Parade Audio

[Mickey1984]

Along the same lines as the thread about park areas, how does the music track work in parades, say for example there is a part where Peter Pan is singing his own special part part, it always seems to be when the Peter Pan float is right infront of you, but this must happen for all people all the way along the parade route or else it would be odd to see Peter Pan but hear Timone singing for example, so how does that work, as essentially it is 1 long continous song/parade right? Or for the very few times I have stood and watched a parade have I just been rather lucky to be at the same point in the parade as that particular character? Now I know it will be all about speakers in the floats, but how do they get the timing correct and seemless?

Or am I being a bit thick

 

[kap91]

Depends on the parade, there's a couple different variations on the system they can use. In general though there's a background music loop that plays in each of the parade "blocks" and repeats over and over again for the entire parade. In some parades the loop will switch depending on the section of the parade. A block is a relatively small section of the parade route that plays the same audio through all the speakers in that block. For example, town square is a block, and the next block is main street itself. Blocks are easily identifiable when parades start and end, because you'll hear the opening and closing of the parade twice if you are near the borders. At the same time each float has its own music and dialog loop playing through its onboard system. The block "background" loop and the onboard loop are synced together.

In your example above the Peter Pan float would have a loop with Peter pan's music and dialog. It'd probably be a couple minutes long and keep repeating. At the same time the generic parade music loop would be playing throughout the entire block. The key thing would be that the loops are either the same length or multiples of each other in order to keep everything together.

The system can become more complex or less depending on how the parade was designed, whether there's show stops, one loop for the whole parade (think current day parade) or multiple loops (elp, or xmas parade) length, etc.

I don't necessarily have all the technical details down and am not sure how familiar you are with smpte but suffice it to say it all works off of synchronized timecode. Essentially there's a master clock and a clock for each subsystem. They're locked together to be the exact same time down to fractions of a second so that when one starts or changes the others stay in sync.

As far as to when the loops change over, its supposed to be automated based on tracking devices built into the parade route, but as far as i know the system seldom if ever works. Instead there are techs that walk the parade route and radio down to master control the position of the parade. Hope that helps.

 

[lego606]

I thought they just got all the citizens of Main Street to open their windows at the same time

 

[kap91]

I thought they just got all the citizens of Main Street to open their windows at the same time

The citizens need not worry, the windows open automatically at show time.

 

[Mickey1984]

Wow thats a hell of an explanation, you would think with that system it would go wrong all the time (or does it?).
so in theory if you walked with a certain part of the parade you would just hear the same thing over and over again, how bizarre.

 

[Tom]

Wow thats a hell of an explanation, you would think with that system it would go wrong all the time (or does it?).
so in theory if you walked with a certain part of the parade you would just hear the same thing over and over again, how bizarre.

Of all things, I've never experienced a parade where the music was not in perfect synchronization. For most evening parades, each block along the route will play the background harmony, while each float plays its specific melody from onboard speakers.

 

[Crazydisneyfanluke]

I saw somewhere that there is sensors in the ground that sense what parade float is going pass. This helps with the sync of the music and make sure the parade is on schedule.

 

[Tom]

I saw somewhere that there is sensors in the ground that sense what parade float is going pass. This helps with the sync of the music and make sure the parade is on schedule.

My understanding is that they've done away with the sensors and rely on spotters and cameras now.

 

[kap91]

I saw somewhere that there is sensors in the ground that sense what parade float is going pass. This helps with the sync of the music and make sure the parade is on schedule.

The sensors are possibly still there but the system never really worked and isn't used now. - at least as far as I know.

 

[Crazydisneyfanluke]

My understanding is that they've done away with the sensors and rely on spotters and cameras now.

thanks for letting me know

 

[MOXOMUMD]

The citizens need not worry, the windows open automatically at show time.

Do the windows really open before the parade? I thought they were open all day.

 

[kap91]

Do the windows really open before the parade? I thought they were open all day.

Yes they do. And they close afterwards as well.

 

[MOXOMUMD]

Yes they do. And they close afterwards as well.

Hm, guess I never paid attention. Thanks.

 

[Goofyernmost]

Many of the floats have there own sound system on board. So along with the street sounds you also hear whatever is being broadcast from the float itself.