Tap Tempo for Accurate Event Period

[budude]

I'd say there's probably enough variation in the equipment to give a certain amount of "offness" especially if using non-LED lighting no matter how accurately you sequence. This is a definite time saver!

[mrpackethead]

I'm going to have to disagree with ya there... lights that are timed perfectly to the music are what make the show look amazing... being off by even 5 or 10ms is quite perceivable by the human eye/ear, and in my opinion, contributes to the 'amateur' feel of a lot of shows...

Mmm, so your tungsten lights have a ramp up/ramp down time of sub 5ms? Your leds will. But my point was not about lights being in sync with teh music. It was the music itself. Music that is 'perfectly' timed is souless.

>A lot of artists record to a computer/metronome 'click track' keeping the tempo very >rigid.

some do. And their music may soundlike a computer would play it. Espically those who make 99% of the music on their sequencer.. However if you are playing along to the click track, your timing is still not perfect, and there is variation between bars, and thats what gives music its grove, its soul.. Go and google this topic, theirs raging debate!

>I've found that if I set the event period correctly, I'll be able to throw events in >anywhere in the song, and they will almost always be perfectly in time.

Yes.. But your talking about your lights, not the music itslef

Actually, being able to offset the music by +/- a few msec would be a nice feature, because depending on where it starts, your beats might be timed correctly, but just offset by 5-20 msec (throughout the whole song)[/QUOTE]

[Virtus]

I just tapped out all my songs and recorded the timing for 8 blocks per beat and 12 blocks per beat and then used the new sequence wizard to tap out a beat track for a couple of the songs. The math on this is perfect. Each division now makes "sense" when sequencing. This is a great tool if you haven't started sequencing all your songs yet.

[djulien]

Any plans to turn this into a Vixen plug-in? It would be very convenient to enter those parameters directly within Vixen, and then have it set those beats in a beat channel.

don

[JonathonReinhart]

Yes. I'd been planning on it. College is kind of kicking my butt at the present though... If anyone would like to take my electronics systems test wednesday, I'll promise to have the plugin done by friday :-)

I'm not sure yet if KC has the all of interfaces available to do this though (both setup the event period, and insert events). I'll be looking into it though. Do you guys typically add a dummy channel at the beginning or end for a beat track?

[Virtus]

Do you guys typically add a dummy channel at the beginning or end for a beat track?

It would be neat if you could do it like the Audio Visualizer across the top so the beat track is always visible when you scroll down a long list of channels.

[51fordf2]

It would be neat if you could do it like the Audio Visualizer across the top so the beat track is always visible when you scroll down a long list of channels.

Yeah!! I second that!!! That's my biggest problem - carrying the beat track down with 256 channels to sequence....

R

[djulien]

If anyone would like to take my electronics systems test wednesday, I'll promise to have the plugin done by friday

What kind? (jk)

I'm not sure yet if KC has the all of interfaces available to do this though (both setup the event period, and insert events).

Yes, those interfaces are available. Some of the plug-ins use the interfaces to set channel values (such as the RGB add-in tool), and to get the event period they typically just ask the XML node for the data.

It would be neat if you could do it like the Audio Visualizer across the top so the beat track is always visible when you scroll down a long list of channels.

That would be very nice! I don't think the interfaces are there to do that (at least not in 2.1.x). An approximation to that could be done using an approach like the Cue Sheets, but that doesn't really give the accuracy that would be needed for beats.

However, it could probably be done by disassembling the Visualizer code or surrounding MDI child window and then modify the paint logic.

That's my biggest problem - carrying the beat track down with 256 channels to sequence....

It would also be nice to generalize this to "sticky channels" - that is, designate one or more channels to always display at the top and bottom of the currently viewable portion of the grid. That would avoid a lot of awkward copy and paste work down within the grid.

don

[Virtus]

Today I discovered that the RANDOM button in Vixen, when selecting varying intensities and a length = 8 (which will be once per beat), can produce very nice in sync (though not syncronized, but the correct rate) changes.

[djulien]

Today I discovered that the RANDOM button in Vixen, when selecting varying intensities and a length = 8 (which will be once per beat), can produce very nice in sync (though not syncronized, but the correct rate) changes.

Thanks for sharing that! Then it's easy to slide it left or right to line up with the music.

It looks like you can also get 1 cell per beat (rather than the whole length as specified in the Random window), making it easier to see the start of each beat, as follows - While the cells are still selected with the mouse, if you then copy to clipboard, then move the selection left or right 1 position, then use XOR (boolean paste), you'll get a blip at the start of each of those intervals, rather than the whole beat. ie: X---X---X instead of XXXXxxxxXXXX etc.

don