Listening to a band without timecode?

This is a question for anyone who can think of a good solution really. I am doing a show which has a band, however its not appropriate to the music to be using a click track. Is there a way anyone can think of to receive triggers from the band to the lighting desk at various points in the music without timecode? Or to generate a variable timecode from the beat of the music?

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks,

Katie

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  • Yes, No, and Maybe? Let's knock one out of the gate right away being variable timecode. Physics says no to that one. Time is time. However, depending on your source you could vary the BPM of a sync track like a mix engineer does for reverb, or a DJ making a smooth transition into and out of a bridge between songs.

    Though I wonder if there's an easier solution to your situation. Can you give some more detail about the interactivity? Do the cues need to happen at specific times, or simply need to be triggered based off events in time? Could a musician simply send a trigger of chosen flavor at the specified time that fits in their performance? Does it need to be automated? This is sort of the thing where a good stage manager makes the money. They live, breathe, and die by the sequence of a performance, are they not able to call the cues based on the performance of the music?

  • So firstly, of course you can vary timecode, it's just a count. Secondly, check out Einsteins general theory of relativity for how time can also vary.

    I think my first post wasn't clear enough. I am really asking if anyone has used a piece of software that they would recommend, which takes some sort of audio input such as a bass drum beat, and can interpret that on a timeline and spit out OSC triggers, or midi triggers or some such. I know that disguise can do something along those lines, however I want to see if there are other options as well, so that I can cover all bases.

    Musicians triggering the lighting isn't a road I wish to go down. It may well be that it can all be called by the DSM, but we are doing R and D at the minute and its an interesting thing to research.

    Thanks,

    Katie

  • There are two software solutions by ETC developers, both can recognize a frequency spectrum and can make an OSC trigger. Both based on the same algorithms.
     Luminosus https://www.luminosus.org
    Sound2Light https://github.com/ETCLabs/Sound2Light

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