Wednesday, June 17

Cool

Let's See

There's eight compositions, three moods, four arrangements, six starting sections, and twenty variations on the one theme, not to mention the fact that the structure is very much dependent on the length, and that all those factors serve merely as a seed.  So there's easily ten thousand different outcomes even before you really start to customise it.

Awesome.

...

Oh yes.

View from a Cloudy Window

Escapement
Counterpane
Intermezzo
Antebellum

Hrm.  Might tinker with those last two some more.

Hum.  Actually, apart from a couple of chorus sections in Counterpane and Antebellum that could do with punching up a little, I'm pretty happy with all four.  So, having broken and then repaired the mu.nu virtual server (accidentally upgraded it from 8GB to 1GB instead of 10GB), I think it's time for bed.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:57 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1 So what's the story with the music? The implication is that it's just being created combinatorially out of existing fragments. With what tool? And where did the fragments come from?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, June 18 2009 03:48 AM (+rSRq)

2 The program is Cinescore, which is designed for creating background music for video.  So the first pass is combinatorial - you choose a theme (a collection of pre-recorded instruments, rhythms and melodies), and then a bunch of different arrangement options, and specify the length of the track.

Then you can specify that, for example, you want this movement to be quiet and then slowly build up to a climax here and then fade away slowly until it returns with a sudden dramatic jump here - to match whatever's going on in the video.

Of course, I'm just noodling around trying to coax interesting noise out of it.  Which is sometimes a bit frustrating, as I learn my way around the program.  It's kind of the polar opposite of Acid, which I used for my previous compositions.  In Acid you have to be very specific - you take a mandolin in F# playing a particular sequence and match it up with a cornet and a cello and a wood block, and you can time things down to 1/32nd notes.  (And I have on occasion even edited the waveforms.)

In Cinescore, you say, uh, give me an intro, then a buildup, then something dramatic at 1:45, then a nice clean exit.  And then you're not quite satisfied with the outcome (if you're picky like me) and you spend three hours fiddling with it trying to get it to do just what you want.  It's an amazing program, but very annoying at the same time.  It is still 1.0, so I very much hope they stick with it and smooth out some of the kinks.

I really want to get a copy of Vocaloid, but no-one seems to sell it.  I'd be perfectly happy to use the Japanese voice sets, but I kind of need the application itself in English.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, June 18 2009 04:11 AM (PiXy!)

3 First minute of “Escapement” sounds a bit like Philip Glass.

(Which, BTW, is about all I can get - a minute or so of download, then the server closes the connection. D*mn dialups.)

Posted by: Old Grouch at Friday, June 19 2009 02:12 AM (uKJ7j)

4
First minute of “Escapement” sounds a bit like Philip Glass.
The funny thing is that it might be. wink

Sony (and Sonic Foundry previously) get some pretty famous musicians to record stuff for their software, but the license says you're not allowed to even mention them in your work.  So I credited my laptop instead. smile

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, June 19 2009 02:53 AM (PiXy!)

5 Maybe I should put all my music up as a podcast feed.  iTunes will restart a download if it drops out, and my fans can automatically get new tracks as they're released.  (Like, once every five years...)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, June 19 2009 02:58 AM (PiXy!)

6 It's not a dropout, it's a forcible closure.  Have the same problem pulling stuff I've posted (like here and here).

Posted by: Old Grouch at Friday, June 19 2009 02:08 PM (uKJ7j)

7 Ah.  I think that might be related to the other problems we've been having, then.

We'll be moving to the new server in an hour's time, and that should fix everything.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, June 19 2009 03:00 PM (PiXy!)

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