Sync effects to music

Set the tempoCopy Anchor Link

Open the Beat Matcher panel. There are three ways to set the beat clock.

If you know the track's tempo, or the music has none to detect, type a BPM into the number field. You can also tap Tap along with the music four or more times. Spectralite then averages your taps into a BPM. If the reading settles on twice or half the real tempo, the ×2 and ÷2 buttons correct it in one click.

Let the detector follow the musicCopy Anchor Link

For live audio, turn on Auto Beat-Sync with the Auto button next to Tap. Spectralite listens to the incoming audio, finds the tempo, and adjusts the clock many times a second. The show then follows a band that drifts or a set that eases between tracks. The status under the BPM readout reads No signal until beats reach the detector, and Listening while the detector settles. When the detector holds tempo and phase, the status turns orange and reads Locked.

Pick the audio input from the microphone button in the panel's toolbar, or from Edit > Inputs > Audio. Prefer a direct feed from the mixer over a room microphone. While sync runs, it sets the tempo, so the BPM readout and Tap stop responding. ×2 and ÷2 still work, so you can fix an octave without dropping the lock.

The detector locks tempo and beat phase but does not decide which beat is the bar's "one". To set the bar, press Cue on a downbeat that you hear. While sync runs, the same press also calibrates for microphone and output delay. The Beat Matcher reference covers full setup, the confidence readout, and latency compensation.

Schedule a layer on the beat gridCopy Anchor Link

The simplest beat-sync needs no nodes. In the Timeline, each layer row has a beat grid that splits one bar into sixteen slots, four per beat. The effect plays wherever a slot is on.

Click slots to build a pattern, or drag across a range. For example, turn on the slots of the second and fourth beats and clear the rest. The layer then hits on the backbeat. Fill and Clear set all slots at once. Because the grid is measured in slots, the pattern keeps its place in the music at any tempo. Beat time covers the grid model.

Start from a bundled beat effectCopy Anchor Link

Several built-in effects already read the beat clock, so you can get beat-locked motion without opening the Node Editor. Chase On Beat, Sparkle On Beat, and Colour Advance On Beat step on each beat, and a search of the browser for beat finds those three. Exponential Decay Flash, Asymmetric Pulse, Jump And Fall, Radial Shell, Helix Sweep, and Random Shape Burst are also beat-driven. A beat search misses them, so scroll to them.

Most come in two forms. The (Loop) form runs continuously against the beat grid, so it appears when you add a timeline layer. The (Bump) form fires once when you trigger it, so it appears only in the browser you open from the Bumps panel.

To build on one, select it in the Node Editor and click Duplicate. The copy is your own editable graph, already wired to the beat.

Drive an effect from the beat clockCopy Anchor Link

For motion beyond switching a layer on and off, read the beat clock inside the effect. In the Node Editor, add a Time node. It has no inputs, and its outputs give the beat clock in several forms:

• Beat Progress ramps 0 to 1 once every beat.
• Bar Progress ramps 0 to 1 once every bar of four beats.
• Cumulative Progress counts total beats as a continuous value that never resets. Use it for animation that should not loop.
• Beat Index and Cumulative Beat Index count whole beats, within the bar and overall.
• Seconds counts time since start, and Active Seconds counts time since the layer turned on. Both ignore the beat clock, so use them when a motion should keep its real-world speed at any tempo. Timestamp and Active Time are the same two values in milliseconds.

For a flash that fires on each beat and decays, subtract Beat Progress from 1 with a Subtract node. The value then starts high and falls. Feed the result into your effect's brightness before the Output node. The light snaps up on the beat and fades until the next one.

For a color that cycles through the spectrum once per bar, feed Bar Progress into the hue input of an HSL to RGB node. Then wire its color through Combine Color into Output. See Connecting nodes for how ports link, and the nodes reference for every node by category.

Shape per-layer timingCopy Anchor Link

Two controls in Layer Settings change how a layer moves through time while it plays. Speed scales the layer's playback rate against the beat. At 2 its effect runs twice as fast, and at 0.5 half as fast. The master BPM stays the same. Beat offset shifts the layer's phase by a number of beats, so a small offset between two otherwise identical layers makes them chase each other.

These controls change how the effect animates while the layer plays. The beat grid still decides when it plays.