Tempo Changes

[raveent]

I do the audio for about 25 dancing school recitals every summer, and they inevitability ask me to "speed it up" during the rehearsal and show. Any chance you could add pitch control to allow me to speed up or slow down a particular song. 8% would probably be enough. Thanks for your consideration, love you program.

Kenny Martinez

[jkowtko]

Mike, this would actually be pretty cool to add if the underlying drivers support it For UI, just set up a "Tempo" slider similar to the master fader ....

Thanks. John

[Mike Daniell]

this would actually be pretty cool to add if the underlying drivers support it

The underlying drivers, ie the audio library used by SCS, does have facilities for adjusting the tempo, although so far I haven't tried out the functionality. I'd be interested to know if other users would find this useful, so further replies welcome!

[jkowtko]

Mike, one key feature that might make this a pretty big feature, would be to retain current pitch while changing the tempo. I know Goldwave can do this, so if your driver can do this too, very neat. There is at least one product out there I've seen (OrcheXtra?) for which this was one of their major selling points, so to have this in SCS would be not only very useful for music track playback, but also a great selling point for SCS.

Thanks. John

[Boswell]

I can hear the sound of another can of worms being opened to feed bloatware. If you want DJ type functions then use a DJ machine or DJ software, not a Sound CUE system.
The next request will be for a temo change cue and for each item in a playlist to have individual tempo etc.

As you can gather, I'm against including things that the majority of users will not use/need and just inflates the programme. If you get a lot of support for this suggestion then fine, I'll bow to the majority.

I would prefer a rock solid programme with NO bugs!

[jkowtko]

In musicals, when the audience is "dead" the conductor will often times speed up the tempo of the orchestra to liven the songs. So if the musical is being played from tracks, then the same capability would be welcomed.

Absolutely necessary? No. And if it means bloating the software and potentially compromising overall quality, then I agree I would hesitate. But if the dev effort isn't huge, then in my book this is good "bang for the buck".

[mikval]

I am planning in getting this software. I have been following the discussions and SCS seems to be moving in the right direction.
It is amazing the level of support Mike provides for this product.
In regards to the tempo change I see a perfect application in ballet and dance performances. We have a great deal of dance shows, and is usually required by the dancers to modify the speed of the music. A small percentage makes a big difference to them. Currently we use a CD player that have a pitch control. Of course we need to remember to change it back to normal for different tracks

[Mike Daniell]

We have a great deal of dance shows, and is usually required by the dancers to modify the speed of the music. A small percentage makes a big difference to them.

Are you wanting the option to save a permanent tempo change for a particular track? For example, if during rehearsals it is determined that music cue #1 is to be played 5% fast then is that 5% a property you want to retain with the cue, so it always plays 5% fast (by default)?

[mikval]

Yes, that certainly will be the case, since once they find the tempo that suits their variation they expect the same during performance.

[Hornett]

to be fair i see this from both ponts of vue, it is completely understandable that perhaps a Tempo change should not be implimented in future versions. I do think that the use of SCS and its implementation out in the field offers an extremely high level of usablitlity, it offers so much more than other Cueing software outhere. I use SCS for Award Shows, dinner partied and conferences, and in the past even used SCS for the discos (That i hate running) to have an option that allows you to change the tempo of music would be a great function. Stupidly enough in the past Clients have asked me to change the speed of certain tracks, this has also been the case for many dance shows i have worked on. I am also going to say that SCS has allowed me to be able to create some fantastic sound scapes for performances, i often need to take the sound out of SCS and edit the original file to either slow it down or speed it up and reimport the file. it is not a problem but again to be able to have a tempo change in SCS might be able to get you out of a hole, and also add another level to your sound design. who knows...

i would love to see SCS with the abitlity to be able to beat match but that ketle of worms would be quite big, but the more users of this software the more money for mike to make this product even better!!

[Theatre III Sound]

I'm of two minds about this request. Like some others, one of the applications of SCS I have is to provide the music for ballet shows and the dancers have requested tempo changes in the past. Before SCS, the process usually entailed re-cutting the CD for the next rehearsal/performance. Now, having a computer on location running SCS driving the sound system presents an opportunity to offer tempo changes on the spot.

Whether to provide this capability in SCS is the question as there are several software packages out there that can manipulate the tempo of a musical selection. I use Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio which my theatre group obtained for ~$60 and has the ability to do tempo adjustments as well as a lot of other things. Since we use Sound Forge to create/edit sound effects before loading them into SCS, this seems like a natural additional task it could do.

If, however, it turns out that implementing this capability in SCS is a small thing, then having that ability available without having to switch to a different application could be useful. The next question is where to add this feature. Mike has done a terrific job of cramming a lot of stuff into SCS, but the screen real estate is starting to get a little busy IMO. First, I don't think I'd want to see this feature on the main run screen and more importantly, I don't think SCS should attempt to do this in real-time. Therefore, I think the logical place to put the controls for this feature if implemented is in the File Selection Screen. There you could adjust and preview the tempo and when satisfied, save the file with a new name or replace the existing file. This would work for playlist as well as audio file cues.

Bruce

[Mike Daniell]

Regarding the real estate issue, I'm considering adding a Production Property checkbox for 'Display Tempo Control', default false (checkbox clear). The idea of this is that the tempo control(s) would not appear at all for any production that does not require the functionality. Being a Production Property, you could set the property for dance productions but leave the property unset for drama productions, etc.

[john-tapas]

Hi Mike

May I add my voice to the "Keep it Solid" sentiments of Boswell.

I have just compared system CPU usage between V9 and V10. This is a long way from being a cast iron test I know, but on my PC it seems that this is significantly higher on V10 when doing identical tasks.
Background rises from about 12% for V9 to over 20% for V10.
Playing Cues is a little more subjective but the graph seems to show that a greater amount of CPU usage is needed, in particular where automatic sequences are running.

I have no idea what aspects of the software place the biggest demands on the CPU, but I feel it would be a shame if one started having to specify top end computers to keep the software working.

Having said that I wouldn't choose to go back to version 9.
Version 10 looks and feels so much better!
How do you manage to keep us all happy?

Cheers

John

[ckaiserca]

Is this an idea that has fallen by the wayside? As a venue that does dozens of dance rectials and a multiude of "variety" type shows, having a Pictch Control would come as a godsend to me. I can't tell you the numer of times I have had to pull a file out ouf SCS so that I could edit the speed or pitch in Goldwave. More often than not, I have to do the same cue more than once as "now it's too fast" or now it's too high" seem to be the words on everyone's lips by the third time we run the cue.

If this is something that could be added, I'm all for it. Otherwise, my only choice for shows of this type is to go back to the CD player with pitch control for those tracks that reqire it. Running things on two seperate systems defeats the purpose of having a control program in the first place.

Thanks for your consideration!

[Mike Daniell]

Well, it had fallen by the wayside but I'll resurrect it. Most similar requests I've received are just for tempo control, but you mention pitch as well. Do you want to be able to adjust both tempo and pitch? I've just had a look at the SoundMan-Server (SM-S) documentation and SM-S has commands for adjusting either, which will make it fairly easy to implement for SM-S users. The BASS equivalents are more complicated as they involve adding another BASS module to SCS. So I will probably start with an SM-S implementation.