MIDI MMC question

[bender151]

I'm in asmall band. We play to a lcick live and would like to sync a light show to that. We're starting with just a couplle AMDJ SPOT 250's... so it just relatively easy to design. The problem is that our click is on a hard disc recorder, which has midi/ins/out. I also have a pro tools sysem on my pc to send receive MMC. My question is, "Can i design a sequence for each song, have someone pull up the file prior to each song starting, and use MMC so that when the PLAY button is hit on the recorder, the lighting sequence starts. Also, is there any easier way to sync to pre-recorded music in this program that by watching a stopwatch? You know, something like some sort of timeline that accepts mp3, wav, etc?"

Thank you

[dmxlighting]

so you are playing a midi track and playing along live with it ?
If thats the case you should be able to add a silent midi score to that track which can directly start actions in FS using the midi control assignment. Come from the midi out of the hard disk unit and get a midi / usb device for the pc running FS. In a nutshell thats it. The lights will run exactly to cue.
Futher reading on midi control in FS is recommended!
The is no other way to auto sync lights to music. FS will allow chases etc to react to sound via the audio program written by Remco but this will not let you do anymore than have the sequence run 'sound 2 light' ie each step of the sequence listens for a beat note and moves on to the next or random step.

[bender151]

Well, not exactly. We're not playing a midi track at all. The backing tracks on the hard disk recorder are good ol' fashioned audio. The machine does run MMC though... so I suppose it depends on how you look at it. I'm sure I have quite a bit of reading ahead of me, but for the most part it seems pretty cut and dry as far as what I'm trying to do. Thanks for the reply.
One of our "problems" though is that the backing tracks weren't really ever sync'd to anything but themselves. For example, when transferring from Pro Tools to the recorder, I should have used MMC as well so that the track would start from the moment the play button was hit. As it is, I essentially just bounced individual tracks form PT to the recorder at once without using MMC. So, basically, instead of the click intro starting exactly when the play button is hit on the recorder, there's a few seconds of nothing before the click/track starts.
Why does this matter? I guess it doesn't if I'm going to get a stopwatch and a notepad and take notes as to when stuff happens, and when to cue certain lighting actions. However, who would want to do such a thing? Do you know is FS supports MP#/WAV import into a timelin?

[Shannon D]

There is no audio time line in Freestyler to import audio files.

I'll share how I run Freestyler from the stage while performing. I'm the drummer of the band and I have a Roland SPD-S sampler. I run midi out the SPD-S back to the laptop to trigger the scenes exactly on time with the band. Instead of hitting two crash cymbals, I hit one crash and the SPD-S. The lights go to the next scene exactly on time with the band. I switch scenes on the backbeat or downbeat and its right on time with us. We don't use the same set list night after night. We take many request and the show just rolls. I don't have a lighting scheme for each song we play. I have many color scenes, movement scenes for the moving heads and static positions for the moving heads. Changing the colors does not interfere with the movements and vice versa. It's not perfect, but it works out ok. I have also used the Behringer FCB-1010 midi foot controller to accomplish the same thing except our keyboard player used the foot controller. We did run from the foot controller and midi thru the SPD-S before. That gave me and the keyboard player control just in case if one of us were too busy with our instrument parts.

[trapgunner]

I have a solution for the sync problems, but you'll need a notebook, and your band need to play with a bpm for the drummer, you'll need a software who play and edit midi.
This is my band and I programmed the lights and work perfect with freestyler: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqbXduiZtfo

I can make a tutorial, is a little complex, but the result is awesome.