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Getting Timings Fast and Easy


jstorms

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This is pretty much how I start doing every song. Gives me lots of timing options very quickly (about 10 minutes). I still have to take some time to make sure things are perfect, but it gives me a huge head start.

 

This video shows how to:

  • Look at what is inside a bare bones LMS file
  • Take advantage of advanced timing wizards in Audacity
  • How to manually convert Audacity timing grids (labels) and import them into Light-O-Rama timing grids
  • How to automatically convert Audacity labels to LOR timing grids using a crude PERL script, that I don't support.
  • How to use the Beat Wizard and the Tapper Wizard.
  • Ends with a brief code walkthrough on the script.

Links:

 

 

 
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John,

Awesome information. Great job as always.

Thank you for taking the time to put it together and making the tutorial.

Thanks for all your tutorials by the way...

Daniel

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Thanks John!       You blew my  mind a little.  

 

I had no idea we could prep timings that way.   You gave me another way to up my game.    Thanks! 

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Wow thanks John. That is amazing, LOR could learn a lot from this. It was a lot to take in. I found viewing on YouTube a little clearer. I will have to watch the first half again a few more times. I'm a little unclear on the formula to round off the seconds in excel.

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First off, great post/video.  I use the first 4 sequencing videos you made as my sequencing bible... this just ups it even more. 

 

One question (and there may not be an easy answer).  Once you create the timings and import them into the sequence editor... how do you go about merging, reducing, compacting the timings into something useful?  I've loaded all these timings, but looking at them set to lights is just random flickering to me.  I'm using this method now to try it out, but now that I have all these timings I'm having a hard time identifying which beats, notes, etc. I actually want/need to use.  While the getting/setting the timings is easier, I'm finding myself using a similar amount of time trying to figure out what timings I need to use.

 

I'm guessing there is no easy answer to this part... just experience I'm guessing.

 

Again, excellent job.  This is an excellent tool.

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Thank you very much John. For your time to make to post  your video. A lot to keep up with, at first look. I'm going give it a go. First chance I get.

 

Thanks again.

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Wow thanks John. That is amazing, LOR could learn a lot from this. It was a lot to take in. I found viewing on YouTube a little clearer. I will have to watch the first half again a few more times. I'm a little unclear on the formula to round off the seconds in excel.

I went back and added an annotation showing the Excel formula more clearly, thanks for the feedback.

 

One question (and there may not be an easy answer).  Once you create the timings and import them into the sequence editor... how do you go about merging, reducing, compacting the timings into something useful?  I've loaded all these timings, but looking at them set to lights is just random flickering to me.  I'm using this method now to try it out, but now that I have all these timings I'm having a hard time identifying which beats, notes, etc. I actually want/need to use.  While the getting/setting the timings is easier, I'm finding myself using a similar amount of time trying to figure out what timings I need to use.

 

I'm guessing there is no easy answer to this part... just experience I'm guessing.

 

One thing I went over a little quickly, and I thought at the time it was a bit too quick. One thing I often do is combine several of the midi channels.

 

I set the paste mode to paste from foreground, add a few dummy tracks to the top.

Then you'll notice the midi channels are grouped in low, high, treble, bass, and some with nothing.

What I do is I'll sometimes take each low channel and paste it into one of the dummy channels, one on top of the other. In the end I get the combined effect of each of these channels. 

I repeat this for each of the groups and it is more usable to me.

 

Also, for beats I'll turn to the BARs track, BEATs track from Audacity as well as the beat wizard track from LOR, but for some of the complex beats I find I still need to hand tune some of these (or at least throw it at my daughter to do for me -- I love her so much).

 

Sometimes you'll look at what comes out of Audacity and say, that's awful, and then you fall back to doing it by hand. Usually, it still gets you at least closer so you have a starting point. The other thing you can do is while still in Audacity is to play with some of the settings w/i the analyzers to give you better results. Usually this is a trade off of getting too many labels per note/beat vs. not enough.

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I was trying to follow step by step your video (by the way thank you for ALL your videos they have been an amazing help).  When I went check my LOR sequence files in the drive it only shows the tutorial sequence and none of my saved sequence.  Does anyone have any idea of what I am doing wrong? 

Edited by sjsocane
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Ok, so I figured out the above.. Sorta.. Still not being saved in the sequence folders under LOR.. However I have another question.. When on note pad after copying the sequence from the excel program in the video he simple hits Ctrl H and replaces " with " from what I can see and it takes away the space in the text.  Well that doesn't seem to work, I am sure it is user error, but does anyone know what I am doing wrong?  I can simple scroll down an manually do it to each line, but the shear thought of manually backspacing 7000+ plus times doesn't sound appealing.  Any help would be appreciated sorry I am not a technologically sound person. 

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Ok, so I figured out the above.. Sorta.. Still not being saved in the sequence folders under LOR.. However I have another question.. When on note pad after copying the sequence from the excel program in the video he simple hits Ctrl H and replaces " with " from what I can see and it takes away the space in the text.  Well that doesn't seem to work, I am sure it is user error, but does anyone know what I am doing wrong?  I can simple scroll down an manually do it to each line, but the shear thought of manually backspacing 7000+ plus times doesn't sound appealing.  Any help would be appreciated sorry I am not a technologically sound person. 

>> hits Ctrl H and replaces " with " from what I can see and it takes away the space in the text. 

 

I'm replacing <TAB><QUOTE> with just a <QUOTE>

Then I replace <QUOTE><TAB> with just a <QUOTE>

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Ok as I have explained I am not computer savvy.  I do not have a D drive only a C drive.  Is a D drive needed to run the script written?  Again everyone I am sorry for the "dumb" questions but I don't know the answer so I figured I would ask....

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Great video MR storms. I've learned a lot through your videos. But as posted above I'm not very comp savy and hope a D drive is not necessary.

TIA (Thanks in advance)

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Hey John,

 

Have you had any trouble with Audacity crashing when running the Polyphonic Transcription on a music file?  I've tried it on several files and it crashes Audacity.  The others work fine (beat, etc).

 

Thanks,

Larry

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Hey John,

 

Have you had any trouble with Audacity crashing when running the Polyphonic Transcription on a music file?  I've tried it on several files and it crashes Audacity.  The others work fine (beat, etc).

 

Thanks,

Larry

 

 

I have seen it happen before. Usually, when I see it I reopen Audacity, it asks if I want to recover, I say yes, then I run the Poly again and it works the 2nd time. #JoysOfFreeSW

Edited by jstorms
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