Via YouTube Doubler, a twisted online YouTube mash-up tool created by digital artist and Emergency Broadcast Network veteran Brian Kane, comes a strange new … orchestral composition. (EBN, for those not in the know, should translate as "video mash-ups before you knew what video mash-ups were.") Charlie Rose interviews Charlie Rose. "Google…" Just watch. (The video is embedded after the break, as it’s essential that both clips start up at the same time. Video will therefore naturally autoplay.)

We’ve got two layers of mashing-up going on: the first layer of this mashed … cake is a new composition by Tan Dun.

ThruYou / Kutiman already showed us what happens when an elaborate video mix pieces together imaginative songs from tiny clips of YouTube uploads – a potentially gimmicky concept, but brilliant when done right. Noted composer Tan Dun has gone that route, as well, with his Internet Symphony.

Using thousands of submissions to http://youtube.com/symphony, the resulting composition is entitled “Internet Symphony, Eroica.” See top.

But all this gets much better when the mash-up is squared in YouTube Doubler. In addition to the Tan Dun composition, a short film has Charlie Rose interviewing Charlie Rose about the Internet. Rose appears as the spoken word narrator on top of Tan Dun’s score, and what results is an odd, reflective commentary on our times, adding a certain nervous uncertainty to Tan Dun’s Internet optimism.

Enjoy.

YouTube Doubler

If you don’t like Charlie Rose, well, there’s always John Cage. [YouTube Doubler autoplay]

Okay, so you’ve seen the painful demo video for Microsoft Research’s Songsmith software – it was intended to me tongue-in-cheek, I think, but the self-parody didn’t quite work. But the idea of auto-accompaniment software that interprets your recorded singing remains impressive. And I’ve gotten some tips that it is possible to make Songsmith sound good. Naturally, the biggest variable will be the quality of your own singing. But to make the software side of the equation more interesting, it is possible to extend the tool.

Garritan, maker of the samples in the tool, has two add-ons. There’s an orchestral pack with the usuals, and Garritan’s sampled orchestras do sound very, very good. Better yet, there are some analog synths to add, including some bass, J-60, Jupiter, and other action. These don’t come with styles, but they do give you some new sounds. Whether you use them for more evil and cheese is up to you. US$9.99 each.

Band-in-a-Box maker PG Music also has Style PAKs that are compatible with Songsmith, too. The key with these is adjusting variables in the accompaniment, and tweaking chord progressions.

I can’t say I’m entirely sold yet because I’ve never been a fan of auto-accompaniment – though, okay, I did pass some enjoyable hours messing around with electronic organ and Casio keyboard presets as a youngster, so I take that back.

Here’s my challenge to you, if you are a Windows user and give Songsmith a try. Go. Make something really great. Maybe it takes this in a new direction — sample Hatebeak’s heavy metal parrot screeches. Maybe you just happen to be a brilliant singer. Report back. The world’s ears thank you in advance.

Image: roadsidepictures.

Breaking News: If you were David Lee Roth, and you decided to use Songsmith, you would sound something like this. (Thanks, Neal Johnson! Actually, what’s a word that means not so much “thanks” but “please, never, ever send anything like this again, for the love of all that is good?”)

Warning: The following link may cause permanent hearing loss, after you gouge out your ears.

Runnin’ With The Songsmith [Metafilter Music]

Ableton announced that they’d be doing an orchestral sample library — called, logically enough, the Orchestral Instrument Collection — way back when Live Suite came out last year. But Orchestral Instruments actually didn’t ship then. As of this week, it is shipping.

You can buy the whole library for US$599, or you can pick up sections a la carte for $189 (or, oddly, $159 for Orchestral Percussion). Like the Essential Instruments Collection, the samples come from SONiVOX, with high-fidelity and low-fidelity (read: lightweight for performance) versions. There’s also something new called "SmartPriming" for system resources. I haven’t yet gotten my hands on this, so I can’t comment yet; obviously, it comes down to how important Live integration is to you, or whether you’d prefer a third-party orchestral library.

The a la carte sections, though, makes me think of Garrison Keillor’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra skit. (It’s Classical Music humor. My apologies.) One way to choose sections: think about which God would want you to buy. Excerpt:

But for a Lutheran who feels led to play in an orchestra, the first question must be: are you kidding? An orchestra? Are you sure this is what you want? Do you know what you are getting into? Opera. Is that anyplace for a Christian? Don Juan and Mephistopheles and Wagner and all his pagan goddesses hooting and hollering, and the immorality — I mean, is anybody in opera married?

Not to give away the punchline, but not surprisingly harps and percussion (think about the patience required to be an orchestral percussionist) win out, so that could theoretically guide your purchase decision here. Just remember:

The French Horn takes too much of a person’s life. French horn players hardly have time to marry and have children. The French horn is practically a religion all by itself.

Software is different, of course. A Young Lutheran’s Guide to Music Software, anyone?

Audio Impressions had a working demo of their flagship orchestral library, DVZ. Well, ok—just the strings were demoed, but the full package with over 600 instruments is scheduled to de-vaporize and ship in March.

Audio Impressions > Products > Realtime Instruments (DVZ)

DVZ (pronounced “di-vi-zee”) promises a unique experience for those yearning to achieve new realism for that film score sound. The string section emanating from their NAMM booth did indeed seem to hit the nail on the head.

I was particularly impressed that it sounded so good being played straight from a keyboard. Part of the reason is that there is an algorithm that senses how fast notes are being played, so you can get articulations that make more sense without needing to be programmed after the fact through sample switching or tweaking attack and release times.

So what else is innovative about DVZ?

Ninety percent of the samples in the DVZ library are of individual players, and there are no samples of more than two players. This allows flexibility in programming that achieves realism on several fronts.

First, the total number of players never changes no matter how many notes you play. Think about it: if you hold one note of a typical violin section patch it may sound like 12 players. Hold down a second note and suddenly you’re hearing 24 players. Hold down a four-note voicing and your virtual orchestra hall gets crowded quickly.

DVZ has an algorithm that splits the notes up in an intelligent way, producing a performance that is based in reality—and sounds like it. You can quickly set the size of each of your sections, which will of course affect how intimate or big a sound you get, and it can also be made to match the size of orchestra allowed by a particular film budget.

And since instrument parts are made up of individual performers, you can achieve the sorts of tonal variations that create a realistic sound. Why be locked into a few section samples as they were recorded?

Individual players can also be moved around as dots in a virtual space. While I thought this might simply be accomplished through convolution reverb, it was explained that the SPACE programming module instead uses delay and phasing to emulate positioning and microphone bleed within a heavily multi-miked sound stage that has come to define that film score sound we are all used to hearing.

Ok, if you are thinking of adding DVZ to your setup, there are a few things I guess I should tell you. First, it’s freakin’ expensive! The price hasn’t been set in stone, but indications are that it could be in the $10-$15k range. (Yes, k means thousand.) Believe it or not, this would make it competitive with other top-shelf orchestral sampling packages and if you are a working composer you might not bat an eye at the price.

Also, to run the full orchestra with all its capabilities currently requires about six Windows machines—five for the samples and one more for the application. Hmm…this looks like a good job for 64-bit technology to come to the rescue—and it’s indeed on the drawing board.

The DVZ application will be able to communicate with your software through VST and Audio Units. A Mac version is scheduled for later this year.

More at www.audioimpressions.com

Josh Jancourtz is live on the show floor in Anaheim for CDM.

The Garritan Personal Orchestra forum has become more than a place for users of this sampled orchestra library to troubleshoot and ask questions — it really is a community in its own right. From sharing new compositions to assembling an orchestration guide, the GPO users are busy. Their latest creation is an 18-track album of (mostly traditional) holiday music, arranged for the sampled virtual orchestra of GPO. Download the music, or Garritan will even send you a CD. While you’re there, scroll down for a rendering of the Nutcracker in GPO — even if we might start to prefer it on bike parts. Now in its third year:

Garritan Christmas Music Player

That’s all fine and well, of course, but where’s the Reaktor Christmas Album, featuring all your holiday favorites rendered completely unrecognizable on far-out synths? (Finally, “This Christmas” made bearable — by re-arranging it for a microtonal granular synth that completely obliterates the horribly annoying melody? Native Instruments forum users, can you deliver?)

Moving on to a somewhat naughtier Christmas mix, our favorite mash-up DJ has cooked up yet another X-mas music stew:

DJ Riko Christmas Music Mixes

I never feel in a holiday mood until I hear Boris Karloff’s voice. And nothing makes my guests start to chug the Egg Nog like the dulcet tones of The Partridge Family singing Jingle Bells. And, while the Garritan effort is admirable, it doesn’t feature “the best drum-and-bass Christmas song you’ll ever hear and also features what just might be the best use of sleigh bells ever.” All of Riko’s holiday back catalog is there, too, so the insanity never has to run out.

Sorry for the slowdown, incidentally, folks — more “hard news” from CDM next week; we’ve got a lot of stories in the pipeline. Well, and more frivolousness, as always. That can’t only come but once a year.

The Vintage Computer Festival has selected Commodore 64 Orchestra to be the first to [sic] the historic Commodore 64 Parallel Super-Computer. The project is slated for completion for exhibition at VCF 6.0, where the 20th anniversary of the Commodore 64 will be celebrated. The first prototype will utilize 16 Commodore 64 machines in sync with a musical application that Commodore 64 Orchestra will program to write its Symphony No 1. series. Founder Nico of the Commodore 64 Orchestra states that “We are pleased to have been chosen to compose on the world’s first Commodore 64 Parallel Super-Computer and would like to thank The Vintage Computer Festival for their support and vision.” The Vintage Computer Festival is an international event that celebrates the history of computing. The mission of the Vintage Computer Festival is to promote the preservation of “obsolete” computers by offering people a chance to experience the technologies, people and stories that embody the remarkable tale of the computer revolution.

Commodore 64 Orchestra [MySpace Page]

My only question: 20th Anniversary of what? (The C64 was released 24 years ago, in 1982.) Update with answer: James from Retro Thing observes this is probably actually old (2003) news. Obviously, I’m familiar with the C64 Orchestra … not sure why they’re commenting on this now. But since 2003 is part of the Age Before CDM, feel free to go check out that MySpace page now and rock out to some happy 8-bit, while I wonder if between this and the pornographic 8-bit image I just posted accidentally, today was the day I got punked. ;)

Create Film Scores

Jerome Leroy, an L.A.-based music systems technician, is editing the new site. Jerome tells CDM he works as a studio technician and technical assistant and had a specific “thirst for film music tech news” that led him to start his own specialized resource. We’re of course always happy to see the community of practical sites for digital musicians growing, so this is great news — welcome, Jerome!

Among the early articles is a great piece on assembling farms of Mac minis to help process samples for Vienna Instruments and their massive Symphonic Cube package. The minis are a little underpowered in the hard drive department, but thanks to a cheap price and fast processor, they can be an economical way of adding necessary sample-processing power. The article also details composer John Frizzell’s setup, which originally, like a lot of film composers, used a Mac as the main machine and PC slaves for GigaStudio; Frizzell has sinced switched to an all-Mac rig of three G5s. Jerome says this is the first of a series; we’ll be watching:

Mac minis as VSL Farms: An Overview

Related: CDM’s resident game composer talked to Tomb Raider’s Troels Brun Folmann, who uses a similarly massive computer farm for his music. His setup: one master computer, eight sample slaves, all PC. (His sample library of choice is East West’s Symphonic Library XP rather than Vienna’s.)

CDM Interview: Tomb Raider: Legend Composer Troels Brun Folmann on Adaptive â€Å“Micro-Scoringâ€Â?

Got a sampler farm of your own? Let us know about it. (Don’t worry, we won’t get into pissing contests over who has the most computers — for those of us who don’t need to use enormous orchestral libraries, one machine often does just fine!)

Now, I’ve gotten in trouble before when I’ve said Finale was blatantly copying its music notation rival Sibelius. But I don’t think anyone can argue with me this time. The major features in Sibelius 4: parts linked to full score, and integrated video support and film scoring features. The major features in Finale 2007, based on a marketing email I just got from Finale:

1. Parts linked to full score
2. Integrated video support and film scoring features
3. Intel Mac native support

Sounds familiar, huh? Now, honestly, these were really features that both packages would inevitably add, so I’m glad to see Finale continuing to level the playing field. And don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of other features that are unique to Finale; Finale users will want to read through the extensive feature list Finale just posted. Specifically, they continue to improve integration with Native Instruments Kontakt Player and Human Playback features. Unlike Sibelius, Finale can host a wide range of VST/AU plug-ins (all based on Kontakt); the feature works really well in Finale 2006 and is improved in 2007. But most importantly, I think copying is good, not bad. Many of the Sibelius and Finale users are fiercely loyal to their product; they have to be — composing is hard enough work as it is, and switching from one platform to another would be a big adjustment.

Bottom line: when rivals compete, users win. MakeMusic once didn’t even want to acknowledge that it was competing with Finale; as far as I know, they still don’t like to refer to “the competition” by name. They’re clearly aware of it. And their product has gotten a lot better as Sibelius matured. (Sibelius has improved a lot, too; I’ve been a Sibelius user since version 1.xx, and looking back, frankly, that version was pretty awful. 4.1 is a joy.)

I wholeheartedly endorse upgrading each product, with one caveat: back up your system and keep your old version handy. Your scores are too important to risk on any upgrade from any company. Case in point: a bug in the Finale 2006 installer for Mac (later fixed) could wipe out preferences. But, once you’ve backed up, sometimes the latest-and-greatest really can be the greatest.

The only real bad news? A few lines in my book are now out of date.

Sample designers Garritan Library, the folks behind the popular orchestral library Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO), have begun releasing portions of their free guide to orchestration (see my previous story). The full text and examples are straight out of the classic Rimsky-Korsakov orchestration text, the landmark guide to orchestration that has taught many master composers. The Rimsky-Korsakov is a must-read for composers, but it’s still one perspective and hardly perfect, so it’s even better to discover the text has been fully annotated in this version.

The result is a community-driven guide to orchestration that’s really unlike anything I’ve seen before. The whole course is designed for self-study, with plenty of examples and illustrations. The professors who edited and annotated the text are discussing the results, turning the Garritan forums into a kind of interactive classroom. When the whole set of lessons are done, they’re even holding an orchestration contest. (Now that’s something I never got in my orchestration classes — not just grades, but genuine competition.)

The examples have been fully rendered in Garritan Personal Orchestra, so the project also shows what a virtuostic GPO orchestrator can do. It’s admittedly not quite the same as healing the excerpts played on a real orchestra, which is potentially problematic for someone learning orchestration. But it’s still interesting to follow the scores interactively, and if you’re a composer trying to learn GPO orchestration so you can make better demo recordings so you can convince real orchestras to play your scores, don’t miss the power tips interspersed with the lessons. (And, hey, the GPO sounds are good enough for U2!) The people on the GPO forums really know this product inside and out, including how to make it work with notation software.

It’s exciting to see something new in music learning. The first four lessons are out now, with many more coming. I’ll keep you posted — now, go practice so you can win the orchestration contest!

Principles of Orchestration Online

Garritan update: Gary Garritan reports that there are more products in the pipeline, if you’re waiting on new Garritan libraries like the first-ever Steinway-authorized piano. He says he’s just waiting on the 2.0 release of Kontakt Player. Stay tuned here.

When it comes to new musical interfaces, everything has come full circle. Composers and interactive musicians have for years appropriated Nintendo hardware like the wireless PowerGlove. Forward-thinking music designers and music makers have imagined and prototyped hardware that would translate gestures and three-dimensional movement into sound. But there’s never been anything approaching a mass-market device, until now.

Once upon a time, you’d only find wireless multi-axis controllers in experimental academic studios, but now they’re the buzz of the gaming world, thanks to Nintendo. And even a game about conducting classical music can be headlines news. Here’s more on what Nintendo’s cooked up, and, as I’ve said before, why it might inspire musicians to experiment with new ways of making music.

Thumbnail from IGN’s excellent Wii Music coverage; other images from Nintendo Wii site videos.

Wii Music: Be the Conductor

Nintendo opened their press conference for last week’s massive E3 trade show with game visionary conducting (with some effort!) the theme from The Legend of Zelda, relying entirely on the wireless Wii controller. The “Wiimote” senses position, tilt, and acceleration, (presumably via a combination of infrared pointing, accelerometers, and gyroscope), as well as providing cool features like a microphone and speaker. (Oh yeah, and buttons, if you still care about those.)

Aside from Nintendo tunes, Bizet is on offer, and guessing from the video at the Nintendo site, it looks like you can play drums, guitar, and so on, as well.

This is all about making music easier, right? Well, not necessarily. Buzz from E3 attendees is that the Wii music game is actually quite hard. I’m not sure it’s for exactly the same reasons that conducting is hard, but the point is, when you put your whole body into a task, you demand more of your body, in terms of gesture and precision. Likewise, if it’s something that’s too easy, it’s less fun. (Hmmm, put in gaming terms, the challenge of learning a musical instrument isn’t what some people would think — just as in gaming, it’s the frustration of it, trying to tune your body to perform subtle gestures, that makes things fun.)

For full details of the game, check out IGN, which has a full preview and videos. Don’t ask why CDM didn’t get a press invite. I don’t know. ;)

But this is exciting for a number of reasons. First, the mass market is getting people excited about music making, and embracing new ways of interacting with technology, meaning the time is also right to start to share what we’ve been doing holed up in academies and galleries with the rest of the world. Not only that, Nintendo has provided a big incentive and inspiration to artists to keep pushing the technology.

The Future of Controllers and Building Your Own Wii-like Controller

The Wii remote is actually something you can build yourself; it uses all off-the-shelf tech. While Nintendo has enough volume to make these cost $30 retail or whatever they’ll be priced at, you can still get away with making your own interactive controller for under US$150, thanks to the fact that DIY components are all mass-manufactured. (BYO soldering iron, but I hope to have a demo later this summer.) And, of course, if you build it yourself, you control how it works and what gadgets you add to it, as well as, most importantly, software interaction.

DIY builders have something now, though, that they didn’t have before: a view of what the end result could be, from the mass market perspective. And it’s always interesting, because Nintendo engineers and programmers view these problems differently than, say, a college digital media student. It also gives us a break from looking at code. Lately, I’ve been firing up my Nintendo DS when I need to think outside the box about an interactive design problem. There’s something about the immediacy of the game medium that makes me (and others, I suspect) feel differently about the possibilities of interactive music and animation. (I’ll have to explain this to the IRS after I write off Nintendo hardware on my taxes, but I’m sure some readers are sympathetic!)

Incidentally, if you don’t want to break out a soldering iron, you’ll also soon have cheap tilt-sensing controllers that could be useful for music applications. The Gyromouse products have been out for years, and are a favorite among Macromedia (er, Adobe) Director users, but the new devices are likely to be more fun. Hacking a Wii controller to work with a Mac or PC may be tricky, though GameCube controllers can work with computers via cheap adapters, so Wii controllers may, too. If that doesn’t work, there are already PS2/PC-compatible knockoffs of Sony’s PS3 knockoff of the Wii, like the eDimensional controller recently discovered on Gizmodo.

Nintendo’s Take on the Big Picture

If you’re interested in interactive technology, let alone gaming, it’s worth checking out the full Nintendo Press Conference. Substitute the words “music instruments industry” for “game industry,” and these are worthy thoughts for music technology makers. Nintendo’s focus has been on expanding the market for games, attracting people who’ve never gamed (not sure how they avoided even Tetris and Pac Man, but okay), and people who are lapsed gamers (the many people who say “Oh, yeah, I used to play NES all the time”), all while giving more to the hard-core gamers (the folks who are probably saying “why again would I spend $600 for a PS3?”).

Now, granted, Nintendo is taking some big risks (they said so themselves), so while I really buy into this vision — brand loyalty aside, because these are the kinds of things I believe in as far as people using technology — they’re going to have to deliver. This isn’t a gaming site, so I can’t comment on that and sound like I know what I’m talking about. But I do think that thinking about the experience of technology, the fun of using this stuff, and how to appeal to a broader audience and satisfy users is just as vital to music tech.

It’s tough for the smaller music technology industry to think in these kinds of broad, adventurous terms, because most of the product developers and manufacturers have enough to keep them busy. But the time might be right to do just that. What’s unique about Nintendo’s take, I think, is that they’re listening to their core market — the people who were saying, you know, I really had a lot of fun playing the old Mario Bros. games and I miss them, or the people who just want to wave a controller as a sword. (I was even talking to a woman in a bar the other night with friends, and she was psyched about swinging the Wii controller around.) Music making offers the same sort of visceral reaction for a large community of people, not just the niche market that some of us represent.

Stay tuned for more on using these kinds of controllers to make music. Let’s see if I can get my wireless movement sensors working before Nintendo ships their Wii. Personally, I can’t wait to play with both.

(Okay, for some reason, that conclusion sounded more dirty than geeky, but . . . you get the point.)

What’s your take on the controller? What would you like to see from music tech; does any of this have applications to real music making and not just music games? (Is there a difference between the two?) Let us know what you think, and don’t forget, CDM’s rgaming and music forum is waiting.

Related:
Nintendo’s Revolution Controller and the Future of Music Hardware