How to Edit and Submit Music for a Bodybuilding Show
Every year people come up to us at the last minute with looks of "help me" because they
haven't put any time or effort into getting their posing routine music done. Hopefully this
article will at least help you with the technical aspects of getting your music edited and
submitted for a show. As for the procrastinators?...Well, I can't help you.
One common problem I literally hear is recording or taking posing routine songs from
low quality sources. This year I even had one competitor submit a song that sounds like
it was recorded on his cell phone from the radio in his car with the air conditioning
running! I told him about it, but the competitor doesn't seem to understand or care.
Submitting low quality poorly edited music is equivalent to saying...
a) I did all this work in the gym, but I still don't care how I look on stage.
b) I don't think I'll make the top five to pose at night anyway.
c) Somebody mentioned YouTube tutorials. What's YouTube?
...take your pick. Point made?
Below are step by step instructions to help you get on the right path.
1. Read the Contest Rules!
Every promoter and contest is different. Here is a subset of the rules from our shows, but
ALWAYS read the contest specific rules in case they change.
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Bodybuilders/Women's Physique routines are 60 seconds
Mixed Pairs get 90 seconds
Fitness Women get 2 minutes
No profanity (complete show disqualification!)
MP3/MP4 or WAV file format for online submission
Contest specific music submission deadlines
Submission format (online only? or CD? or both?)
Unless you follow the show rules I have the right to refuse your music that was submitted
in some odd audio format I can't open, even during the day of the show. I'm not a DJ I
also don't accept thumb drives because of virus concerns (see the submission rules).
Every year we see the nervous procrastinators that don't follow the rules and the
competitors who come prepared. The ones who come prepared present themselves better
on stage because they have less to worry about
2. Start With a High Quality Audio Source
I always recommend to start with the highest quality music source you can get. Just
because a song sounds fine on YouTube, your PC speakers, your cell phone speaker, or
car stereo, it doesn't mean it will sound fine on a 20,000 Watt audio system at the show.
There have been far too many examples that have proven otherwise over the years!
You've probably spent money on a trainer, gym membership, tanning, contest entry fees,
travel, and even a fancy posing suit, so don't let the price of a $0.99 audio file get in the
way of a great stage presentation.
There are hundreds of places to get songs online; some legal and others not to much. In
this article I'll talk about two legitimate sources of high quality audio files for brevity. I'll
mainly discuss online sources.
The first suggested source is from Amazon.com, where you purchase high quality MP3
files that are easy to edit. Some songs are even free if you're already an Amazon prime
member. You can buy your music at the same time as your supplements!
The second source is likely more common for most competitors: Apple iTunes.
The problem with iTunes is that it stores the audio in a DRM protected format that has to
be exported in order to edit the song. You can do this by creating a play list - in this case
I called my custom play list "posing-routine". Then you right click on the play list name
and choose "Burn Playlist to Disc." You'll obviously need a blank CD-R in your CD
burner so iTunes can burn the audio CD. The default settings to create an audio CD
should be fine.
Then you have to re-import the audio CD into iTunes, which should just be a matter of
re-inserting the CD into your computer. HOWEVER, before you do that I would
HIGHLY recommend that you change the default import settings to a file format that's
easily edited. You can do this by changing iTunes preferences. Under "General" click
the "Import Settings" button and change the "Import Using" drop down dialog box to
"WAV Encoder". This will give you an audio file just as high quality as the one you
purchased from iTunes, but easy to open and edit.
After you insert the CD iTunes should ask if you want to import the CD into iTunes,
which of course you want to. When iTunes is done with the CD import the WAV file
should be somewhere in your iTunes library directory (most likely under Library>Music->iTunes->iTunes Music->"Album name"). Now you have a file you can
edit...finally!
If you start with a purchased CD, you can also use this exact same CD import method
into iTunes to get a WAV file for editing.
3. Setup Your Editing Software
In this article I'm going to recommend a free open source audio editor called "Audacity."
It's available for Windows, Mac, and even Linux as a completely free download from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/. As with any free software, the setup can be a bit
more complex than commercial software, such as the Adobe Audition software I
personally use. To get the Audacity audio editing software simply click on the green
download button on the home page and install the software onto your computer with
default settings.
One problem with this software is that it doesn't ship with the drivers necessary to work
with M4A files, nor to export MP3 files. For that functionality you need to install two
more pieces of software, LAME and FFMPEG. The software for both Windows and Mac
can be found at http://lame.buanzo.org/#lamewindl. DO NOT click on the green
"DOWNLOAD NOW" banner ads. Download the files using the
"Lame_v3.99.3_for_Windows.exe" and "ffmpeg-win-2.2.2.exe" (or Mac equivalent)
links, then run the installer. No additional setup should be necessary.
After everything is installed you should be able to double click on the "Audacity" icon on
your desktop and open the audio editing software.
4. Open Your Audio File and Start Editing
I know...FINALLY! Let's start by opening your audio file by choosing the "File" menu
item and selecting "Open". Then select your posing routine music (shown as
##_David_Patterson.mp3 in the example below) and click on the "Open" button. An
audio waveform should open as shown in the third picture below.
The first thing I always fix is volume levels. As we can see in the example below the
audio waveform isn't going up to the maximum level (if it is, you can skip this part). I've
never heard a bodybuilder say "turn my music down!", so let's correct the volume level.
Go to the "Effect" menu and choose "Amplify". This will bring up a dialog box that will
allow you to adjust the volume of the audio. You want to adjust the "Amplitude" slider
until the "New Peak Amplitude" value reads 0dB, then click OK. If the "New Peak
Amplitude" value reports a value larger than 0dB, the you have created clipping
distortion in your audio (very bad!). After applying volume adjustment you should see
the waveform become bigger vertically, as shown in the third picture below.
The next step is to delete any lead in silence. This is extra time where you get to stand on
stage nervous, wondering when your music is actually going to start. It's always better to
remove this silence so you don't have time to get nervous. We start by pressing the
"Home" key on the keyboard to move the audio cursor to the start of the song. Then
press the "Zoom In" button (spyglass with +, just below 39 on the level meter) until you
see any silence before the music starts (about the first 0.6 sec in this example). Select the
silence by left clicking on the audio waveform and dragging across the entire silent
period (as shown in dark gray in first picture below). Then press the "Delete" key on the
keyboard to delete the silent audio. The end result should look something like the second
picture below.
Next we'll cut the audio to the correct length, as per contest rules. In this case I know that
David is a bodybuilder so his audio should be 60 seconds, but he submitted 90 seconds
(typical Diva Dave...but I digress). This is where we can take a bit of artistic license. If
the song edits better at 58 seconds or 65 seconds, then you should probably end it there.
If you go over that I'll have to cut your song down to contest rules.
Also, if your song doesn't have a natural ending at 60 seconds I typically apply a 3
second fade. You don't ever want to chop off the end of the song. It’s too abrupt!
Let's start by selecting everything past 1:03 in the song for deletion. Press the "Fit
Project" button on the button bar (spyglass just below 27 on the level meter) to zoom
back out to the entire song. Then left click at the end of the song and select up 1:03 on
the timeline. Press the "Delete" key on the keyboard to remove the excess ending off the
song.
Next, we are going to fade out the last three seconds of the song. Do this by selecting
from 1:00 to the end of the song with the left-click drag operation. Then click on the
"Effect" menu and choose "Fade Out." The last three seconds of audio should look like
the third picture below.
The final editing step is to add some silence after the song is over so the audio person
(me) has time to recognize that the song is over and stop it before the next one plays. To
do this you'll first need to press the "End" key on the keyboard to set the audio cursor to
the end of the audio. Then select "Silence" from the "Generate" menu. I typically use 5
seconds of silence since that's sufficient to let me tell the difference between a break in a
song and the end of the song. After clicking OK you should see 5 seconds of silence
added to the end of the song as shown in the fourth picture below.
5. Export Your Song and Submit It!
This is the part where you actually create the final song file, i.e. the WAV or MP3 file.
Unlike a Word document or many other types of files, creating a WAV or MP3 file from
Audacity requires an operation they call "Export". If you just use File->Save Project that
will save an Audacity project file, not an audio file.
Select "Export Audio" from the "File" menu. When the Export Audio dialog box comes
up select either MP3 or WAV for your output format. When you press the "Save" button
Audacity will save the audio file to your hard drive - make sure you put it somewhere
you can find the file later!
At Craig Productions we highly suggest that you submit your music online at least a
week (if not more) before the contest. You simply attach the MP3 or WAV file you
created in an email to [email protected]. Include your full name and contest
category. You'll get an full QC check and confirmation from me that your audio is OK to
go.
We started to do this for a variety of reasons, one being that home burned CD's are
extremely problematic. They scratch/damage easily, they get lost just before the show,
people forget them at home, their trainer was "supposed" to bring it, they get burned in an
incompatible format that doesn't play on an audio CD player and the audio file to make
another is at home 200 miles away...some people even burn computer files to the CD and
expect it to play in an audio CD player because their car stereo recognizes the files. By
submitting your music in advance online, you create less stress for yourself and everyone
involved.
...and finally, good luck at the show.