iTunes Single Play Concert Success: What we did - Yay!
Dear WAMUGgers Thank you all for your recent helpful advice re playing single items in iTunes at our school concert. We had the concert today and it was fantastic. We got great feedback from the parents, staff and of course our rockin' rollin' kiddies! For your knowledge this is what we did. Firstly we unchecked the tick boxes in the playlist so each track would play and stop without the next one starting. The kids (my little techie group) went through the various visualisers and chose several different ones for different tunes. The plan was to choose each visualiser then run the separate tunes accordingly with the kids singing alongside and the visualiser projecting onto the big screen behind (actually next to them as it turned out). Then I decided we needed something even simpler. It would have been nice to have different visualisers but really we didn't need that complication. KISS is a good policy when it comes to these things I believe. Brian had suggested G-Force as a good visualiser and as I had a basic copy already installed I went to the website http:// www.soundspectrum.com/ and discovered that I could download a Gold or Platinum version if I paid good money to them (PayPal). Rob suggested Gaslight which is very nice too. However I went with G-force this time. Does Gaslight have the options I detail below? For around Au$40 I could download the latest full version of G-Force, a Standalone Version and Sound Spectrum Darkroom. More on these soon. Maybe a bit much for a visualiser but hey, this could be interesting. $40 is not a bad investment for a successful end of year concert, especially when we're going to run it on a Mac in an all PC school. It's tax deductible too! So I paid for it, got my registration code and downloaded the software. Here's what happened: Sound Spectrum Darkroom allowed us to save each single track as a self-contained Quicktime movie, complete with G-Force Visualiser. This produced some really great effects with original quality - I kept the music format as .aiff and used no compression. (720 x 576 is the maximum screen resolution for $40 but that's quite Ok for a visualiser) We put all the tracks into a desktop folder and when all were selected and opened together they layered nicely in the finder window. We learnt to prefix each numerically in reverse order, allowing the first item of the concert to appear in the front in the layer. Eg with 8 tracks we numbered the first one *8 We Will Rock You* so it would appear at the front of the stack. (Think about that for a minute. We needed to, before discovering the logic of this move!) Techie Yr 7 kid then needed simply to click on the front window, click Apple/Cmd-F and the music, complete with visualiser opened to full screen and played to the end. Any mistake could be solved with *Space Bar - Escape*. We never needed this as it eventuated. With the PowerBook hooked into the school's old but great Yamaha 6 channel mixer/amp and big bore Yami speakers, we lifted the seagulls off the roof, and the grannies out of their seats - truly - we could see the shadows of the gulls walking across the skylight panels - funny indeed - and the grannies? Well...! Now the piece-de-resistance: G-Force Standalone rocks! It has a keyboard command interface that could be more user friendly, as it took me a long time trawling the FAQs and instructions to find this solution, but having done that it worked perfectly! Simply put, with various keyboard commands you can open it to a range of screen sizes and resolutions, and vary the input sound devices. By setting it to 1152 x 768 resolution and sound input being set to the PowerBook internal microphone, we were then able to run this software visualiser for live sound in the hall. Imagine the kid's surprise seeing their voices being projected onto the big screen when singing the National Anthem. They sang louder than ever, a great motivator I thought!. Then when our pedantic music teacher plonk-rocked away on the piano, it too was visualised on the big screen. The kids playing their glockenschpiedelhunds noticed too. We refrained from running it during the boss's big speech but were tempted. He may not have fully understood what was going on behind him. Anyway, thank you all for your help in getting this done. We had a great day. I'm happy to share more information with anyone interested, on or off- list. Regards Reg PS Yay, the kiddies go home tomorrow to be with mummies and daddies and carers for Christmas.
iTunes Single Play
Dear WAMUGgers I'm planning to use the PowerBook to run our school's Christmas concert, the theme of which is Rock and Roll. I plan to project a visualiser onto a big background scene while the music is playing and kiddies singing along. Is there a way to set iTunes to only play one track at a time without going on to the next track. I can't seem to find a way. This would prevent the music automatically starting for the next item when it's not needed, if I'm not quick enough to stop playing at the end of each track. I guess I could do this by putting each track into a different Playlist but there must be an esasier way. Also who knows of a good visualiser to use for the rock and roll theme? Regards Reg
Re: iTunes Single Play
Playlists... Set each track in its own playlistis an option, however a bit messy G On 2/12/05 7:26 AM, Reg Whitely [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dear WAMUGgers I'm planning to use the PowerBook to run our school's Christmas concert, the theme of which is Rock and Roll. I plan to project a visualiser onto a big background scene while the music is playing and kiddies singing along. Is there a way to set iTunes to only play one track at a time without going on to the next track. I can't seem to find a way. This would prevent the music automatically starting for the next item when it's not needed, if I'm not quick enough to stop playing at the end of each track. I guess I could do this by putting each track into a different Playlist but there must be an esasier way. Also who knows of a good visualiser to use for the rock and roll theme? Regards Reg -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml Guidelines - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml Unsubscribe - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] WAMUG is powered by Stalker CommuniGatePro
Re: iTunes Single Play
Or add blank tracks or sound into each track ... Add 5/10 seconds to the end of each track of no sound or create a track which has no sound and place it between each track to give you a buffer G On 2/12/05 7:26 AM, Reg Whitely [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dear WAMUGgers I'm planning to use the PowerBook to run our school's Christmas concert, the theme of which is Rock and Roll. I plan to project a visualiser onto a big background scene while the music is playing and kiddies singing along. Is there a way to set iTunes to only play one track at a time without going on to the next track. I can't seem to find a way. This would prevent the music automatically starting for the next item when it's not needed, if I'm not quick enough to stop playing at the end of each track. I guess I could do this by putting each track into a different Playlist but there must be an esasier way. Also who knows of a good visualiser to use for the rock and roll theme? Regards Reg -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml Guidelines - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml Unsubscribe - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] WAMUG is powered by Stalker CommuniGatePro
Re: iTunes Single Play
On 02/12/2005, at 7:26 AM, Reg Whitely wrote: I'm planning to use the PowerBook to run our school's Christmas concert, the theme of which is Rock and Roll. I plan to project a visualiser onto a big background scene while the music is playing and kiddies singing along. Is there a way to set iTunes to only play one track at a time without going on to the next track. I can't seem to find a way. This would prevent the music automatically starting for the next item when it's not needed, if I'm not quick enough to stop playing at the end of each track. I guess I could do this by putting each track into a different Playlist but there must be an esasier way. Also who knows of a good visualiser to use for the rock and roll theme? You could list your tunes in a finder window a play them one at a time or in Toast it allows you to set up to 8 seconds pause between tunes. I'd like to see G-Force (a great visualizer http://www.soundspectrum.com/ ) on a big screen. enjoy Brian
Re: iTunes Single Play
What I would do is make a new playlist and add the songs I wanted to use to it. Then use the small tick boxes next to each song to turn all the songs off. Then, when you want to play each song, just double click it. Songs without the checkbox marked will not be played automatically, but will play when selected. I'm planning to use the PowerBook to run our school's Christmas concert, the theme of which is Rock and Roll. I plan to project a visualiser onto a big background scene while the music is playing and kiddies singing along. Is there a way to set iTunes to only play one track at a time without going on to the next track. I can't seem to find a way. This would prevent the music automatically starting for the next item when it's not needed, if I'm not quick enough to stop playing at the end of each track. I guess I could do this by putting each track into a different Playlist but there must be an esasier way. Also who knows of a good visualiser to use for the rock and roll theme?
Re: iTunes Single Play
Hi Reg, I would do as Jude suggest. The ArKaos Visualizer I find great. http://www.arkaos.net/software/vis_description.php The Visualizer, which runs on Macs and PCs, slots transparently into major MP3 players such as Sonique, Winamp™ , Windows Media Player, MusicMatch JukeBox, and RealOne™ on the PC's, SoundJam™, Audion™ and iTunes™ on Mac OS 9.x and iTunes™ on Mac OS X, allowing users to play graphic effect videos with any playable sound file. ArKaos' sophisticated beat-matching technology synchronizes to the percussion and bass-lines of your music and integrates video-effect sequences seamlessly with your tunes. The Visualizer comes with great ArKaos visual files pre-loaded, if you have ArKaos VJ 2.2.1, you can create your own visual animations with your pictures and movies ! Cheers, Ronni On 02/12/2005, at 8:42 AM, Jude wrote: What I would do is make a new playlist and add the songs I wanted to use to it. Then use the small tick boxes next to each song to turn all the songs off. Then, when you want to play each song, just double click it. Songs without the checkbox marked will not be played automatically, but will play when selected. I'm planning to use the PowerBook to run our school's Christmas concert, the theme of which is Rock and Roll. I plan to project a visualiser onto a big background scene while the music is playing and kiddies singing along. Is there a way to set iTunes to only play one track at a time without going on to the next track. I can't seem to find a way. This would prevent the music automatically starting for the next item when it's not needed, if I'm not quick enough to stop playing at the end of each track. I guess I could do this by putting each track into a different Playlist but there must be an esasier way. Also who knows of a good visualiser to use for the rock and roll theme?
Re: iTunes Single Play
Hi Wamuggers Thank you all for responding to my query. On 2 Dec 2005, at 8:42am, Jude wrote: What I would do is make a new playlist and add the songs I wanted to use to it. Then use the small tick boxes next to each song to turn all the songs off. Then, when you want to play each song, just double click it. Songs without the checkbox marked will not be played automatically, but will play when selected. I got to school this morning after posting this to the list and one of my yr 7 girls showed me the tick box trick (and we're a Windows school!). I've never *noticed* those tick boxes before. It works well now. Thanks Reg
Re: iTunes Single Play
Well I'd hate to tell you all that there is a very, very simple solution. Highlight the song you want and press the loop button next to the Shuffle button in iTunes twice. It turns blue on first click indicating loop all songs, 2nd click means loop individual song (a 1 appears on the loop icon) The song will loop over and over and over until stopped :) Shame you all haven't used it :P Regards Christian On 02/12/2005, at 5:48 PM, Reg Whitely wrote: Hi Wamuggers Thank you all for responding to my query. On 2 Dec 2005, at 8:42am, Jude wrote: What I would do is make a new playlist and add the songs I wanted to use to it. Then use the small tick boxes next to each song to turn all the songs off. Then, when you want to play each song, just double click it. Songs without the checkbox marked will not be played automatically, but will play when selected. I got to school this morning after posting this to the list and one of my yr 7 girls showed me the tick box trick (and we're a Windows school!). I've never *noticed* those tick boxes before. It works well now. Thanks Reg -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml Guidelines - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml Unsubscribe - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] WAMUG is powered by Stalker CommuniGatePro
Re: iTunes Single Play
Thanks Christian and WAMUGgers On 2 Dec 2005, at 8:24pm, Christian Kotz wrote: Well I'd hate to tell you all that there is a very, very simple solution. Highlight the song you want and press the loop button next to the Shuffle button in iTunes twice. It turns blue on first click indicating loop all songs, 2nd click means loop individual song (a 1 appears on the loop icon) The song will loop over and over and over until stopped :) Shame you all haven't used it :P I don't want to loop the song, I need to stop it altogether after it has played once. Uncheck (delete the tick) for every track in the play list and only the selected track will play. Seems so easy once you know how. Regards Reg
