Outboard Gear Looking for a Click Track Solution

[jhdesynz]

I have a question that I am hoping there may be a simple answer to. My TD is looking for a visual device that can be located on stage that will blink when it receives an incoming beat from an audio click track.

We perform mostly everything to click tracks and all the musicians have in-ears, but its not feasible for all the singers to have them and we're looking for an inexpensive way to help them keep the tempo during numbers where the drum beat isn't pronounced (Yes we've already thought of get better singers, but we're a mostly volunteer group).

The click track is a stereo MP3 with practice track on Left and click on Right. Its played back by Pro Presenter off a Mac Pro.

Any ideas?

 

[Jescalese]

i dont really know if this will help, but in my theater we use a video camera on the conductor and a video monitor back stage for singers, we also have a light that can be switched on from the sound board to tell singers the mic is live. if the singers are backstage that might work, but if they are on stage thats a different issue, good luck hope this might help

 

[coldnorth57]

check this out it might work for you
TimeStream Visual Conductor

 

[mixmaster]

I have a question that I am hoping there may be a simple answer to. My TD is looking for a visual device that can be located on stage that will blink when it receives an incoming beat from an audio click track.

We perform mostly everything to click tracks and all the musicians have in-ears, but its not feasible for all the singers to have them and we're looking for an inexpensive way to help them keep the tempo during numbers where the drum beat isn't pronounced (Yes we've already thought of get better singers, but we're a mostly volunteer group).

The click track is a stereo MP3 with practice track on Left and click on Right. Its played back by Pro Presenter off a Mac Pro.

Any ideas?

strobe light with a speed control maybe? multlply BPM of the song by 60 to get beats per second, set the same rate on the strobe, mask apropriatly so that only the singer can see it.

 

[AlexD]

Like the strobe idea, But you would have to be very good with electronics to do this. Take a metronome and take it apart take out the speaker that makes the clicking sound and attach a series of led lights on to it, set the metronome to the beat and the LEDs should flash to the beat. If you got a long wire you could send the metronome to the conductor or DSM so he/she could change it depending on the tempo of the next song. I have no idea how this would be done but I think it would work. If I was to do this I would just take the speaker off and connect the speaker wires to a single amplifier if needed and then to the LEDs form the amplifier.
Hope this helps

 

[Chris15]

I'd think you should be able to isolate the clicks reasonably easily. You should be able to get it out as an audio feed by some means.

If you then feed that into a comparator set appropriately, then the you get a trigger when the clicks come through. Basically it's the principle of noise gates. But in this case you're not opening the audio channel but triggering a light or some other device...

 

[derekleffew]

jhdesynz, do some Googling for "audio controlled relay." My first thought was this RDL unit, but the minimum release time of 0.5s is too long. Chris15 is on the right track with the noise gate concept. Ohhh--another thought: search for external VU meter, LED style. Given variable gain, the click track can light all LED segments. Most seem to be DIY kits or instruction form, so a good project for an electronics enthusiast.http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/members/jhdesynz.html

 

[AlexD]

Like the strobe idea, But you would have to be very good with electronics to do this. Take a metronome and take it apart take out the speaker that makes the clicking sound and attach a series of led lights on to it, set the metronome to the beat and the LEDs should flash to the beat. If you got a long wire you could send the metronome to the conductor or DSM so he/she could change it depending on the tempo of the next song. I have no idea how this would be done but I think it would work. If I was to do this I would just take the speaker off and connect the speaker wires to a single amplifier if needed and then to the LEDs form the amplifier.
Hope this helps

I can not remember what way this is but I think it is, an LED needs a direct current but the speaker wire that you would connect the LED to is an alternating current. So if you were to do this then you would have to have an AC to DC convertor at some point.

 

[Garfunky]

I highly recommend just splitting the audio signal from the click track, and sending it to a Db meter that the performers can see. American audio makes one that you can pick up for less than $100.
L.E.D. decibel display (Black) - dB-Display Black - American Audio
The inputs on this model are unbalanced, so I wouldn't recommend looping the audio through the meter, but rather sending a separate signal from the mixer if you have an extra output.

 

[Chris15]

Just one thing to be careful with; because we are talking about the click track, you need to mindful of the effects of latency. If you can avoid digitisation that is good.

Ideally you want to feed the Right output of the computer into an iso split and feed the indicator off that to avoid introducing delay via the console, admittedly it will only be a few op amps worth, but better to get rid of it where you can...

This is where a number of the VU ideas will face issues, there is a few fractions of a second of delay. If it gets above about 3 milliseconds you will have sync issues...

I don't think anything stand alone is wise (metronomes etc.), they just won't get the sync right and things will be worse than nothing...

 

[jhdesynz]

jhdesynz, do some Googling for "audio controlled relay." My first thought was this RDL unit, but the minimum release time of 0.5s is too long. Chris15 is on the right track with the noise gate concept. Ohhh--another thought: search for external VU meter, LED style. Given variable gain, the click track can light all LED segments. Most seem to be DIY kits or instruction form, so a good project for an electronics enthusiast.http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/members/jhdesynz.html

I like this idea, prob going to work the best cuz we can eliminate most of the latency by building a custom circuit. Just going to be a matter of getting our main tech/electrical engineer to work on it.

Thanks Derek!

 

[SHARYNF]

Here is a link that might be useful

LED Audio VU Meter

it is built with this part from Nat Semi
http://www.national.com/mpf/LM/LM3915.html

Sharyn

 

[theatre4jc]

Way to have a visible click?

At my church we have an orchestra that is made up of volunteers and is to large to give everyone an in-ear monitor, yet to small to tell the people that just plain suck to go away. So we have people that cannot keep time on their own. Now I'm a lighting guy, not a musician but I thought that was why the conductor was there, to keep everyone on time. Anyway to the point. We are doing a Christmas production where we will not be able to have the conductor in a very visible spot. So he came to me asking for a MIDI to DMX converter to fire a small flashing light for the click. So it would be a visible click track. However, I (the LD for the church) am not going to program the MIDI to fire the light on every beat of the click on every song we have. And I know no one else will either.

So my question is: Is there a device that will be able to trigger a flashing light in tempo with the click track, that does not have to be programmed, but instead can "hear" the click and fire the light? We run our click, loops and everything through Cuebase, which I know nothing about. I'm trying to find an easy way around this so I don't have to spend hours putting on/off cues through the MIDI with the Cuebase for the 10ish songs we will be doing. All songs are original and have yet to be created and won't be clicked for a while so I'm guessing I won't have a ton of time to do that anyway.

Thoughts?

 

[museav]

Re: Way to have a visible click?

Could you just set a strobe for the beat per second meter desired? If you did something where you had a click track trigger something else the latency could start to cascade. And I'm interested to see what you come up with that the conductor and entire orchestra can easily see but that also does not distract them from reading their music or bother the audience.

A personal view but a conductor does much more than function as a metronome or click track, so I might instead look at some way to make the conductor visible, maybe a camera on the conductor and a large image at the rear of the space or something like that.

 

[derekleffew]

Re: Way to have a visible click?

"...to a voice like a metronome...Up a steep and very narrow stairway..." Sorry.

The two posts directly above have been moved here from another location.

 

[Footer]

Re: Way to have a visible click?

A personal view but a conductor does much more than function as a metronome or click track, so I might instead look at some way to make the conductor visible, maybe a camera on the conductor and a large image at the rear of the space or something like that.

By far the best solution. When I am doing opera we put the pit upstage on a 12' tall loft. The maestro is centered facing the backwall. We have a camera on the maestro feeding 3 monitors FOH that face the stage. We also had a camera on the stage feeding the maestro. It allowed the singers to see the maestro and vice versa. A few well placed 19" LCD B&W tv's will do the trick. It will also allow the conductor to react to what is going on a bit better.

 

[pmolsonmus]

Re: Way to have a visible click?

If there already is a click track that the orchestra hears and the audience doesn't - I'm assuming there is some sort of monitor feed. If that is the case take a copy of that feed and get it to a balanced or unbalanced signal. Plug that 1/4" or XLR into any cheap stand-alone digital recording interface with an LED monitor. If you monitor the input, your latency should be minimal and you should be able to see the clicks with no problem. Threre are a ton of new and used interfaces very cheap on ebay.

 

[WooferHound]

Re: Way to have a visible click?

What about a Color Organ that has an external audio input . . .

 

[Chris15]

Re: Way to have a visible click?

A few well placed 19" LCD B&W tv's will do the trick.

Be very careful when selecting your monitors for an application like conductor relay...
Milliseconds of delay can be the difference between the orchestra being in time or not, and some LCD displays have tens or hundreds of milliseconds of display latency.
Truly conductor relay should be run using analogue cameras feeding analogue display (eg. CRTs)... Anything else is a compromise and a game of making sure the latency is good enough...

 

[Footer]

Re: Way to have a visible click?

Be very careful when selecting your monitors for an application like conductor relay...
Milliseconds of delay can be the difference between the orchestra being in time or not, and some LCD displays have tens or hundreds of milliseconds of display latency.
Truly conductor relay should be run using analogue cameras feeding analogue display (eg. CRTs)... Anything else is a compromise and a game of making sure the latency is good enough...

We had been running CRT's but had one die. We bought one LCD to test with and it was perfect on a side by side test. I think the latency issues that we used to see are a thing of the past. We never heard a singer or our Maestro complain.