[BigJon]

Picked myself up a Santa hat at Big Lots for $2 to wear during the parade. I need to get in touch with the parade organizer to make sure he got my registration form and switch vehicle info for them.

[DarkSpectre]

Chris and I will be joining you guys after all. it's a long story but we'll be there.

[Martog]

Chris and I will be joining you guys after all. it's a long story but we'll be there.

Ah that sucks, would've been aweseome if you guys could've gone to Steel Con, but stuff happens.

I'm still game for coming down, I'll probably rig a better cabeling system for the lights instead of using jumper cables the day before lol.

[DarkSpectre]

Martog - It's no big thing. iIve met Ernie before and have 2 autographed pics. So It's cool to be able to take part in this. Plus my wife and baby boy can enjoy the parade also.

Jon - Do we have an idea who all's going to be there? I know you and Travis, Me, Chris, and Dante, Martog. Is there anyone else? BTW, Dante does have a dark gray uniform.

[Gareee]

An idea you might want to borrow: Walmart has some cheap garland wreaths for $6.. they also have matching garland.

We picked some up, as well as a battery powered led light set.. put the lights in the wreath (you can easily make a coat hanger hook to wrap around your hood latch), make a foam core or cardboard Gb NG Ghost, put him in the middle, and then put a bit of the garland over him, with the end of that light string, and you have a festive holiday Ghostbusters wreath for the front of your car!

I'm doing our ghost out of insulation foam, so he has a bit of a 3D look to him.

We just picked up the stuff last night, but I'll post pics in a thread here once I get a bit of things together.

We are also ading a santa hat to a dancing slimer to put on top of the ecto rack... and possible a small christmas tree up there as well.

[BigJon]

So far list is:

BigJon-Myself
Travisthegeek-Travis
DarkSpectre-Adam
Chris
XxMysticblurxX-Dante
Martog w/car
RichLather

I would reccommend everyone getting a santa hat, just for the festiveness. They usually toss candy out at these parades...so if folks can bring a bag of tootsie rolls or dum dum suckers (cheapest candy at the store LOL) then we should have enough to toss out during the 2 mile walk.

Martog, do you have an AUX IN jack on your stereo to hook up to my mp3 player with GB music? If not, let me know and I can burn a CD with music on it to play in the stereo.

Found out we won't be the only costumed folks there, turns out that the Ohio Garrison 501st will be there as well. So that will be pretty cool.

Hoping the weather turns out ok for next weekend. Let's hope this 50 degree weather sticks around for a bit.

[DarkSpectre]

Yeah. me too. Looks like it's going to be fun!!!

[RichLather]

Yep, I confirmed with BigJon that I'd be there. This is blossoming into quite a happening now.

I know an MP3 playlist has been mentioned already. Would there be interest in my mixing the Ecto-1 siren into some of the music?

[Martog]

Martog, do you have an AUX IN jack on your stereo to hook up to my mp3 player with GB music? If not, let me know and I can burn a CD with music on it to play in the stereo.

I have both an AUX port for my iPod Touch and I could interface it with the USB port as well, I got this Outback well packaged, I didn't get the Bluetooth media sync lol, but I do have in car bluetooth phone.

I have both Ghostbusters 1 and 2 soundtracks so I can do about anything, and I can always push the Ecto Siren up as well, that will probably be on its on playlist and I can do random GB song playlist as well.

[BigJon]

That works for me then. If you want to toss up a few songs onto your ipod and throw the siren in there too that should do the trick.

[Gareee]

What I did was alternate the major songs, with a mp3 of the siren lasting 20 seconds. I tried the score, but many passages are too low volume wise for a parade.

I think I ended up with the main gb ray theme, the main orchestra them, the extreme GB theme, and the commercial, each separated by the siren.

That gives you a 15 minute repeating playlist, though you might want to separate the songs by the commercail and then the siren.

When you consider the length of a song, and how fast a float travels, you kinda want the iconic siren and commerical to hit all the parade viewers.

The siren also helps "sell" your vehicel as an ecto.

[BigJon]

For my personal pack, I had the Ray Parker theme, the Run DMC theme (love that one), "Savin' the day", "Boys are back in town", and then a metal cover by Vomitron, and another cover by some punk-ska band. I want to get Hoobastank's cover on MP3 as well...

[Gareee]

I think I included having the day, and the run/dmc version as well.

While dirivitives are great for us to hear and enjoy, something to consider is your target audience. Most will be kids, and parents and grandparents.

They'll love the songs they are familiar with, but might not like things like the shouty metal hoobastank stuff.

Something to consider, you are mixing for your crowd, not yourself.

I pulled the michael jackson bad mash up, and the thunderstruck mashup as well, because they kind of wander off the main music path some, and when you consider how long they run, thats all the people along the parade route will hear at all when they are on.

I felt the extreme ghostbusters them was short enough, and canon enough to include. if your crowd doesn't "get" the car or outfits, the music could be the one thing that makes them connect that it's Ghostbusters. Once they hear the original music, you'll see a huge smile on thier faces.

[Martog]

Gareee to what comercial are you refering to? I am drawing a blank right now!

And you guys will have to let me know before I get down there what you want, I don't have much of a music collection, and my iTunes syncs with my desktop computer so once I leave home there is no changing what is on it!

[Gareee]

The Ghostbusters commercial from the movie.. since they were very commercial, hearing an "advertisement" goes over very well!

I'm cutting some additional holiday sound effects into it, a few different mixes, and as I mentioned before, I'll happily make them available for you guys.

My mix will be:

siren
commercial
gb song

and I'll mix up the different commercial mixes, and of course decide on my song selection... probably 3-4 songs. Most parades last 30 minutes to an hour, and you go fast enough for viewers to really only listen to 60 seconds max of whatever you are playing.

I'll make the 20 second siren track available for you guys as well if you want it. It has the crank up, and decay in it as well.

[RichLather]

I have the Ecto siren WAV, and plenty of editing software so it's no problem to edit it, echo it, whatever.

[Gareee]

I used audacity for my editing. Basically I isolated the wind up and wind down sounds, and a few of the siren cycles.

I tinkered with the timing.. a 10 second interval seems a bit too short, but a 30 second long cycle seems to make the siren drone on forever. The 20 second cycle seems to be the best option.

[Martog]

As a reminder, if you guys want anything specific for the music please PM me so you can get it to me asap! My iPod only syncs with my desktop so I'll be a good hour away from it for the parade!

Gareee I wouldn't mind have the comercials and the siren with startup and wind down, I don't have those, just the normal siren and that's it.

[DarkSpectre]

Ok. Going on Gareee's suggestion, I think this might work;

Siren -20 Sec
GB Theme
GB Commercial
Savin' the Day.
Siren
GB theme - Instrumental
GB Main title (Bernstein)
Siren
Run DMC
Siren
Attaboy Skip Version
Commercial
Siren
Flip City
GB Theme Searchin' for the Spirit mix or the extended version with the drum intro
Siren
On Our Own
Exteme GB Theme

Repeat

If we could throw in lines from the movie between songs, that would be cool. Also since my editing machine is down, does anyone want to try and add sleigh bells to the GB theme?

[Gareee]

There's an extended club mix (thats what I have it listed here as) that includes a good quality version of the commercial, as well as movie quotes in it.

You might want to include the extended xgb mix I posted here as well.

Not sure if you guys saw the wreath we are working on:

[DarkSpectre]

Damn Gareee, that's awesome!!!

[Gareee]

Thanks!

The ghost there is just an enlarged printout from my computer.. nothing special there.. yet.

We've cut him out of felt now, and plans are to "plush" that, and an idea I got today (and literally am heading out to the store for), is adding a string of led lights inside him, so the ghost lights up as well as the red wreath. To transfer the black toon lines to the felt, I'm just putting that on top of a glass table outside, and putting a work light under that.

I couldn't edit my last post any longer, but you migth want to substitute the xbg theme with my new extended mix post here.

Also the back to back ray theme and instrumental might be a biit too long without a changeup.. I think combined they are 8-14 minutes, depending on which mix you use Thats a long time on a parade route without a changeup.

[DarkSpectre]

Hmm Good point. I could say then remove the instrumental version.

[Gareee]

Or just slip something between them.. maybe the siren track, and the commercial? You can just snip it off the front of that extended club mix I was talking about.

I will have 2-3 holiday versions of the commercial within a day or so... I'll be posting them, and you could use those, if you like.

[Travis The Geek]

The play list is looking pretty good to me. Any idea what the approximate run time is for this?

[Martog]

I don't have some of those so I can't really comment on how long it is otherwise I'd tell you.

[Gareee]

Thats looking about 40 minutes or so.. its very similar to our dragoncon mix.

Our parade loop is much shorter.. its about 20 minutes long. As long as you have the ability to repeat, you can do a shorter parade mix.. otherwise you'll want enough for the walk down the entire parade route.. and longer would be better then having the music stop the last leg of the parade.

[Martog]

Well repeating is not an issue with any modern MP3 player and my iPod touch and loops just one song or go through an entire playlist and loop that instead.

Don't care what is playing, I'll be inside of the toasty Outback even if the windows are down.

[Gareee]

Ha! We are looking at a high that day of 43, and a low that night of 22.

I think we'll be wearing black turtlenecks and heavy pants under the khaki!

I have some large bulky ski gloves as well.. they should look like a fine replacement for the rubber gloves.

[BigJon]

Looks like weather in our area is calling for high of 41 partly cloudy. My nomex will keep me nice and warm.