first ever Dressage to Music - help please ??

monte1

monte1

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I am struggling, I decided to enter our very first freestyle DTM in two weeks time and now worried sick we wont be ready in time ;-((

Basic floor plan done, i think, and am getting friend to video us on Thursday evening so can figure out BPM and then find music !!
any tips gladly welcomed as I am a complete novice at this and had to build the 60 x 20 arena in the field to practice, so i am also worried it wont be absolutely the correct proportions !

it is only prelim level so nothing spectacular
 
Me too! Same place perchance? :) it sounds as though you have it sorted, have a floor plan to show off your good bits and music that suits your horse, I've gone for stuff that makes me smile so at least ill have fun :)
 
LiffWee93 said:
Me too! Same place perchance? :) it sounds as though you have it sorted, have a floor plan to show off your good bits and music that suits your horse, I've gone for stuff that makes me smile so at least ill have fun :)
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lol......... no music yet only floor plan. is yours at at wellington ??
i am hankering towards beach boys music!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I found instead of bpm I just played my video on the iPad or computer and then had YouTube or iTunes open on another device and played music and watched the video to pick what I liked. I'm not musical but the bpm thing flummoxed me so I just went with what I thought matched.

The other piece of advice, which friends gave me, that was helpful was to be prepared to freestyle. Arenas can ride at different speeds and on the day you might find yourself in front or behind the music. Make sure you know the music well and know what your compulsory movements are to make sure you include them. Then just make sure you transition when the music changes and just be aware you might have to wing it in between! I added extra trot loops and a whole 20m circle when I did mine the first time!
 
thank you Walrus, I actually tried that last night and found quite a few songs which seems to work ok, so fingers crossed!!
re winging it, :-) thanks might just have to..
LiftWee93 see you there :-)
 
Would agree with Walrus - don't get too hung up about the BPM stuff. Listen and watch! That advice actually came from somebody who puts together music for a lot of people - including me as I just couldn't find the time to do it all myself. Worth every penny and she came up with music which I would never have thought of.

However, do be careful that your horse agrees with your choice of music! Mine does tend to get a bit tense, I'm working on it and play the music in the stable and in the arena to get her used to it but it does depend on the location of the speakers and how "diffused" the sound is - she's not keen on places where the speakers are very close to the arena and are very defined points of noise (hopefully that makes sense). The other problem is the music systems at some venues distorts the sound horribly and that doesn't help either. If necessary I'll have to re-think the music and change to something more relaxing but I'm struggling to find music I like as much as the current test. I have a few competitions over the next few weeks and if I can't get her relaxed then I still have time for a rethink before the Regionals next year.

Finally, be aware that some surfaces ride faster/slower than others. The first time I rode the test at Pachesham I was way in front of the music and had to do some rather panicked adhoc movements - the next time I was prepared and had a back-up plan.
 
I steward a DR venue and we run freestyle tests from Novice upwards - the biggest mistake I see is people getting obsessed with the music and forgetting how to ride, especially those at Novice! These people are combinations I see week in week out, they do a lovely test normally but put it to music and they forget how to ride a 20m circle!

The most important thing to remember is THE JUDGE DOESNT KNOW YOUR FLOORPLAN. So if you are a little bit late to your music, or have done a movement at a different marker by accident....the judge doesnt know that and wont be marking you for it. Your interpretation of the music in the artistic marks at the end is one mark (ok normally a x2 or x3, cant remember) but still just the one mark. Whereas all your movements that are compulsory account for the majority of your marks.

So focus on getting your compulsory movements correct, everything needs to be accurate and make sure you dont forget any of them. Make sure they are obvious too - because the judge doesnt know your floorplan, they are having to work hard to spot when you are doing each movement, so if you have to do a medium walk make sure you do the full 20m of it and its clear, dont go back into trot or into the free walk too quickly otherwise they may miss it and you'll get marked down. The amount of times I have written for a judge and we've both sat there going 'what was that?!' when we see a tiny bit of something and then the rider goes into another movement too fast.

You should be able to do your floorplan with ease without the music, and the floorplan should be designed to show off your horses best paces & movements - get that nailed then the music should just be the icing on the cake, rather than being the main focus. Sometimes if a venue's music system breaks (ours did once!) the competitors have to continue without the music so be prepared and know that floorplan off by heart - dont worry too much about the music.

A judge is looking for music that suits the horse's character & name - so if your horse has a cheeky/funny name for example they'll be looking for music that fits with that. They dont want super fast music all the way through, it needs to have that slower section for the walk, and you'll find a few judges that dont overly love music with lyrics all the way through. But as I said before the music part of it is just one mark, so its not the end of the world.

Your focus is to execute all the compulsory movements as well as you can, as you would in a normal test - that is where the bulk of your marks will come from.

Good luck!
 
Thank you so much KC100 and MTCM that is really helpful advice , I have bought and downloaded instrumentals of three songs and played them on phone while riding him last night, which he didn't seem to mind and I think they fit OK ;-)

it is Prelim we are doing, so not hugely technical and my biggest challenge now is to get the music from my phone onto a bit of software so I can figure out how to edit it together . oh and film us riding the test and get the timings about right!..lol..
I think as it is our first one ever and not had a huge amount of time to prepare, it will be what it is and I will expect nothing and try to learn from it. it is quite fun though choosing songs and writing floor plans so am hoping it won't be the last one we try!

will report back .....
 
If you are at Wellington (2nd November?) I should see you there. I find with music classes there's nothing and then a glut of them so I'm doing 3 in 3 weeks! If that doesn't desensitize her nothing will and it will be back to the drawing board. I certainly agree with everything KC100 says - it's amazing how adding a third dimension of the music does make things more complicated - if you are following a set test you know exactly when to do a movement, if you are listening for the music to change then it's easy to forget the simple things like how to ride! Also, although the judge doesn't know your floor plan if you panic because you are out of sync you need to be able to bluff it "elegantly" otherwise they will cotton on to the fact that something isn't quite right with the choreography (speaking from experience). I'm totally hooked on it even though our scores vary greatly.
 
thanks, actually I am on the Sunday (UA) our riding club had tagged a DTM class on to end of Wellys dressage day for all us beginners ..lol .
good luck, am sure you will be fine :-))
 
LOL yes, exactly :-)
and thank you
, you too!
i am freaking out a bit now though, about being ready enough, as got to try and edit all the music together properly and no idea what i am doing ............
gonna try downloading and using Audacity this evening.........

MCTM said:
That explains why there's a prelim class - couldn't see one on the Monday :) Good luck and have fun (most important).
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Had a quick look at yesterday's results which were up on the board today and it looks like you had a good day (that's if I've remembered your "real" name correctly). Are you hooked by the bug?
 
He! He! Really enjoyed it & we (daughter) was 4th Prelim/ Intro combined to boot, same score as 3rd but slightly lower collectives, very pleased for first go at DTM ! Loved, loved our music, I spent days testing out all sorts of styles & working it all out and it did sound lovely - judges liked it too, phew ! How did you all get on ? The fog was a bit creepy wasn't it :-O
 
A friend mentioned a 'fantastic little pony' was amazing, but I was helping dd get our pony ready so missed you ! Well done, 6th overall is awesome !!
 
awhh haha, she is cool, i will admit! :) she stars in the welly riding club compilation video they have just put up on their facebook page :) i am soo soo chuffed considering she only had one runthrough to the music at home in my field in the dark in my homemade arena of poles :P
 
LiffWee93 said:
How did you get on op? :)
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Hi, quick update , we came third in the prelim :-) and had really great fun.

horse was very calm if a bit tense ( so was a I!) and I forgot on occasions to soften my hands, so it didnt feel as nice as it does at home. our canter transitions were not brilliant but, we started and stopped when we should have and hit our markers for the music, so for our first ever DTM, third ever dressage test and first time ever in an indoor I was really pleased with him !!!!

my friends videoed it and it looked way better than it felt, which give me hope ...lol
will try and post it if anyone is interested ??

MCTM said:
Had a quick look at yesterday's results which were up on the board today and it looks like you had a good day (that's if I've remembered your "real" name correctly). Are you hooked by the bug?
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MCTM I am totally bitten with the bug , had really good fun and loved riding to the music, thinking of giving it a go at novice now so can be more creative :-)

how did you get on yesterday??
 
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Spangles said:
He! He! Really enjoyed it & we (daughter) was 4th Prelim/ Intro combined to boot, same score as 3rd but slightly lower collectives, very pleased for first go at DTM ! Loved, loved our music, I spent days testing out all sorts of styles & working it all out and it did sound lovely - judges liked it too, phew ! How did you all get on ? The fog was a bit creepy wasn't it :-O
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Well done, sounds like we all had a good fun day, I had such a fun time and want to go and do another one :-)
haven't seen my test sheet yet as am picking it up from Welly this evening, so will be interesting to see the comments and areas to improve.
fog was indeed creepy on the way home ........
 
Really pleased with Lottie yesterday - been doing quite a bit of "desensitisation", playing her music in the stable and the arena. She was a bit spooky in the fog (we were outside) but less tense than normal. Anyway managed to get a 72.22%, won the restricted section and was 3rd overall. Off to Sparsholt for another practice on Saturday.
 
well done :-) - sounds like a productive day and good score!
i bought one of those mini pocket sized speaker things for about £4 paired to my phone and been playing it really loud while riding and while poop picking in field around him ;-).
haven't got an arena all work done on grass, so my concern was his reaction to the music blaring out of the speakers as we rode past them indoors, but he was fine!

have fun at Sparsholt!
 
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