nca competition rule book for school teams - National Cheerleaders ...

NCA SCHOOL COMPETITION RULES
NCA reserves the right to be the arbitrator and interpreter of all rules covered in this document.
MUSIC INFORMATION
Regionals: Routine should be on CD. Duplicate CDs must be available at the music table in case of lost or broken CDs.
Coaches are strongly advised to create routines (mix music) that finish a few seconds under the time limit to ensure
that the team does not go over time. Judges’ decisions on timing of total routine and music portion of routines are final.
Nationals and Classics: Music should be on CD or digital music player (iPod, iPhone, MP3).
• If utilizing CD, Duplicate CDs must be available at the music table in case of lost or broken CDs. Coaches are
strongly advised to create routines (mix music) that finish a few seconds under the time limit to ensure that the
team does not go over time. Judges’ decisions on timing of total routine and music portion of routines are final.
• If utilizing digital music player, NCA & NDA will provide the necessary cables. Be sure to follow these steps below prior to
your performance:
• Set up a playlist for each routine
• Turn OFF any equalizer, sound check and/or volume limit
• Turn your volume up to 100%
• If using a phone, make sure it is in airplane mode to avoid incoming calls during performance
• MUSIC TIPS
When you work with audio, you need to make sure you set proper levels at each stage of your audio production.
• PRODUCTION
During this phase, you record the elements used in your music, such as sound effects, voice-overs, and so on. This is the first
and most critical step in any audio production process. Any audio recorded poorly at this phase will be difficult to fix later in
the process. This also goes for selecting music. Make sure that you are using high quality music files. There is no match for
properly recorded sound, no matter how good your audio cleanup tools are.
• CAPTURE
Transferring your production audio to your editing software should be a transparent process that affects your audio as little as
possible. The audio levels of your source footage and captured media files should match exactly.
• AUDIO PEAK DETECTION
Audio that is too loud causes distortion and often cannot be salvaged. Most editing software has the capability to find audio
peaks.
• AUDIO GAIN AND NORMALIZATION
Before cutting and mixing multiple audio sources together, you may need to normalize varying audio levels that are intended
to match. Audio that is too quiet should be raised to an acceptable level before mixing and output.
• MIXING AND OUTPUT
During mixing and final output, you need to ensure that audio levels are consistent compared to a reference audio level, such
as audio tone. Loud parts should be consistently loud, and quiet parts should be consistently quiet (but not so quiet that they
get lost in the noise). The dynamic range (the change in levels between quiet and loud) should be large enough to create a
varied mix, but not so large that viewers have to constantly adjust the volume when listening to the final music track.
RULE BOOK • 8