music for July holiday drone show on 97.9

[oldiesfunhouse]

I was listening to KSL and they had the mayor of Salt Lake City on. She said that, instead of a firework show this year, they'll be having a drone show. She said people could tune into 97.9 FM to hear the music that is coreographed to go along with this show. I've always thought it was cool to hear music on the radio that went with a fireworks show, or now in this case, a drone show. It's Saturday, July 1, at 10 PM. I'm wondering why the music is on 97.9. I believe that's a locally owned company and they don't have HD radio so there's no delay. Some of the other big stations, including all of them in the Bonneville group, would have to turn off their HD or start the music however many seconds before their delay to compensate so the music and the drones would be in sync. I remember 98.7 used to play the music for fireworks shows when I was a kid. Remember when KSL AM would cover the Stadium of Fire live on the Fourth of July? I think they quit doing it because people would sit outside of it and just listen on their radios instead of buying tickets and going to the show. I have a memory of 107.5 when they were either KMGR or KMXB covering some of that after KSL stopped doing it.        

[CAwasinNJ]

As far as I know Now 97.9 is locally owned.

These days I'd be shocked if any fireworks show company of any real size was still doing it manually.  It makes much more sense to have it be computer controlled, and for a drone show computers would be a must.  The HD delay is a known quantity, so that would be a simple matter to take into account.  I seem to remember reading about how these things actually worked at one station.  The show and the music were controlled separately but coordinated with each other.  I'm not sure how, but it could have been by phone.  The station started the playback and the pyrotechnicians did their thing at the same moment.  Today it would be even easier.  Computers can listen to an audio source and know precisely what it is and where in the song it is.  The Shazam app is a perfect example.  It doesn't just know the song, but it knows the time and can scroll along the lyrics as their sung.  It should be simple to just feed the audio from whatever station is playing the soundtrack into the control computer and just let it figure out when each shell should be fired or when and where a drone should be moved.


(The comment about Born in the USA was moved to its own thread here.)

[christopherjohn]

When we did firework shows back in the day, we would play one channel of music (mono on air) and the other channel fed down the firing commands from a over a phone line to the pyro. Now, it’s much different. We have been syncing KSOP-FM to the Sandy City Fireworks for the past 15 years or so. I make a mix, send it to the pyro. They program the launch sequence in the computer. Even with our profanity delay and HD it works out just fine. They have a radio tuned to 104.3. In my countdown, I have a DTMF tone. When the computer hears that, it starts the sequence. So the pyro says go, we start it at the studio and the computer does the magic. It’s pretty fun breaking format and playing all sorts of fun stuff. 10PM on the 4th we will do it again.

[amanuensis]

Cristopherjohn, it is so interesting to know that your radio station picks the music for the Sandy show -- and then the fireworks company then plans their show around what the station selected. I would have assumed that it was the other way around -- a fireworks show company would offer to the sponsoring city a list of shows that they could perform based on budget and desired length and that the music would have been preselected by the fireworks company to correspond with those choices. Meaning that the radio station was just handed a CD and told "play this when we give you the signal."

[CAwasinNJ]

I'm not clear on whether making the mix is referring to the output of the audio board or creating a playlist.

[Timmy]

Jun 29, 2023 21:37:08 GMT -6 CAwasinNJ said:

I'm not clear on whether making the mix is referring to the output of the audio board or creating a playlist.

He makes a custom mix of several songs.