coreographing fireworks display-urgent

[Ctrl_C]

So my friend has about 8 boxes of class C (1.4G) fireworks ranging from fountains to 30 shot mortar artilleries, as well as 6" arial shells. I would like to set up a show and coreograph it to good music like prodigy or something. I have an idea of the delays for the mortars and things and the plan is to cut all the fuses short, wire them to electric matches, and connect everything to a "touch-off board" which is hooked up to a car battery and numbered so that fireworks can be set off by connecting leads.

I would like to find a piece of software for coreographing fireworks to music though. Anybody have any ideas?

[Crazy Swede]

There are several softwares on the market for musical fireworks but they all depend on lots of other equipment to be useful.

The key to make a good combination of fireworks and music is to really know your products, especially delay and burning times, and equally important, to really know your music! Also, it helps a lot if you are musical, or at least have a good sense of dramatic timing.

Since all effects launched from the ground have to be fired some time before they are supposed to appear, you have to start from the exact moment in the music where you want the effect and then count backwards, taking into account the delay time from electric triggering to the effect bursting in the sky.

This is something that is not easy to perfect and the best guys have lots of experience. Usually, they also spend a fortune on testing both the products and different combinations with various pieces of music. But, many companies actually fire more or less randomly and just try to enhance the feeling in the music!

So, my recommendation to you is to sit down and think about what kind of effects you have. Then, choose one or several pieces of music, write down an exact time scale for all the music on paper and plot the exact beat where you would like your effects to fire. Try to estimate what time it will take from when you trigger your touch board until each individual item will be seen. Mark those times and write them down. These will be your cues so you know, from watching a stop clock, exactly when it’s time to fire. Also think about the total burning time of cakes and fountains. It is really annoying to have some small cake or similar still firing after the music has stopped!

The best thing is to have the whole show in your head, because then you can adjust the firing if necessary or stop if something unexpected happens.

Finally, don’t forget to save a lot of material for the finale!

Good luck!

[yt2095]

a quick off the top of my head thought for you.

you`ll obviously have some sort of PA system to be playing the music, do you or your friend have disco lights that go with it by any chance? :)

specificly sound to light units.

the Triac output could be wired in banks on your switcher board for each stage of the music, since each light reacts to certain volumes or frequencies (depending on the S to L unit) you would then only have to make your electric igniters closer to your dispaly shell (no fuse) and tap your connection every 10 or 20 seconds for a new/next segment of music, and just let the music itself do the choreography for you.
sort of a "fuzzy logic" aproach. it would have the advantage of you being able to demo this several times beforehand to perfect it by using the light output instead of your pyrotechnics, a nice clear visible indicaction. and no worries about computer interfaces or s/ware failure etc.
also, you`de get a different display for different bits of music you decided to play, with enough pyro you could even work impromptu and do requests! and still be impresive :)

Good luck with it :)

Edit: the simple way would be to open the units, and take jumper wires off each bulb to a simple screwdriver conector strip on the outside of the case (exopy resin or dril and nut/bolt will do to secure your strip). wire them up logicaly and number them. the Triac output will be more than plenty to set your ignitors off. it`s up to you then how you wire them to your switcher box/board (you need that as you don`t want them all to go in 1`st 20 secs :))
deep reports for base, screachers for guitar solos etc.. but stepped at 20 or 30 sec intervals for new pyro loads. it really sounds more complicated than it would be to do in reality.
and if you know your pyro charges intimately, as i said, you could almost automate it with little to no effort and be able to accomodate ANY request at a moments notice :)

[mrloud]

I'm assuming you don't have the time or budget to build complicated electronics or hire a MIDI timecode controlled device and associated relays.

You need to work out what device you want to fire at each given place in the music. Eg, at 01m 34s I want x blue fountain to ignite.
Assign a place in the music to fire each device.
Lay the fireworks out on the display area in rows in the order you want to fire them. (Sticking little lables on them will help).
Then simlpy practice walking up and down the aisles in time with the music pretending to touch off each fuse with an ignition source until you are happy you can do it for real.

Thats the way the pros do it. At least when I've been around. Much easier and more reliable than hundred of metres of wires, junctions and electric matches.