2016 freestyle presentation for cads

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Freestylin’ Fun Putting Your Own STAMP on Your Freestyles


About Us We started making freestyles for our pony club rallies in 2010 with help from Ariel and Andy Wyatt. We both found the process to be creative and fun. Last year we tried our hand at doing all of the steps ourselves and had a blast! We would like to bring the same fun that we have and joy we experience to you, too!


Combining two favorite things:

music + horses = Bliss


What you will need:

KNOW THE RULES & requirements! (test sheet) Metronome (phone apps are great) Sound editing software (ex: Wave Pad or Garage Band)

Music The best part! (amazon, itunes, other sources) laptop or ipad Calculator & Paper

(there’s a tiny bit of math involved)


Where to Find this Stuff? Test sheets: Cads website! Metronome Phone App: go to the App store...there are so many good ones! many are free! Sound editing software: Wavepad Sound Editor http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/index.html Garage Band is great for macs, too! http://www.apple.com/mac/garageband/


Which comes first? The Choreography or the Music? It’s a personal preference, but we pick the music, adjust it to fit the tempo then go to choreography to play around with the movements, tweaking the music (cutting and pasting it into place) making a rough cut. then we run through it several times tweaking the choreography or music.


Music Guidelines: Lyrics: Some judges are not keen on lyrics in freestyles. Others don’t mind either way. It depends on where you are showing‌ Dressage at Devon = no lyrics. You are probably ok with lyrics elsewhere, but keep in mind that it’s more difficult to blend pieces where there are lyrics.

Tempo: You can change the tempo of the music with the music editing software, but when you change it more than 15-20% of an instrumental piece, the music sounds odd. Changing a piece with lyrics starts to sound weird if the tempo is changed more than 15%, depending on the song.


Where to start?

Find your Beats per Minute (bpm)

HOW? The easiest way is to get a video of your horse in a dressage test or have a friend video you on ipad or phone while riding, or simply record your horse being lunged. Use your super easy phone app, play around with the metronome to match your horse’s gaits (walk, trot, canter) Record on your notepad


The Really Fun Part:

Listening to your favorite music, finding your very favorite pieces and seeing if they are close to your target bpm. you can modify the bpm with your outrageously cool software!


Write down all of the pieces of music that might work for each gait. You may have 3-4 pieces of music for each gait, that’s ok. You can narrow your final music by listening to each selection and seeing how flows with the other music. Keep the walk/trot/canter music in similar genre. Don’t think of music with the mindset “what will the judge like”, Pick what YOU like! Be original! have fun with it! Download the music and save on your laptop or ipad.


And now, the Software fun! ● ● ● ● ●

Go to the Main Screen of WavePad Create New File x 3 or 4 (this opens up 3-4 pages for 4 dif pieces of music to edit) Right click on one of the new files to “Insert File” “Begin” Select the music you want to use. Insert a music piece into each empty file, leaving one empty. The empty file will be the one where the cuts of music will be added. Click “File” “Save as” and enter name of song so you can keep you music tabs straight.


...and here comes the math part! Changing the tempo of the song to fit your bpm

Example: The trot song we’ve chosen (“Confident”) is 133 bpm but we need it to be approx 150 bpm This means we need to increase the tempo 12.8% (150 target bpm - 133 bpm of the song = 17 bpm; 17 / 133 = 12.8%) so we go to our handy dandy wave pad and select ● Effects ● Speed ● SPeed change ○ Set the speed adjustment to 112.8 ○ Apply VOILA! the song is now approx 150 bpm. Repeat process with other music pieces


So now you have music that matches your horse’s gaits...time to bust out your sweet moves! Hopefuly your song will have a punchy opening. Some horses have a similar walk and canter bpm. You can use this to your advantage: opening verse makes a great walk piece, the dramatic chorus for canter. You can be very creative with your freestyle, even at the intro and training levels. You can increase the difficulty of your freestyle by piecing your movements together in a more challenging sequence. ex: picking up your canter on a straight line instead of at a corner Carefully read your test sheet for allowed moves so that you aren’t penalized for illegal/above the level moves. It helps to have a ground person play your music pieces while you piece your choreography together and help write down/remember what you come up with.

Practice! Practice!

PRACTICE!


Editing! Cut and paste your musical pieces together...Go to the music file that you want to use..Highlight with your mouse the particular musical section...Right click “Cut” and put cursor onto your blank “canvas” and “Paste” the piece onto it.

right click “copy”

Repeat with other pieces to build your music. If you need to trim, highlight section and delete. You can also fade in and out between pieces by going to “Levels”, “Fade in” (or “Fade out”)

right click “paste”


Other Editing Tricks: ● ● ●

To add a pause (at halt)...”Edit”...”Silence”...”Insert Silence at Cursor” (1000 to start) If you need to add a little time (ex: at the beginning entrance), highlight the section you’d like to repeat then click on “Edit”...“repeat loop” When you have your final product, save it to your computer. Save it to a jump drive. Be sure to save it in an .mp3 file format, not a wave file, or it may not be able to be played on the device at your show

Final Notes:: ● ● ● ●

Know the rules...you have five minutes from salute with no minimum...there will be no whistle at the end of your time limit, but the judges have stopwatches to time you. You will be penalized for going over the 5 minute limit. You have 45 sec from the whistle to signal to your sound engineer to start your music You then must enter the arena within 20 seconds of your music starting. Be sure to perform all of the requirements on your test sheet...the judges will give a ZERO for movements not ridden


The End


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