Preparing Music for Vaulting Competitions How to Guide Where to find music files? •Music CD’s •Online from iTunes, MP3 stores such as Amazon, etc. •Create your own with music apps such as Music Maker •Copy from You Tube Common Music file formats There are many music or audio file formats. You can tell the format of your music file by the extension or by viewing the file type. .mp3 is the most common and universally playable and for that reason the required music file format for competitions. They will play on any computer : PC or Mac, old or new! .m4a and .m4p were developed and are used by Apple and usually the file format downloaded from iTunes .wav files are the standard windows PC audio file format but can be quite large. They take up lots of space and are very slow to load How to convert to MP3? There are many conversion applications and software programs out there. You can buy one or download a free one. The one I like to use is a conversion site where the conversion is done on the server, not your computer. The address is http://www.convertfiles.com/ Some music editing software also can convert music files from one format to another. Creating .mp3 files from YouTube music videos –the easiest way to get music! This is a link to a free You Tube video to mp3 converter: http://www.youtube-mp3.org/ YouTube-mp3.org is an online service for converting music videos to mp3. You do not need an account, the only thing you need is a YouTube URL. They convert the audiotrackof the music video to mp3. Because the software is platform-independent: You can use it with a PC, Mac, a Linux PC or even an iPhone. All conversions are perfomedin high quality mode with a bitrate of at least 128 kBit/s. The service is completely free. It can take 3 to 4 minutes per video. How can I modify a music file or combine them? •Some times you need to edit music files to fit your freestyle. •Take some lead time off of the beginning •Remove some inappropriate lyrics •Splice two or more pieces of music together •Even change the tempo to match your horse’s timing There are many music editing software packages out there but I have found that Music Editor Free works quite well and the basic program is free! You can download it here and it has an excellent how to http://www.music-editor.net/index.html What about renaming files? •Music files for competitions need to be renamed. The usual requirements are something like this: MUSIC: Music with lyrics (youth appropriate) ok for all classes. To Upload your music: Create an account at www.box.com• Select a Personal Account –Free for 10gb of secured storage. • Create a folder with your Club Name and Event such as ABCVaulters_Nationals2015 • Share the Folder with: Music Manager Carolyn Conner at cc_vaulter@yahoo.com • ONLY MP3 File Formats are allowed! Naming convention: Both the file name and title are the same. NO SPACES AND USE AN UNDERSCORE BETWEEN EACH ClassNumber_ClassName_ClubAbreviation_FirstName_LastName_AVAnumber 33B_BRONZE_FS_WBV_SALLY_SMITH_4B8 Or for Run In or Compulsories music: RunIn_AllCanterGoes_WBV The album should be Nationals2015 and the artist your club abbreviation ABC. MP3Tag software Rename files with this free software that you can download from: http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ This app lets you rename all your music file tags easily prior to uploading for a fest.