|
Hit points or 'markers' are possibly one of the most valuable assets within a sequencer when trying to make music that fits the picture. They are your guidelines of what to aim for and how to judge the tempo of a piece of film. For a classical composer who composes to form, these hit points really determine what the form will be.
There are several ways to enter hit points into your sequencer. I will discuss a few of them and show you how to have your sequencer show you the best options for setting a tempo.
Entering Hit Points
Firstly, open your markers window by clicking on the mini-menu within your tracks window (top left hand corner of the window bar) and select 'Open Left Side Bar' if it isn't already open, and then change the Sidebar drop down menu to 'Markers'.
Click on the mini-menu
Open the side panel
Select the drop down menu
Open the markers window
Now in the mini-menu of the markers window you have 2 methods to enter the marker. The first option is to press 'Record Hits. What record hits does is it plays the movie and then as you watch the film and see something that is an important hit point, you play a note on your midi keyboard and a new marker will appear in the markers window. When you have finished entering the markers press stop on the Control Panel (or SHORTCUT KEY: 0 (on the number keybad) or Spacebar) and the markers will be in the marker window. You now need to go back through the film slowly and adjust the markers to their exact position, as playing them in will only give you a roughly timed marker rather than a frame accurate one.
The other method for inputting them is to scroll the film to each position and press 'Add' from the Marker mini-menu and you will have the markers placed in their exact position.
Entering The Markers
Locked vs Unlocked Markers
When you enter a marker it will stay in its position in the measure if you change the tempo. However, for film & tv work, you want to lock the marker to a SMPTE time code and that is done simply by 'locking' the marker. Locking the marker doesn't mean you can't change it - simply that it is locked to the frame number you've entered. If you have entered your 'hit points' and not locked them, make sure you lock them before changing tempo or els eyou're going to have to re-do the job! If you haven't entered them as locked markers just click on the first lock and drag down and they will all lock.
Locked Markers
Working Out Tempos
Once your markers are all in place you can get your sequencer to calculate the tempo that will make your markers fall 'on the beat'. If a marker falls on a beat you will then be musically prepared to accent the action in the frame. Although you may have several markers there is a way to measure which markers are most important to hit and which ones are not as important. You do this in the column to the right within the Markers window. Simply change the priority (weight) to None, Least Important, Normal, Very Important.
Prioritizing Markers
Once you have done this, you can select the markers for which you want to find as your hit points. Do this by clicking the 'Find' column to put green check marks by the appropriate marker. Then click the Marker window's mini-menu and select 'Find Tempo for Locked Markers...' and a new 'Find Tempo' window will appear. (N.B. You cannot find new tempos for an unlocked marker ad the unlocked marker will stay in the measure position regardless of tempo.) The 'Find Tempo' window allows you to select a range of tempos, the proximity of the hit (i.e. closest whole note, quarter note etc...) and the degree of accuracy for the search. In the search below you can that I searched for a range of tempo between 106 to 112 bpm, searching every 0.05 of a beat to the closest eighth note (quaver for UK readers).
Find Tempo
In the above window you can see that the top tempo that it came up with found 3 hit points, none that were near, and 4 that didn't hit. It also suggested that in order to get that I need to 'offset' the piece by 25 frames (meaning start the piece 25 frames later). It's telling me that because I told the computer that it was OK to move, or offset, the piece by upto 30 frames. I could have also told it that it was OK to move the piece earlier by putting a negative number in the 'min' settings of the offset.
Before I chose the top tempo I want to see whether that is the best option as I need to see which of the hits have been 'hit'. To do this, simply highlight the tempo that I like and I can see the corresponding hits.
Seeing which markers 'hit'.
As long as you are happy with the tempo select, 'Apply' and the new settings will be applied to the piece of music. If not, then repeat the process with new time settings.
One word of advice, don't get so caught up trying to be mathmatically correct that you lose the musicality of a piece. The art of film scoring is that you can combine the accuracy of both the timings and the emotion, but above all, don't let your music become 'estranged' from the picture. Film music is 1/2 film and 1/2 music so always keep the musicality present.
|
|
|
