Audacity gurus

[AAH]

I am currently massively behind with my preparation for this year and haven't started on sequencing at all so I'm hoping a few gurus can help me. My possible playlist for this year is as below and I'm hoping someone with some Audacity skill could create some timing files for me. Even just a file or 2 would help me out as I really have no idea what a beat, note, bar or any of that stuff is but my attempts haven't produced anything like what I'd call a nice timing to go with the music.
Alternatively a guide to how to produce some nicely synched timing files would be good.

Alvin and the Chipmunks - Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree
Alvin and the Chipmunks - Christmas Don't be Late
Bob Rivers - Decorations
Bob Rivers - Parking Spaces
Bob Rivers - Police Stop My Car
Bob Rivers - Toy Sack
Brad Paisley - Penguin, James Penguin
Dropkick Murphys - The Season's Upon Us (The 1st 40s is all I'll use)
Hilary Duff - Jingle Bell Rock
Hilary Duff - Santa Claus Lane
Royal Guardsmen - Snoopy and the Red Baron Christmas
Trans Siberian Orchestra - A Mad Russians Christmas
Trans Siberian Orchestra - Wizards in Winter
Village People - Disco Santa Claus


Thanks in advance

Alan

 

[drlucas]

I have a couple of the TSO ones I can probably send you my xml files and you can look to see if it helps at all. Lately I've been using the XLtap software that Sean has posted on the nutcracker website to make my own timing marks. Audacity creates too many notes for my liking and I only use it really when I want to play with a piano keyboard effect. Last year at this time on Vimeo Sean posted some nice tutorials on how he navigates in audacity. I always wanted to create a summary pdf document of his tutorials but can never find the time/motivation. Anyways will post shortly my xml backup folder for you to go through

 

[drlucas]

Here is the xml files i am using....

 

[AAH]

I know how to use the txt files that audacity creates as I have had a play at making some with Toy Sack being my most successful attempt but at the moment I have no idea how to use and xml file. More reading to do in the morn it looks.

Thx for the files by the way.

 

[drlucas]

In nutcracker create a new sequence and use the radio button on the right side that I think says xml vs the one in the middle that says audacity timing. That's it really. Sean has a video or two on sharing sequences and that is the jist of how to do it. Would be awesome if people can share sequences this month

 

[Ɠαяєтн]

I usually use audacity to create 3 timings per song. Beat, Note Onset and Polyphonic, these are created with the Queen Mary plugin with Audacity. The video from John Storms shows the whole process.


Manually Inserting Audacity Timing Grid into LOR

 

[arw01]

Alan, there are a lot of timing files in Nutcracker's release, and if you send a song or two to Sean he adds them to the collection of timing marks he's made up already.

 

[AAH]

That video is great but I am still not happy with the timings I have got with several songs that I've tried and that is the big issue I am having..
I have looked through the timings inside the nutcracker folder but I think only 1 matches what I have in my playlist.

 

[Ɠαяєтн]

If you want to move the timing marks in audacity, left click and drag to where you want them.

 

[drlucas]

XLtap is a manual way to make timing marks but I find it a lot easier than with Audacity. Once you create timing marks manually in XLtap and bring in to xlights (just use the audacity option when selecting the song). Once in the grid in xlights what I do is just select two or three models, lock down the brightness and effect 1 and then make random effects and pick one model and hit play effect and tweak the timing marks manually there.

The other approach is use a beat detection file from audacity and then Start deleting rows one at a time.

Both pretty cumbersome methods unless you have someone else' marks.

I can let you know the mp3s I used for my previously posted xml files if you don't have them and you should see a pretty high level of confidence with the timing. There is at least 6 songs there that ended up being pretty good and have a fair number of marks but at the same time not toooooo many

 

[AAH]

I actually created the timing for most of my songs today either through Audacity and grabbing either the beats or bars and then using the method in the video to import the timing marks into LOR. I then used a fade down per timing mark as that was nicer to work with than my usual on or off as a timing mark. After I had a fade down I subdivided each timing interval up by 4 or 8 so I ended up with something like 0.1s intervals while still having timing marks directly related to the music. With 2 of the songs I used the XLTAP app that's downloadable from the Nutracker release page. After my tone deaf attempts to tap it out I went back to Audacity and matched up the timing.

 

[djgra79]

The above video shows how to import the Audacity timings into a LOR sequence - can the same be done for Vixen? I've opened up a sequence in Notepad but can't locate the timing area of the code??

 

[AAH]

I think that Vixen 3 will directly import audacity timings. Not sure if the video below is valid or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5WUM3CjJkU

 

[djgra79]

Brilliant, thanks Alan!

 

[Gilrock]

If the goal was to get timings into LOR then why not just use the LOR software. I started with LOR and it always worked great for marking the beats. I create a dummy "beat track" channel and then I have the beat generator in LOR mark the beats in yellow onto that channel. Depending on the song I usually only mark the downbeats and I like to use fixed grid 0.05 timings.