DiyLightAnimation
Fun => The Porch => Topic started by: zwiller on November 19, 2012,
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I wanted to open a discussion about sharing beat tracks. I would like to help members out that have issues getting a basic beat track for their sequence and am considering doing some and posting them here. I wanted to see if there was some interest.
First off I think RJ has done a awesome job keeping this place safe and sound and would like to keep it that way. Can someone confirm that if I would files posted here would be fall under non-commercial use? Since I only plan to share the sequence files there should be nothing to be concerned about. Any other advice doing something like this?
Right now I am getting pretty comfortable with LSP and plan to use it for this. I would also like to keep the technical aspects regarding file sharing to a minimum...
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the sound file used will need to be clearly identified.
Artist/album/song
since many versions of lots of popular songs, and even multiple versions of the same song by the same artist.
since a beat track is essentially a one channel sequence, i don't think there would be an issue.
I'd be curious of the alignment of sequence played, to sound output on different systems to see if there would be an issue from person to person (not ever machine is equal)
but it would give a lot of people a good start on a new song.
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I for one have already benefited from your beat track. My sequence is much cleaner and smoother now because of it. I just want to say thank you for doing that for me, and i for one can benefit from more. Of course posting on this site is up to RJ and the admins.
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I'd be interested. I'm horrible at beats and think I have lots of room for improvement :)
As long as you only do the sequence and not include the actual music (besides giving us the specific details) I would think it would be fine. After all you are helping the community.
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I'm very interested in sharing beat tracks.
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Go for it. Are you talking about posting a whole sequence or only a one track sequence consisting of a beat track. I for one prefer the sequence, but album artist/artist/song is a must. This is my 6th year and I still have been unable to create a new sequence that was worthwhile. Last year I just took a song and did color and RGB effect changes every 20 seconds. Surprisingly most people liked it, maybe because of the RGB effects. I started that sequence just to learn and test my RGB nodes, but it turned out pretty good although I was up to version 6 by mid December.
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No doubt there could be some hiccups with edited songs. What we can do is reference the song, artist, and album and elapsed time to minimize this issue. I think it might be wise to link the mp3 used in Amazon. That way, if the mp3 you have does not match up then you can grab the right one. Not 100% it will be perfect but who knows?
Thanks Sebastian. Glad you could use it.
Right now I am just thinking of posting a .msq file with intervals on the beat. I just tried one and it went well. Included will be 2 channels with images of mini trees so I could test view and make sure it was on the beat. Waiting for a computer guru to pitch in to convert to vixen. Thought I remember a workaround with LOR or something.
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isn't this sorta trying to be implemented in nutcracker?
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Beat tracks or the conversion of LSP files to vixen? I really would like to understand Nutcracker but too focused on learning LSP.
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Msq file you can use light elf to convert to xlights and the xlights to vixen. Or you can just export to Lms from lsp and use xlights to convert to vixen. Multiple ways to get there. I myself use lsp so msq works for me.
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Beat tracks or the conversion of LSP files to vixen? I really would like to understand Nutcracker but too focused on learning LSP.
I believe he was wanting to know everybody's show music, so that possibly the software could have predefined points in the music.
then the software could output to almost any sequencer.
I think it might make sense to go this route as you wont have to worry about "i like this song, do you have it in ABC sequencer?"
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Nutcracker does not use automated beats, but timing marks (beats) that some one has defined. Not much different that doing a beat track in vixen. It will output defined RGB effects starting at a timing mark, but if the timing marks are off then so is everything else.
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Of course posting on this site is up to RJ and the admins.
Not sure why we would have an issue with it. As long as it is posted with out the music. It would be best if this is going to be done that only music that a poster could link to on like Itunes or Amazon be posted otherwise it is like most of you are saying. The stuff will not sync when the members gets a slightly different version.
RJ
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I definitely could benefit from this idea as well. It is worth a try in my opinion. Thanks!
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I am testing a beat track with another member now. I didn't link an mp3 so we'll see if it works. Hope we get lucky and it syncs well.
Not trying to take anything away from Nutcracker and maybe Sean can use these tracks too.
I think that odds are in our favor that the music we all own should sync. Especially if we take note of elapsed time. We can at least try. I hope it works, since I own a ton of holiday music and really don't want to buy duplicate stuff.
Sooo... What kind of stuff do you guys want??? Maybe there will be a trend.
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Sean has a list of songs that people use He posted a thread somewhere.
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The song length may not be identical, but the track may still be able to be used. For instance, if I rip a track from a CD, it might be one length, but the same track downloaded from Amazon might be slightly different. If they add blank space to the front or end of the track, that doesn't change the actual beat, just when it starts in the MP3.
I have a sequence like that. I have the music from a CD, but it is slightly different from the sequence I downloaded and does not line up well at all as downloaded. If I add or delete cells to/from the beginning of the sequence, it shifts the beat track to line up with my version of the song. So as long as the songs are the same versions, they should be able to be lined up and shared. it might just take shifting the track to match your specific music file.
Also, nutcracker uses "chunks" of the music. So a section could start @ 10.4 seconds and end @ 24.6 seconds. So a nutcracker effect would play during that time, but there are many beats during that 14.2 seconds that are not accounted for...especially if you are using other DMX items that activate to the beat or melody of the song. You might get an effect to be close to the beat, but there will be no substituting for manually lining up your lights with a good beat track in areas where you need that kind of precision. Each type of sequencing has their place and are used extensively in each of my songs.
My $0.02,
-Keith
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I agree that the same should be indicated because ripping CDs is always different than you get online. That way it would make it easier to see if you have the same one or not.
Also, some songs need more than 1 channel for a beat track, depending on their complexity. Hitting the words to a song can be very different than the drum beat. So if you can add a description as to what you are considereing the beat, that would be helpful too. Especially if you are using more than 1 channel.
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I have 5 versions of white christmas all different lenghts same artist
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How do we go about getting this setup within the forum? Is that even an option?
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Maybe we could use the wiki or have a new forum page
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Let's just see where it takes us. We can just post the files here. This is just something I thought about.
The elapsed time will not be 100% but it will eliminate most songs that are well edited. A second or two off might be reasonable. Folks with LSP are OK since there is an alignment tool. It works great. I assume there is a way to tweak the other programs too. But Keith has it right, the beat "should" be
the same.
For now I plan to use just 2 channels for a beat track. It doesn't have all the fancy riffs and stuff in there but it is a good solid foundation to build on.
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might be nice to have a forum section called Community, a new thread could either be artist, or song, with the different version beat tracks inside, so it's easier to find what you're looking for rather than 27 pages in a thread.
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I leave that up to the mods. I am still unsure if there is enough interest. Regardless, I plan to do some for the folks here that want it. I hope somebody will do the .msq to .vix conversion. If there is somebody willing I can send them one to try. I wonder how well it will translate. I am in no way affiliated but the level of accuracy in LSP for beat placement is powerful and not sure if that will carry forward to vixen.
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I can do the conversions to help out.
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I opened up the LSP file that Zwiller sent me and loaded it into LSP 2.5 Looked and sounded good. My copy of the song seemed to match up to Zwillers beats. I exported the sequence to LOR format. Then I tried to use xlights to convert to Vixen, but it failed. Here are the xlights messages:
Reading: C:\Users\jnealand\Documents\xlights data\FelizNavidadBEAT.lms
Reading LOR sequence
Track 1 length = 0 centiseconds
ERROR: sequence length is 0
Finished converting all files
Not being a heavy xlights converter I am not sure what could be wrong. Will try using light elf once I can get it to run. No luck so far, but I posted my error messages in the light elf forum.
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Sean has a list of songs that people use He posted a thread somewhere.
Christmas song list (For Nutcracker users) http://meighan.net/nutcracker/effects/xmas_songs.php
for anyone, no login needed: http://meighan.net/nutcracker/effects/xmas_songs_read_only.php
the difference is nutcracker users have sort options.
I have a file with music phrases and beat tracks for Wizards in Winter.
I created the beat tracks using audacity.
Use "Generate, Click Track"
(http://meighan.net/nutcracker/images/2012-11-21_2211.png)
The concept of marking music phrases and beat marks using audacity is that the file is sequencer agnostic.
The marks are a 3 column ascii table (START time, END time, label name). Time is in microseconds.
I hope we can get more sequencers next year to recognize this simple way of marking songs.
thanks
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Sean,
I really want to learn Nutcracker but it's not in the cards right now. Do you have other beat tracks? I hope I am not taking anything away from what you're doing.
Here's the deal: I have been playing music most of my life so the beat thing is an organic thing to me. I don't rely on software. I lay it down manually.
What I am trying to do is help build a library of beat tracks so that that members who can't dance ;D can have a good starting point. That's all.
Jim, thanks for reporting back. I have an updated beat track for an amazon mp3. Glad the appliance install went well. :) Another member successfully converted to .vix. Sounds promising.
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Public songs up on nutcracker now looks to be Wizards of Winter, Christmas Eve Sarajevo, Mad Russian Chritsmas.
Seems a shame that both goals are so similar yet looks like there's gonna be a lot of redundant work done in different places. I wonder if there was a way to grab the data from the lsp files strip out everything but the on/off and save it in the txt column format nutcracker expects. I'm currectly scheming in my brain on trying something similar with the midi files I create for my use as beat tracks.
You don't need to know nutcracker to submit beat tracks it's more knowing how to make a label track in Audacity, uploading it into nutcracker website with a link to buy the song and a name and then done. People can pick effects they have made that I believe are auto sized to those beat phrases for their chosen light model and hit the magic export button to get a HLS, LSP, LOR, or Vixen file of their choosing.
Now for someone who didn't want any of the nutcracker effects I could see there being a desire for something fast like a "just light on and off" button in nutcracker along with the phrases I suppose.
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While the concepts are similar I do not feel that a traditional beat track is quite the same as timing marks created by audacity. I see the audacity "phrases", as Sean calls them, being just a time slot (usually a number of seconds) that may contain many beats and that is the difference. A phrase in Nutcracker is just a point in time to change an RGB effect. A beat can be a light(s) flashing every second and you would not change a spiral tree every second. I think it is a mistake to confuse or comingle the two, but it is important to know the difference and both have their place.
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I just checked Audacity and I see that it is based on BPM. Pretty sure the click track is mainly designed for when a musician is recording but I suppose you can get reasonably close with it after tweaking it. There is usually some degree of drifting. That said, as Jim points out it's not the same thing. Apples and oranges. A beat track done by a human will always groove better/tighter.
It looks like a lot of work to do a label track for each beat. It doesn't take much time to do these beat tracks for me. The work as I see it will be doing songs I don't like... ;D
Injury, keep scheming, it sounds like you're onto something.
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I just checked Audacity and I see that it is based on BPM. Pretty sure the click track is mainly designed for when a musician is recording but I suppose you can get reasonably close with it after tweaking it. There is usually some degree of drifting. That said, as Jim points out it's not the same thing. Apples and oranges. A beat track done by a human will always groove better/tighter.
It looks like a lot of work to do a label track for each beat. It doesn't take much time to do these beat tracks for me. The work as I see it will be doing songs I don't like... ;D
Injury, keep scheming, it sounds like you're onto something.
I agree that the click track only works where the beat is not varying. In Wizards in Winter , TSO uses a click track in their performance. So in that case it laid down the beats down for the entire song, with no drifting.
Other songs, you need to mark the tracks manually.
Marking the music phrases is where i am spending my time this season. These need to be done by hand. I also am a musician. I play in the VFW band, the Highlands Ranch Community band, The Littleton community band, the John Phillip Sousa band, two oechestras at church, the renaissance faire and various solo gigs. I play flute, piccolo and recorders. As a musician and a programmer I am lookign at ways to get music data out where it can be used again.
Jim, i think you misunderstood the need for beats in Nutcracker. The label files will have music phrases and beats. The nutcracker effects will be made beat aware and allow things like having the effects on a megatree highlight the beat while you are doing bars or meteors.
It probably will be used more on the single strand effects of eaves, fire sticks, windows and arches.
Adding beat aware Nutcracker effects will be a next season task.
Marking a song into these three music classes was where i am going next year
Music phrases: The places where you would normally change an effect. Most are 5 to 10 seconds long
Beats: Every measure marked throughout the entire song. These will be used in nutcracker to do enhancements to the current effect
Notes: I plan on marking notes, note1 to note88 using the frequencies on a piano. These will be used in a nutcracker effect to place highlight effects matching a note. Like a bar effect where each bar lights up matching a descending note sequence.
By marking up a song into meta data , it has the advantage of only needing to be done once and can be shared across all the sequencers (well we could hope). The HLS sequencer has already added parsing of the Audacity label file for this seasons users.
I think all of this is more complicated than you just creating a beat track. Your method could be available to use this season and it is usable by the LSP users immediately. They also dont need Nutcracker in any way.
If you have time, i could use your help in marking up the music files i list in the xmas songs into music phrases. That would make those timing marks available for Nutcracker projects for this year. Marking up music phrases would best be done by someone who is comfortable with the music.
If interested in marking up music phrases, pm me.
thanks
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Thanks Sean. I really think nutcracker and be put to good use with LSP. You've got alot of great effects LSP can't touch. I plan to import some things into my sequences when I get my show done and up.
Long time rocker here. I play all things but took instructions for drums so that explains my fixation with all things beat.
It's kind of interesting but I planned on a progression of things too. I know that basically everyone wants to buy sequences. I actually thought about starting something up but at this point I want to go the same direction as you and RJ.
In my mind we get 10-30 songs beat tracked. Then later I add 8 tracks for notes that make the song. Kind of like the columns/keyboard riff here: https://vimeo.com/34574775 (https://vimeo.com/34574775)
This song is not for everybody but it basically 90% beat track. This will give an idea of what you can do with a basically just a beat track. https://vimeo.com/34592001
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Got the file that Zwiller sent me converted from LSP to Xlights xseq using the Light Elf tool. Then used xlights to convert to Vixen 2.1. Loaded it into Vixen, attached my 2011 profile (since it has a preview) and played the beat track. Looks good to me, but what do I know about beat tracks or music. Just call me low music, but not low tech. LOL.
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Care to try a beat track for Feliz Navidad? I tried with other members and they found their existing mp3 worked fine. I do have a revised beat track for an amazon mp3 with link that I will post later if this goes well. Just trying to learn dropbox and see how this beat track sharing will work...
Please provided some feed back. Thanks.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7vqysxloaxne9vo/BwlzdG0a0d (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7vqysxloaxne9vo/BwlzdG0a0d)
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Now that's my kind of song :). I will try later. Still waking up. Thanks Sam