Working with the music from a laptop

Squaredancecalling Steve · October-27th-2004, 05:29 AM

I've been working with my laptop at the dances for about a month now. I'm still using vinyl, although less so than I expected I would be at this point. I haven't begun to transfer my vinyl to the laptop, so all my singing calls and most of my lines and round dances are still on vinyl.

I started using a program designed for callers that was so buggy it was crashing an average of 2-5 times a dance, requiring me to restart the computer to get it going again. So about a week ago I decided to bypass the program and work directly with the the core component programs. Although I'm still learning them and getting used to working with them in live dance situations, it is a huge improvement and is working out.

I'm using Goldwave to import music from CDs and transform them into mp3 files. And I'm working with Win Amp coupled with the plug-in Pacemaker at the dances. Pacemaker is very cool -- for example, I can now speed up the popular round dance to Could I Have This Dance For The Rest of My Life by 11% (it's real draggy at regular speed) without changing Anne Murray into a soprano in the process. And the program remembers the settings for each number! I've also started using the plug-in Loop Master for my patter calls, but that plug-in does not remember settings and must be fiddled with constantly during the dance, so I'm keeping an eye open for a better looping method.

The dancers have in generally loved the new music I'm using for patter calls. Contra callers, folk-type callers, and some square dance callers just speak their calls, but I actually chant and sing my patter, so I have to be able to work closely with the music, and feel comfortable improvising my chanting patterns over it. I prescreen all my music before I try it with the dancers. Even so, some of the music I have liked best just hasn't worked out in dance situations -- Bob Wills, Stuff Smith, Count Basie...

OTOH, some of my favorite new music has worked out wonderfully -- Booker T & The MGs, Tito Puente, Buck Owens...

The happiest surprise has been the calypso/Soca of Arrow ("Easy Dancing"), which I loved practicing with but wasn't at all sure the dance would like. One night I played it at the end of the dance and two couples just started ballroom dancing to it. So I started calling to it. And those couples found two other couples, made a square.... and I've been calling to it every night since then! The school kids loved Star Wars (the disco version by Meco), but I was surprised to find most of the adults did, too. This week I've been working on integrating some traditional Celtic music into the act.

ANY recs in terms of musical laptop programs that might be relevant,

OR any experiences of DJs out there working off laptops, etc.,

AND of course any danceable musical suggestions are

ALL welcome!

Dennis Gonzalez · October-27th-2004, 11:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Squaredancecalling Steve

I've been working with my laptop at the dances for about a month now. I'm still using vinyl...

My laptop dancer wears vinyl too, and for the last month as well. She used to wear "breathable" cotton, but not anymore! What a coincidence!

Squaredancecalling Steve · October-27th-2004, 02:52 PM

Dancing in vinyl is always a sweaty proposition, Dennis. The current clothing-relating craze among my dancers are shoes with springs in the heel, which they claim makes for a more comfortable evening of dancing.

Squaredancecalling Steve · November-4th-2004, 02:52 PM

Yeoman's service from laptop in its role as a jukebox at some recent gigs where I work as much as a DJ as I do as a caller and dance teacher! Just double click and it plays the song! Unless I'm figuring incorrectly, I should be able to get about 9,000 song-length mps on my hard drive before I need more memory.

I'm almost ready to start transferring my vinyl to the laptop (pre-amp to the mic input, I think). I've looked up an old thread on cleaning records and am inclined to go with the Nitty Gritty Record Doctor II for cleaning them up before recording. Any thoughts on this?

Here's a question: My understanding is that editing mp files doesn't really work, so the way to go is to make a wav file, edit the wav file, make and store an mp3 copy, and then save the wav file to a disc in case you lose the file or want to re-edit it. Does it make more sense to save the wav before or after it is edited?

Meanwhile, back at the alternative patter front, I've added to regular use some Chieftains, Ventures, Fiddlers Five, a honker/ bar walker named Charlie Ferguson and the hit version of Down Yonder (slowed down).

Squaredancecalling Steve · December-1st-2004, 06:30 AM

Transfering CDs to the laptop with Goldwave is fine and easy. But now that I'm actually getting into transforming my vinyl into mp3s some other callers have steered me to a shareware program called Audacity that is much quicker and less clumsy than Goldwave for the crucial "noise reduction" phase of the operation.

Both programs use the same idea: first record the sound of the record when there is no music playing -- the pops and crackles and whatever else you hear at the very beginning and end of a record. Then you strip those sounds from the musical part of the record and you've cleaned up your record.

As I say, much easier to do with Audacity than Goldwave.

Squaredancecalling Steve · December-7th-2004, 01:01 PM

I've got the transfer of vinyl into MP3s on my hard drive down to a science now, and with a couple of thousand 45s to transfer I'm at it all day and night! The program's (Audacity) ability to clean up stratchy records is really astoundingly good! Out of the hundred or so I've transferred so far, all but a couple have come through the process sounding clean as a whistle! It's been great!

My main problem is time management. Getting the record cued up to start recording takes a minute. Following the recording, the noise reduction process, ID tags, and exporting it as an MP3 file takes another three minutes. But the recording process is in real time, about four minutes a record, and four minutes is an awkward time -- too long to just wait, and too short to work without a lot of herky jerk back and forth. Nevertheless, I'm learning to adjust to the four-minute work slots!

Last two nights I've worked exclusively from the laptop, although I'll continue to carry the records for peace of mind and for the text information ("Key Change in middle break", "16 beat intro", "No tag, ritard," etc.) until I'm working with a system that brings text up with music.

Squaredancecalling Steve · January-1st-2005, 02:51 PM

Pacemaker is the software that allows me to speed up, slow down, shift pitches, etc. & remembers each song's settings.

So last night at the New Year's Hoedown my beloved Pacemaker Plug-In for Win-Amp goes weird on me -- first showing me another version of Win-Amp for a moment (a caller who was on stage with me at the time, to check out my laptop, said, 'That's the OLD version of Win-Amp I have!), then announced that my "Beta version" of Pacemaker had expired, and I needed to pay to keep using it. (I had paid, and for a newer version.) So I worked around not having, changing the program a bit, giving up my accelerating singing call to "Sea Cruise," etc.

e-mailed Pacemaker's inventor. He responds this morning, apologizing, he accidentally left it the Beta expiration thing in the newer versions. But he advised me to set my clock back to 1/1/04 and it would work again. And it does!! And mostly remembered!

Meantime the guy's site is totally down -- Pacemakers all over the world, thousand and thousands of DJs and callers, have crashed!!!!

Squaredancecalling Steve · January-2nd-2005, 03:09 PM

Pacemaker's devloper, Olli, has fixed the bug with a new version 2.1.

I'm having trouble downloading it (my computer keeps taking me to the old version (Olli tells me it's "remembering too well"). A caller/friend (with the same model laptop) has downloaded it and will burn a disc of it for me.

Meantime, I'm still planning on investigating DJTraktor, from the Native Instruments site. My son is suggesting it can replace Win-Amp and its plug-ins with a more smoothly operating unified player/looper/ pitch-shifter/ tempo control etc. system.

Squaredancecalling Steve · July-29th-2005, 03:54 AM

I've been working exclusively from the laptop for months now.

With counseling from several of the Agilent engineers who dance with me, I've just purchased a backup system from CMS CMS It's essentially an external hard drive with a USB plug and a system to automatically search for and download any changes since it last looked. If I ever crash, I should have a reasonably updated version on the CMS device (40 gigs, my computer is only 30) and can copy it back to my laptop. And, if it crashes and I need it to be ready right then, for a dance, I can pop the external drive out and plug it into my computer. (The engineers have assured me this is very easy, and have talked me through it without actually doing it.)

So far I transfered just short of 400 vinyl records to mp3s, using Audacity as I described above in my early December post. I've also transfered 620 CD tracks to mp3s, using Goldwave. As I've described above, I play them using WinAmp with the Pacemaker Plug-in. I've scrapped the Loopmaster Plug-in. It required too much attention, caused me to make errors (looping my singing calls inadvertently), so now I just pre-loop my patter calls and make them 12+ minutes long.

I'm getting now to my second-rank singing calls, many of which are not in my first rank only because they were recorded out of my best singing range. But with WinAmp's ability to alter the pitch (in increments of 1/10th of a semitone) without changing the tempo, some of these are being upgraded to preferred status. This has been one of the most satisfying aspects of the change to digital technology. One beauty than recently went through that kind of elevation into the top ranks was "Salty Dog Blues" -- "If I can't be your salty dog, baby,/ I won't be your man at all./ Honey let me be your salty dog".

The juke-box aspect of the laptop is proving valuable at all the dances, most especially at parties for inexperienced dancers, who often want dinner music before the dance and take longer breaks between dances because they're not in shape. But even at my regular clubs (experienced dancers), keeping the music going has been a plus. Interestingly, one of the current faves is Duke's "Blood Count", from "And His Mother Called Him Bill" -- Johnny Hodges is getting to them!

Squaredancecalling Steve · October-1st-2008, 11:49 AM

The headphone output on my laptop is wearing out. Several times a week, now, I have the sound cutting out (for a second or two, until I jiggle the patch cord) because the jack is loose.

I've been advised to get to a USB External Sound Card, which would plug into the USB port and provide a better quality output for the patch cord to the amplifier.

Sound like the right way to go? Any recs?