Sequencing

[Joe D]

Hello...



I will be starting to sequence tonight, and was wondering if anyone would like to share some tips on how they carry this on... Who uses the tapper, ect and any suggestions that would make this easier?



Thanks

Joe

[Brian Mitchell]

I start out by creating a track just for a beat track and use the beat wizard. I have it turn on a channel every 2 beats so you get an on off on off pattern that's easy to see.

I also have a beat channel at the top of each group of channels (or track) and paste the beat track into this channel by Time, not event. Usually there is always one or two of these tracks showing on the screen as a reference.

I sequence using .05 events throughout.

Since the beat wizard came out, I don't tap anymore.

[DownTown]

I find that the beat wizard only will work on songs that have a tempo that does not change for the duration of the song. In my case, that is one song out of about 15. I have had the most success using the tap wizard, and .05 timings. I am coding 160 channels, and spend between 3 and 15 hours per minute, depenfing on the complexity of the song I'm doing. I use a beat channel also, until I've completed the sequencing, and then I remove it.

D.T.

[bigbth]

I feel better now....I was spending 10 to 12 hours per minute and thought that I might have been doing something wrong!

Brian

[Brian Mitchell]

For songs where the tempo changes, you can use the beat wizard piecemeal for just parts of the song.

Someone put together a tutorial on this but I forget who.

[mmaness]

There are also times when you can slow down the playback speed and take your best guess as to where the timing event belongs. I don't use this very often, but there are times that it gives you a better guess than almost anything else.

[doublea]

Using the waveform to see the beats of the song can also help quite a bit.

[bigbth]

Here’s how I setup a sequence:

File/New/Musical Sequence. Then attach the .mp3 file and name it. Then I click Don’t Add Any Timings/Ok. Then import your channels through Edit/Import (if you don’t have channels already setup then now is the time). The next step I have done two ways. 1.)I then check the length of the sequence at the bottom left corner of the sequence screen. Use Excel and figure out the total time in hundredths of a second (minutes*60*100+seconds*100+hundredths). I then divide that number by a whole number so that I have a workable number of divisions, also a whole number. To many divisions make the file hard to manipulate (typically <7500 for a 2:30 song). Or 2.) I make a new channel from Tools/Channel Properties/Add Channel and call it Beat. I start Tools/Beat Wizard and use Tempo x8 and set it to Turn On Channel “Beat”, 1 beat for every timing.

Put your View Wave Form on Full and you’re ready to go. I sequence almost the entire song in ½ speed. Unless the music is slow and plodding I don’t see any other way. The tapper never worked for me as I have no rhythm…

[taybrynn]

Also consider shortened versions of the songs. I made a lot of mine 1:30 in length and it makes sequencing a lot easier and keeps the show length down if traffic is an issue. I just use Audacity to edit the songs down, kind of trial and error.

As you become more advanced, you can start using multiple tracks.

I think the intent of different tracks was to use different timings for each track, but you can also use the tracks as a convienient grouping mechanism as well. This becomes more helpful as your number of channels grows ... and thus finding things is more time consuming.

Typically, If I use the beat wizard (which I do a lot lately), I duplicate the current track to create a new track ... then use the beat wizards and just sections of the song which have a common (non-changing) beat ... and then use the beat wizards to turn on certains channels ... say on every [4] beats, then turns on channel A with beat offset of [0], channel B with beat offset of [1], channel C with beat offset of [2] and channel D with beat offset of [3] .... this can produce some pretty cool stuff, esp. if channels A,B,C,D are say a front row of mini-trees or part of a mega tree series ...
Then changing it to be either [on the beat] [2x beat] [4x beat] ... makes interesting patterns quickly.

Scott

[bigbth]

I never tried to use multiple tracks. In the Help section it talks about the tracks as if the program could separate the tracks of a song. For example, if one track had the guitar and another the drums, you could work with each track in it's own track window. You could run the wizard and anytime that channel on that track rose above a setpoint, you could turn it on.

All my .mp3s are one mass of sound so one track makes sense. I suppose if I had hundreds of channels it might help in organization.

Brian

[taybrynn]

Well there is relatively little wizardry in the use of tracks, IMHO.

You can use it simple for organization, or for keeping your main timing marks cleaner.

The tracks don't relate to different audio files ... its all just ways to control lights for the same audio file in a musical sequence.

You could use different tracks to try and break out different timings and then make those timings control certain (groups of) things.

I think the power (for me) in tracks is #1 organizational and #2 (feeding wizard generated segments into tracks 2,3,4,... so that the main track (1) can remain relatively clean and using some fixed timing interval.

One thing I hate about the tracks as that your sitting in track #1 at 1:30 ... then you move to track#2 for the first time ... then track#2 is at 0:00 ... so you manually have to move back to 1:30 ... which is time consuming.

Now if two tracks happen to fit into one window, then those track together ... so its a confusing mix of timing mismatches when moving around between tracks and generally discourages me from using them. I think it would be nice to be able to select [ lock all track positions] vs [ per window track positioning, as it currently works] ...

Personally, I hardly ever use the tapper anymore. If its something very irregular ... then maybe the tapper works for getting those ... but I prefer using waveform and the 1/2x speed for the really tricky syncs.

[bob]

bigbth wrote:

I never tried to use multiple tracks. In the Help section it talks about the tracks as if the program could separate the tracks of a song. For example, if one track had the guitar and another the drums, you could work with each track in it's own track window. You could run the wizard and anytime that channel on that track rose above a setpoint, you could turn it on.

All my .mp3s are one mass of sound so one track makes sense. I suppose if I had hundreds of channels it might help in organization.

Brian

The help files didn't mean to imply that this is for actual separate audio tracks. The LOR meaning of "tracks" doesn't really have anything to do with audio tracks.

It's just that it might be convenient to one set of timing marks that matches up with (say) the guitar and another set that matches up with the drums, even though the guitar and the drums are both in the same audio.

And that's essentially what LOR tracks (as opposed to audio tracks) are for: different timing marks for different purposes.

[bigbth]

1/2 speed has been the only thing that works for me also. That damn bar moves across the screen way to fast for me to even get an idea when the event started. Although sometimes I'll just drop in a block and then see how close I am. It takes a couple of iterations to find the right spot that way but it works and I don't have to try and separate the 1/2 speed sound, which sounds sort of like what you might hear if you ran over cat in slow motion..... After listening to 1/2 speed for a while can really make you hate a song....

Brian

[bigbth]

I understand but if I setup my timings to cover everything from the beginning, trying to create separate timings on separate tracks for each instrument seemed a little tortuous....

Brian

[taybrynn]

After listening to 1/2 speed for a while can really make you hate a song....

Totally agree ... thats why I'm doing more rock songs ... less torture for me.

trying to create separate timings on separate tracks for each instrument seemed a little tortuous

Yes, it kind of is. The only saving grace is that you can see the on/off information on all tracks, regardless of which track was used to enter the on/off information from.

So I end up going back to track#1 and then seeing how well things are filled in (overall) ... and then sometimes you have to keep going back into new tracks and doing them for a specific time range to fill-in the gaps that remain in the sequence.

If I can handle the additional stuff in track#1, I usually will. If I can't, or would be forced to dirty-up the main track a lot, then I often go into a new track, or use an un-used portion of an existing track (track 2+) to wizard another range of stuff into.

Whats really cool about using ranges, is that you could beat wizard a part into track#2 (say between 0:15 and 0:30) ... and then you could later return and tapper in the timings for something else (say between 0:45 and 0:55). When I have a need for a new timing and it overlaps with an existing track timing, then I usually open a new track and start using it.

This is like asking how to do art or programming ... many ways to achieve the same result. Some better, some worse. I am just finding what works for me. I just wish there was an easier way to take a range and then get into a wizard and have the option of the currently selected range being 'remembered', so that I could use the wizard on that same range if I wanted, instead of having the remember the exact start, stop times and entering them (very tedious). I also find that I use that same range multiple times, often using different wizard combinations each time ... but having the program use my current selection for a wizard range, would nice a nice 'enhancement', IMHO.