RuedaMaticRuedaMatic - Guides
RuedaMatic can be used at various levels, from simple to fairly complex.
In most cases, you can discover the possibilities hovering over the screens, and reading the tool tips built into the program.
Also, check out these brief videos to illuminate some less obvious tricks of the trade.
1. Basics of setting Beats... Gears... and Moves
IGNORE DATED INTERFACE: This video shows a previous interface of RM. Also, "gear" names have changed, and other incidental details.
"Refresh" gear referred to in the video, has been replaced by the "Accent" gear.
WHAT TO FOLLOW: the method of accessing and setting the gears, beats and moves has not changed.
BEHIND THE SCENES: Gears are set at the beginning of treating a song, when the beats are set. Reason 1: to give hints on moves to pick on each beat. Reason 2: Autofill uses 3 gears: accent, climax, and spicy. Accents are places we try to put a move change, to match a musicality change. Climax and spicy are basically the same. Autofill will try to match a spicy move with these beats.
2. Clave switches: songs that go off-beat
Many Cuban salsa and timba songs have clave switches. The kind we are referring to are the ones where... quite suddenly... you feel like you are dancing on the wrong beat. Usually, the 1 beat has become the 5 beat. We handle this by shortening 1 measure at the point of change. Basically, the 8 count measure becomes a 4 count measure.
You usually find that the clave switches back again, in the same song. So there are two short measures.
Step 1: record beats IGNORING the clave switches
That's often what people do. They continue dancing, and ignore the off-beat feeling... until the original clave is restored in the song.
IGNORE DATED INTERFACE: This video shows a previous interface of RM, and things like "gear" names that have changed.
WHAT TO FOLLOW: the method of accessing and setting the gears, beats and moves has not changed.
Step 2: find the short measures, fix them.
IGNORE DATED INTERFACE: This video shows a previous interface of RM, and things like "gear" names that have changed.
WHAT TO FOLLOW: the method of fixing the beat timing.
BONUS: We only wanted to hear the song at specific beats that we changed. Note how we clicked BEFORE the beat box in the GUI... playback will skip to that beat. SO: There's a fast way to jump to any part of the song.
3. Combos
No video yet.
Combos are sequences of moves. But they are also "decision trees". You can use them when manually setting moves to a song. Then, you don't need to set moves one at a time.
But Autofill also uses them. Combo weight is only used by Autofill. If a combo has a weight greater than zero, it can be used by Autofill. The probability of choosing that combo depends on the weight of the combo.
Then the probability of each "decision" in the decision tree, is determined by the weight of that branch.
Autfill will pick one of the combos marked "Startup" first. After that, it will pick only non-Startup combos. Every (non-Startup) combo should begin, and end in open rueda position (like guapea), so they can be appended. A combo can go to another position (e.g. closed, "Vamos arriba"). But finally, the last move should return to open position.
You have probably noticed that RuedaMatic generally saves everything you do, immediately.
The exception is Autofill. If you Autofill an entire song, RM assumes you might just want a temporary sequence without saving. If you DO want to save it, you need to touch the sequence in any spot. You could e.g. just add a "guapea" to beat 1, then immediately delete it.
4. Adding subtitles to videos of RM dancing
IGNORE DATED INTERFACE: This video shows a previous interface of RM, and things like "gear" names that have changed.
WHAT TO FOLLOW: Making an SSA file. Locating it, and adding it to a video to show the move names while they are being danced.
BONUS: Avidemux is a free program that can add SSA title files to a video. But there are many programs that can do that.
5. Schemes
Schemes are separate universes of dancing. They have their own moves and combos that can be called out in time with the music.
For example, Standard Rueda could be one scheme. Rueda for 2 couples could be another. Then you have the "salsa suelta", "structures", "wheelchair" etc. etc.
You could even construct separate schemes for beginner, intermediate, advanced if you are a teacher with a big school.
Examples: scheme_rueda_normal_basica, scheme_abaco ....
Moves, combos, sequences are all within 1 scheme. The song beats are the only thing that is shared among all schemes.