

Good beginner songs are ones with medium tempos with some, but not a lot of syncopation or counter-beats. They are easy to place your animations against. Instrumental songs seem most appropriate to start with, but if you do a song with lyrics you don't really have to match up your animations with the vocals. A neat presentation that matches with the music is a lot more appealing than animation that looks haphazard.

Medium tempo (I hope you can judge that) can still present good visual energy, especially if it accurately enhances the music, without becoming too complex to program.

Jazz tunes have a LOT of extra off-beat items to play against, so they can become very complex. However, you can program it simply for this year's presentation and add embellishments for next year.

Plus, whatever tunes you choose, if you start simple this year you have somewhere to build to next year!

[Guest guest]

Uh oh, you sort of asked for a list of songs, I think...

Do take a look at the other LOR threads and you'll actually find some folks who have made some of their sequences available for no charge, and you can give them a listen and see if you might like to adapt them to your display.

[Guest guest]

Mannheim Steamroller, Beach Boys, Some of the Old Classics. A lot of the difficulty comes with more channels.

[Guest guest]

I made the mistake of trying to start with what I consider a difficult song: TSO's Wizards in Winter (yes, I'm also Carsonite). After getting frustrated, I got smart, set WIW aside and re-worked thru the LOR tutorial for the Russian Dance show. I thought about what I was doing this second time and was able to use that show and complete two new shows, using Burl Ive's Holly Jolly Christmas and Dean Martin's Let It Snow. They are both short (around 2 minutes long) and have simple easy-to-follow beats. Then I finished WIW and the results are pretty cool.

[Guest guest]

That's a tough one to start out with. Try to get one or two old classics. They don't have much of a beat which makes it easy to create a sequence to.

I have done Rocking Around the Chrismtas Tree, Let it snow, and White Christmas.

All Old classics.

[Guest guest]

one thing I did with each of the songs I sequenced was listen to the song many many times and kind of get an idea and visuallization in my mind of the lights.

I havent played with the LOR software but the AL software allows me to Tap out various parts of a song separately and display them on the grid separately..

so first id go through, tap the beat, then the main voice, then maybe the backup singers, the strings etc... so I started with songs that werent "Busy" sounding where I could pick out different elements.. I took a raw copy of the song, trimmed the length at both ends and saved it. that was my master, I then took the song and would run it through an EQ on soundforge.. knocking out different frequencies and would save each time as a different name.. then when I used the tapper I could easier pick out elements because I enhanced those.. I disnt care what the sound of the song was at this time.. only the timing... once my timing was set int othe grid then I put the original "master" file back in and set up the Lights.. but the EQ helps to pick out certain elements that you might miss otherwise.. if you have a good EQ program on your soundcard you might be able to do the same thing with that rather than having to edit the song each time but i got much better results processing the song each time.

songs id suggest:

hollyridge strings - jingle bell rock

brenda lee - rockin around the christmas tree

andy williams - Jingle Bells

mannheim steamroller - Deck the halls

TSO - Christmas canon (slow version)

songs id NOT suggest for beginners:

mannheim steamroller - carol of the bells

TSO - Wizards in winter

also seemed to me that when i first started I had tried to keep certain channels to be used for certain purposes only in songs and while it sounded like a neat idea I divided the songs up so much that I only had a few lights on at any given time and my display seemed boring or dark at first so I realized I could re-use channels at different points in a song and not ruin the effects... and it seems to look best if I have more lights on at one time except for certain spots in a song for effect ill let the lights dwindle down for short times.



-Christopher

[Guest guest]

I'm sort of "reindeer" themed this year. Two are in production - Gene Autry's Rudolf, the old version of "Grandma got run over..."

Both were fairly easy, though Gene Autry gets off tempo. Must be his style.

Now working on Run Run Rudolf and Mannheim Steamroller's "Rudolf"

From a nightly standpoint, I plan to just put two on for any single night. Don't want anybody to park their car through four or more sequences. If I have four completed, that would give me six possible pairings. Perhaps on Saturday, I'll do the three best to give me seven unique combinations.

[Guest guest]

You can tap out the beat as well in LOR. I just find it easier to go thru the song as I listen to it.

[Guest guest]

yea i tried the beat thing, i dont like it too much, listing to it about 4 seconds at a time seems to work for me......

also i hear in version 2 you can see the (dont know what its caled, looks like a sound wave) of the song file, the beats should show up well in that.

[Guest guest]

eldoradoboy wrote:

one thing I did with each of the songs I sequenced was listen to the song many many times and kind of get an idea and visuallization in my mind of the lights.

That's pretty much what I do too. I'll listen to a song a gazillion times to get a good idea of what I want to do, before I ever start sequencing. 1, it makes sequencing faster and 2, if I can't think it, I probably can't sequence it. I've thrown out a couple of songs because visually, I couldn't see it working.