Freestyle question

[JenEM]

One of my goals for the coming competition year is to do a musical freestyle, at Training. We’ve got the prerequisite scores, and I think it would be a fun challenge. But one of the required elements confuses me. “Serpentine in trot” is one of the compulsory elements, but at the bottom under the Additionally Allowed elements is “trot serpentine of single loop, or larger serpentine(s) of loops no smaller than 15 meters.”

If I do a big serpentine H/B/K, that is allowed under these rules as a “larger serpentine.” But does that satisfy the compulsory “serpentine in trot” rule, or is that something else, like the shallow loops in T3?

Further, unrelated to movements question: how are y’all getting music on to CD for these? My computer doesn’t have a CD drive anymore! I might consider proposing a rule change to USDF for next year to allow music on flash/usb drives, as that’s what’s commonly used now.

[joiedevie99]

Yes, it’s confusing. I believe what they are trying to say is that a 3-loop serpentine is required (i.e. 20m loops). The diagram is DR 110 a.

You could also do a 4-loop (15m) serpentine if you want. You cannot do a 5 or 6 loop serpentine, as the radius of those circles would be smaller than 15m.

You could also add the single-loop. The diagram is DR 110 b.

[joiedevie99]

Sorry, can’t edit. As to your second question - if you are doing the music yourself, just buy an USB CD burner drive. They’re pretty inexpensive now.

[Silverbridge]

The formatting of the music is one of the obstacles to riding Freestyles. I signed up to ride my First Level Freestyle nine times last season, and five times out of the nine, there were problems with the music. SO sadly, that is more than half the time, in my anecdotal example.

Either they couldn’t get my format to play at all, or, I rode in and began my ride, and the music stopped altogether in the midst of the test. This happened three times, including the last show, both days. The first day I rode it in two pieces which were put together by the judge on the same test sheet even though the rides were hours apart. The second day, when the music stopped again (even though I was assured the problem was all figured out), I excused myself.

But back to the question: Some Prize Lists/Secretaries ask for a CD. Others want you to email or text the file directly to the announcers. So provide what they ask and try hard to get a sound check. If it’s a small show they often tell you there’s no need for a sound check, that the announcer played it and it worked. Better for your peace of mind to insist on hearing it working, for yourself. And not just the intro, but played all the way through.

At the last show where the music failed, one of the judges told my trainer that she is on the committee for Freestyles for USDF and that this is a topic that is being addressed. She said this happens constantly at shows where she judges, that people’s music either will not play at all, or that there are long delays while it’s being figured out, or, that it starts to play and then quits while the rider is in the middle of their choreography.

So she said we shouldn’t feel bad that this happened at my last show, when she saw it happening, and when I just said “enough”, because it’s a problem across the board.

The USDF needs to identify one format and to ask all shows everywhere to specify the same format in the Prize List and that way every rider doing a Freestyle will know what they need. She said they’re working on it.

[flyracing]

You can basically do anything that “serpentines”. The loop or an true serpentine are listed as clearly allowed for the serpentine requirement. Looks like they are intentionally allowing for some creativity so people don’t just redo T-3.

[JenEM]

Thanks, I’ll look up the illustrations, those citations are really helpful! I was just working from the freestyle form, which is…less than clear. I actually prefer a true 3 loop serpentine to the shallow loops in 3, so it looks like that should work perfectly for us

I am planning on doing the music myself. Part of my job includes video editing, so I feel pretty comfortable with doing that, once I figure out the choices. The plan was to basically video the test, and edit the music to fit, then just pull off the video track and export the audio as an MP3 track. The paperwork on the USDF site for the freestyles says stuff is supposed to be on CD, which just seems so outdated in this digital age. I think my parents’ computer is old enough to still have a CD burner, so I can probably just put it in the cloud, and download it there to burn, if we don’t have something at work anymore that can do it.

[JenEM]

Sorry, since nobody can edit…DR110A is exactly what I wanted to do (except the other direction!), so that’s perfect, thank you so so much for pointing those out to me!

[MysticOakRanch]

[QUOTE=JenEM;8985387]
The paperwork on the USDF site for the freestyles says stuff is supposed to be on CD, which just seems so outdated in this digital age. I think my parents’ computer is old enough to still have a CD burner, so I can probably just put it in the cloud, and download it there to burn, if we don’t have something at work anymore that can do it.[/QUOTE]

But many of the facilities have equipment that plays CD - and updating that equipment could be a big $ expense. So that is why a CD is required.

[Libby2563]

Wow, Silverbridge! I’ve been showing freestyles for almost 20 years and have never once had or seen a technical glitch like that!! What crappy luck. I do always bring two CDs just in case but have never needed it. I’ve never been asked for my music in any other medium or in advance.

A USB CD burner is inexpensive and as long as you select audio CD it should burn it in a generally readable format. I could see one problem with USB drives being that you can save anything in any format then be surprised when it doesn’t work.

[pluvinel]

RE: Using a USB thumb drive vs a CD…

Why should I use a $15 thumb drive that stores GB of data when I need to burn only one song that of about 200MB that I can fit into a $0.20 CD-R?

[flyracing]

I’ve never spent $15 on a thumb drive (usually free to $5 or I don’t buy it) and I’ve never gotten a CD for 20 cents. That part aside, the OP doesn’t yet own an external writable CD drive.

An announcer once told me that usef or usdf (I don’t remember which he said) specifies MP3 format, when I brought one copy of audio cd format and one MP3. I haven’t looked into it, but I made him cranky with the CD format.

[ArabDiva]

get one of these. works great.

https://www.amazon.com/External-Windows98-Notebook-Desktop-Computer/dp/B01LZMUBZX/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1482699702&sr=8-2&keywords=amazon+basics+cd+drive

[Silverbridge]

Having it in MP3 format has been a huge problem for me in the past. Many CD players don’t recognize an MP3 file. So that can’t possibly be a requirement of USDF or USEF.

That was the case at Regionals: their player read my disc as a blank disc, even though I listened to it in my car ten times on the drive to LA. I had to ask a competitor who lived in the area to make a CD file from it, at her house. They nearly prohibited me from going in. They said the prize list specified CD v

It was also the case my first time riding it. The CD player read the file as nothing. We parked my pickup at E and begged a friend to hit play with the volume all the way up. It worked but was very distorted.

So it’s hard for me to believe MP3 is universally required. The announcers at shows in Tucson, Scottsdale and Del Mar want it emailed. They do not want a disc. And the Del Mar announncer is that well known CDI announcer with a British accent, I’m drawing a blank on his name but he’s one of the most professional announcers out there. It seems likely he’d know what works and what doesn’t and he doesn’t want a disc.

So anyway my point again is that the specifications are different from show to show and it’s a real problem.

[Aleuronx]

I could be wrong but I believe it has said to use MP3 in the past. I’m a once a girl scout, always a girl scout so I always burned CD’s with a couple of formats, MP3 being one of them (I’ve yet to pay for music, always done it myself). As well as having audio cord that could connect my IPhone/Ipod which had my Freestyle music on it that could be connected to the audio system and played that way. Call me paranoid but I do not want to have the music quit or not play on me!! For the most part sound checks have gone well, but for my piece of mind it’s worth having alternative backups.

I’m so sorry to hear that you’ve run into this problem Silverbridge, Freestyles are meant to be fun not a source of stress.

I just checked the USDF Musical Freestyle Guidelines, they state this about music:

The format for the freestyle music should be a CD. Final preparation of the music in a professional studio is recommended to ensure proper equalization, balance, and decibel levels.

The CD should have only the freestyle ride on it. It should be clearly labeled with the competitor’s name, horse’s name, and level of ride.

Competitors should check the prize-list regarding formatting of their CD’s and if they have questions contact show management.

Always bring an extra copy of the music to the competition. Mark it in the same way as the original, plus some additional notation indicating that it is a backup copy. ALWAYS HAVE IT READILY AVAILABLE.

Consult the competition prize list for information about sound checks and to whom the CD should go.

[Silverbridge]

Yep, and that is just what I have done, as outlined above. Except, as I mentioned, it’s actually an MP3 file loaded onto a CD, which only works some of the time.

I am not a technical person so, to me, burning a file onto a compact disc and bringing in the compact disc as labeled, WAS fulfilling the requirement of “bringing a CD.”

But, as it turns out, it does not fulfill that requirement if the file is not playable, and that aspect, the type of file it must be, is not specified. Even though, technically, CD stands for Compact Disc. “You did not bring us a CD.” “Yes, I did, you are holding my CD in your hand.” Sigh.

As I’ve learned there is such thing as a CD file on a Compact Disc, and an MP3 file on a Compact Disc. The latter does not always work, but is superior format for emailing and or texting, and for playing from your own smart phone or tablet as a backup. As I’ve also had to do.

So if they do want CD files on CDs and not MP3 files on CDs then that needs to be added to the verbiage. And if they don’t want discs at all, then they need to understand their show is out of compliance with what the organization is telling riders to bring them, even if it works well for them by having riders e-mailing it to the announcer.

The judge who spoke to my trainer about the issue said the Freestyle committee is definitely working on how to word it all, and which format is going to be preferred, so it’s all the same, across the board.

I’m glad many of you have not had the experience of going in and having your music stop. I have seen it happen to others when I was spectating, too. So I figured it was pretty commonplace.

[pluvinel]

[QUOTE=Silverbridge;8986006]
…

The judge who spoke to my trainer about the issue said the Freestyle committee is definitely working on how to word it all, and which format is going to be preferred, so it’s all the same, across the board…[/QUOTE]

Perhaps the USDF, bunch of horse people, should actually consult sound engineers and people who are familiar with file formats, sampling rates and data encoding.

Audio CDs use an audio format that is designed specifically for CD players.

Therefore, the audio format used for CD audio tracks does not correlate directly to an computer audio file type. However, there are two file formats that are very similar to the CD audio format, since they support the same sampling rate and bit depth. These are the WAVE (.WAV) and AIFF (.AIF) formats.

WAVE and AIFF are two audio formats that support 44.1 KHz, 16-bit, stereo audio, which is the standard audio specification used by audio CDs. They are also encoded with pulse code modulation (PCM), which is the same encoding used by CD audio tracks. Therefore, WAV and AIF files can be easily converted to audio tracks when burned to a CD.

The WAVE and AIFF formats are very similar, but they use different file headers. Since the headers are stripped away when the audio data is converted to CD audio, both file types are a good choice for creating audio CDs.

WAVE files are more common on Windows computers, while AIFF files are more common on Macs. Since the AIFF format is so similar to the audio CD format, the tracks on an audio CD actually appear as AIFF files when you load an audio CD into a Mac. This means you can copy the tracks to your hard drive by simply dragging them from the CD window to your desktop. Below is an example of an audio CD window in Mac OS X.

In Windows, audio CD tracks show up as .CDA files. These are shortcuts to tracks on the CD, which do not contain audio data. Instead CDA files instruct the computer which audio track to play on a CD. Therefore, if you drag a CDA file to your desktop, it will only produce a shortcut. To import audio from a CD, you will need to use a program like Windows Media Player or iTunes.

Most audio programs, including iTunes and Windows Media Player, can burn other audio file types besides WAVE and AIFF files to CDs. However, the quality may not be as good, since the compressed format must be converted to an uncompressed format. While the sound quality should not be any worse than the original compressed sound, it will not improve when converted to CD quality audio.

Therefore, if you want the highest possible fidelity on your audio CD, it is best to burn WAVE or AIFF files. However, it may not make much of a difference as long as you have high-quality compressed audio files. With today’s advanced audio compression algorithms, most people cannot tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed audio files.

http://fileinfo.com/help/cd_audio

And here are at least 35 data formats for audio files

There are three major groups of audio file formats:

>>> Uncompressed audio formats, such as WAV, AIFF, AU or raw header-less PCM;

>>> Formats with lossless compression, such as FLAC, Monkey’s Audio (filename extension .ape), WavPack (filename extension .wv), TTA, ATRAC Advanced Lossless, ALAC (filename extension .m4a), MPEG-4 SLS, MPEG-4 ALS, MPEG-4 DST, Windows Media Audio Lossless (WMA Lossless), and Shorten (SHN).

>>> Formats with lossy compression, such as Opus, MP3, Vorbis, Musepack, AAC, ATRAC and Windows Media Audio Lossy (WMA lossy).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_file_format

[joiedevie99]

I’ve always saved as an audio format CD (WAV file) from my MAC and never once had an issue.

MP3 CD’s are not permitted.

From the USDF website: “Once you have selected and edited your music save it in either WAV or AIFF format on a compact disc (CD). MP3 format is not acceptable. Music should not be submitted to the announcer at the competition in MP3 format.”

[crthunder]

Silverbridge I feel your frustration. I had never had a problem with my
Music until last year at regionals. Announcer loaded everyone’s music onto his computer for sound check. Music played but listening to entire selection was not an option bc they had too many to get through. Next day during warm up class my music stopped twice and picked up randomly. Judge let me start over and my horse was a good sport. Then during my championship ride it stopped again (different place). Then the announcer blamed my cd saying it wasn’t recorded at correct “level.” Funny it worked for previous year and a half at four different venues… And it was professionally created.

Another issue I’ve had is the outdated equipment (microphone held to boom box anyone?) and poor speaker set up. My music this year became “flat” and lost the parts for some of my phrasing at one location. Of course it is where we go for most of our shows! We even tried playing it from my phone and same issue.

I have found I have to be pretty pushy about sound checks. My friends attended a well respected show at a national level venue and announcer wouldn’t do sound checks… He’s been doing this for *** years blah blah blah… He had the music so low (and no amount of hand waving by riders got him to raise it) we nor riders could hear music. My friend said she just rode her pattern and hoped for the best.

But OP don’t let the stories discourage you! Even with the mess ups freestyle is my favorite!!!

Becky

[Silverbridge]

[QUOTE=joiedevie99;8986091]

From the USDF website: “Once you have selected and edited your music save it in either WAV or AIFF format on a compact disc (CD). MP3 format is not acceptable. Music should not be submitted to the announcer at the competition in MP3 format.”[/QUOTE]

Well, that is fascinating.

If that’s part of the USDF criteria already, then, the problem seems to be based in a communications breakdown between show secretaries and managers, and the sanctioning organizations.

Because the letters I’ve received regarding Freestyle music submission procedures don’t offer those details, nor do the prize lists when I sign up. And if that’s what they want then all they need to do is repeat that passage in their letters, OR put in a link to that section of the USDF site.

I had no idea. And clearly, I’m not the only one, since two different posters on this thread, already, have stated that they believed MP3 format to be the overall preferred method. And yet here is this passage saying it’s not even allowed.

So really it looks as though the show managers, show secretaries, and announcers need to be educated about what’s correct. And also to be asked to include more detail in their prize lists and their letters sent out to registered competitors.

I’m happy to comply with whatever they need, and most shows (all, really) have plenty of lead time between entering the show and the actual show date, in which to sort out an issue. The problem has been that they haven’t ever been this specific about formats.

And I agree, the Freestyle is still the most fun part of dressageing. And there are lots of times when it goes smoothly and easily for all involved. Well, maybe not for the horse. She’d rather be home eating no matter how cleanly (or not) the test comes off.

[JenEM]

That part aside, the OP doesn’t yet own an external writable CD drive.

And I’m not buying piece of ridiculously outdated technology just to ride a freestyle. I’m sure I’ve got someone at work who can burn something to a CD for me, if I can’t personally.

I think that’s actually part of my issue with it–I actually work on the technical side of television production, including some professional editing, so this is something with which I am familiar, and everything is digital. Things come on drives, as files. There aren’t DVDs or video or whatnot anymore, unless it’s archival stuff. It’s just totally outdated from a professional standpoint. And to me, if I’m editing together music for a freestyle, it should be professional. I actually quite enjoy editing, and am looking forward to putting the music together