HELP!

My theater class decided to "change things up" and have everyone step outside their normal role and do something they never thought of. In my case, i ended up directing a one act for our festival. the only problem (well... the biggest problem anyway) is that the one act they gave me is a radio play. its sorry wrong number, if youve ever heard of it. theres a whole lot of sound effects such as a telephone ring which occurs every two seconds or so, a train, and a busy signal. any ideas on how to do this? i tried using a cd player with a bunch of sound effects but because we have to use it soooo much the cd player takes too long to cue the actors and slows the play wayyyyyy down. im sooooooooo greatful for any help.
 
as I see it you either can go forward or backward. Going backward would be useing a tape just record the sound effects in the order they happen wiht little to no pause between them and then all you have to do is hit pause and play when need be. The other idea is to use a computer but I am less expericned with that form.
 
for all the sound work I've ever done (which, I admit, is not much) I have used apple's iTunes which is free for mac and PC (I am a mac man, but it works just as well on a PC) and just had the SFX there. What worked well for me was to set it to repeat 1 and just let the sound play and when I wanted it I would just bring up the levels and bring them back down when I wanted the effect over. I hooked the computer up to the sound board via the headphone out jack to a normal RCA plug (you can get it at radio shack for like 5 bucks) and from RCA to quarter inch plug that went into the board (two channels, one left and one right).

I would suggest this. you can see the audio tracks you wanna play, you can put them into a playlist so it goes track 1, track 2, track 3, and if someone screws up you can get the correct sound effect back up easily just by reading what the song (or sound effect) is called....
 
another more complicated method would be using a full-on professional programme called "Ableton Live"
this is for looping your music in live situations - but -
since you have such rapidfire SFX this could be ideal.

you would assign each sound to a letter key on the keyboard.
- hit a key and its corrosponding sound plays.
you could have more than one playing at once too.

you can set them to individually loop or play once according to teh requirements or the sounds.
you can set it to play as long as you hold the button down, until you press the button again or not stop at all until its finished.

..and if your fully into it you can use a MIDI keyboard to do the same job as the computer keyboard.

really the only disadvantege is that you would have to learn how to use the programme first.
 
I like to use minidiscs. They play almost instantly if you have them cued up. I had to do a show like that early this year. I recorded all my own sounds for the phone rings, button pushing and everything. As for sounds inside the phone (like tones, busy signals, etc.), I used a speakerphone and my condensor mic. Worked and sounded great.

All of this was recorded into Cakewalk Sonar in my computer, and then edited up and spat out the sound interface through S/PDIF into the minidisc recorder to reduce A/D and D/A conversion noise.

What I do with the sounds is put them onto a minidisc in the order that they happen, even if it means having two or three (or sometimes more :wink: ) copies of it on the minidisc. You can name the tracks so the names come up on the screen of the player. Sony has a nice line of professional rack-mountable decks, the MDS-E series. My theatre has an MDS-E10 which suits our needs perfectly, except for the fact that I would like balanced outputs like on the MDS-E11. But I can't complain with what I have.
 
also, what i've done to stop the delay from when you start the cue to when it starts to play, is on iTunes, or a CD player, set it to repeat 1, and then just let it play the track constantly, and just pull the volume up when you need it. When that cues done, turn the volume back down, and then set up for the next cue.
 
youve got to watch out though. sometimes you need sounds to play at the same time not just one after enother.
i was acting in a play and the sound guy had the
flapping of a dragon's wings
-and then-
a crude roaring sound
-and then-
a halfassed cross between a firey sound and an explosion (the dragon blowing fire and burning something)
cause he just pushed skip track every time.

it sounded really bad. i would have made one track wich had all the sounds appropriatly mixed.
 
I'll just back up suggestions already made - whether it's a burned CD, a minidisk, the hard drive of your computer or just a cassette, go through and record the effects you need, in the order you need them and as many copies of each as you need as a single track. Then during the performance you simply alternate between play and pause. Of course, if you miss one cue, the whole thing is out of sequence... so be careful.

John
 
If the biggest problem is the repeating phone ring, there are other solutions which make life a lot easier. Tele-Q is an actual phone ringer you can hook up to a phone on stage - push the button, ring the phone - cost around $140 I believe. Depending on what kind of phone sound you want, most electronic keyboards have phone sounds - before I got the Tele-Q I rigged one up in the sound booth for a couple shows with a lot of fast phone rings - works great for newer sounding phone rings. If you can swing it though a Tele-Q will ring almost any phone you throw at it. Ringing a phone by pushing a button or a key might make dealing with the other effects a little easier.
 
You guys are all way to 'new aged'!

What you need todo is find an old phone (one with an actual bell- not an electronic ring), a 9v transformer (available at radio shack), a door bell button (or any other push button), and as much phone cable as you need for your performance space.

Plug the transformer in.... use the phone cable to run the power from the booth (or where ever else you want to control it from) to the place of the phone (you only hook up 2 of the wires) back by the transformer you need to put the door bell button on one of the wires.... I would not actually use the ringing phone on stage.... I would keep is somewhere backstage but near the phone that is on stage... then you cut the end of the cord off the phone and figure out which set of wires on the phone are the two that make it ring (I can't remember which two it is)!

Push the button and wa-la!




That should work cause that is what we have... but if anyone else has a better idea for a REAL ring....
 
I don't think 9 volts will do it, or at least it doesn't work with my phone. Most older phones need 70volts at 20 herts to ring if i remeber correctly. You may want to ask radio shack about some demo equipment they have that will make a phone ring, they may let you use that.
 
hey im very interested in how that tele-q works.

so are you saying that it is wireless.

or does it wire up to the phone and just give it the normal voltage that makes a phone ring. like trick the phone into thinking it has a call coming in.


and in my country its 90v AC to run a phone ringer (cant remember the frequency).
but ricc0luke mentioned a "9v transformer".
do you mean one that will step up from 9v to something like 70v?
i thought it has to be AC doesnt it?
 
halojen said:
hey im very interested in how that tele-q works.

so are you saying that it is wireless.

or does it wire up to the phone and just give it the normal voltage that makes a phone ring. like trick the phone into thinking it has a call coming in.


and in my country its 90v AC to run a phone ringer (cant remember the frequency).
but ricc0luke mentioned a "9v transformer".
do you mean one that will step up from 9v to something like 70v?
i thought it has to be AC doesnt it?

No, sad to say it isn't wireless - it needs to be wired to a phone that you are sure works to start with. You can find all the info you need at www.tele-q.com/HTML/instruct.htm - if you do decide on one I wouldn't go with just batteries in it - for $18 bucks more you can pick up a power supply for it. I have used it with about 8 different phones from different eras so far and it has worked on all of them - but like I said providing the phone works to begin with. Plus that, I really like a phone actually ringing on stage as compared to a sound effect.
 
cool.
i love things like that.
..eg. im currently designing my second homemade joystick.
for use with Fruity Loops (a music making programme) so i can live tweak things physically.
(of course they dont take the actual form of a joystick.) the first one was just a row of knobs but as far as teh comp is concerned its a stick.
yay.
 

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