Can you approach a symphony orchestra as though it’s an analog synth? That’s a question composers have asked since the first time they heard electronic sounds. It’s impossible to hear the 20th-century technology alongside the 19th-century technology without the one reframing your view of the other. Now, it will be tackled by the new album from composer/singer/violinist Owen Pallett, with an interesting cast of characters onboard, plus one imaginary ultra-violent farmer.
DP’s clever channel strip integrates quite a lot of functionality in every view.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t note another significant DAW release: DP7 is shipping this week. The Mac-only Digital Performer still has a loyal following, especially among the scoring crowd, some of whom have stuck with DP since the Performer days – one of the Mac’s first sequencers. I have to say, this particular update seems to focus more on bundled effects than core functionality – and, in fairness, because it’s tough to change core features without upsetting the stuff that keeps your users loyal, this isn’t uncommon. But DP has uncommonly rich support for being a Pro Tools HD front end, it’s Mac-savvy and Snow Leopard compatible, and given its popularity in scoring, a little touch like the Marker Counter could be huge news for its major following.
Full disclosure: I haven’t found much reason to touch DP lately, with plenty of other tools to keep my attention, so if there is a loyal DP user who would like to send in their dispatch, I’d love to run it on CDM.
In the meantime, I’ll keep this compact to give you a birds-eye view. First, the effects stuff:
In a Hollywood overrun with remakes, a new Tron has quite a daunting challenge. The original film may be a cult hit for its 80s arcade cool, but it also was a seminal moment in the evolution of computer animation, at the nexus of obsessive-compulsive optical effects that came before and digital effects that came after. (Google Perlin Noise, if you must.) But where the bits of the effects look uneven or dated alongside the brilliant, it’s nearly impossible to top the genius of Wendy Carlos’ score. Her deft blend of choirs, orchestras, organs, and rich electronics wasn’t just forward looking: it’s fresh today, an alternative to some of the signature sameness in today’s games and films.
Perhaps Tron Legacy will do what other belated sequels have not: express love for the original. With Daft Punk helming the score and a reverent, inspired crew ready to make Tron live again, the trailer last week was the real sleeper hit of Comic-Con.
If that’s not enough layers of fandom, though, head to GearSlutz for a lesson in film scoring and a recreation of the trailer in Reason, custom Reaktor patches, and Ableton Live. This is not much of an infomercial for Live: because Ableton’s arrange view doesn’t quite understand frames, scoring with Live is a bit of a beast. (Live 9, anyone?) But it’s a great example of love for the movie and its original score. And hey, everyone need a source of joy, even a film.
Stripped the original audio and redid all of the sound from scratch using Reason/NI Reaktor/Ableton Live 8. An M-Audio Axiom 49 was used to perform the Lightcycle Engine Oscillations
Wendy Carlos, if you’re out there, we get it. You revolutionized film scoring and electronic orchestration, and we’re all in your debt. It’s not so much that you switched on Bach or switched on Moog or even switched on Kubrick and guys in glowing skin-tight outfits. You switched on sound, and nothing has been quite the same since.
Now, we just have to hope 2010 can show us a good time, too.
Sibelius today gets the biggest upgrade I’ve seen from the tool in a long time, with major improvements to the way the notation package lays out musical objects on the score, and ReWire support so you can integrate it with your host of choice.
This is an especially meaningful upgrade to me, as I’ve spent a lot of time with Sibelius since its first Mac release about a decade ago, both composing and teaching with it. In case you missed it Friday, I just spoke about some tips that can help with working in both education and composing:
A couple of the recent upgrades, while nice enough, were not necessarily “must-haves” – a natural part of any upgrade cycle. But this to me looks different.
Here’s what’s new in Sibelius 6:
Magnetic Layout: Sibelius has always been “magnetic” in that it automatically reflows objects and page layout to keep everything looking “tidy” as its English creators would say. It’s also always been fast at the task. The problem is, a lot of objects have still required lots of manual tweaking. Sibelius users, you know what I’m talking about: hours spent fine-tuning dynamics and text indications, rehearsal marks, and the like. Basically, all the objects that we’ren’t magnetic now are. (see above)
Magnetic Layout implementation: In addition to the more intelligent objects and space optimization, you’ll see clever collision avoidance, and red-colored collision highlighting when a collision is unavoidable. It also looks like there are nice new guides for, say, making a forte, piano, and hairpin descrescendo all line up, something that required painful manual tweaks previously.
Versions and comments: Scores now track and manage revisions, and you can create comments on the score. Theoretically, this is for collaboration and teaching, though I imagine it’ll be useful even to a solo composer as a score is developed – enough so that you may start to haul your laptop to rehearsals instead of just paper.
ReWire: Sibelius will now act as a ReWire client, so you can record the output of the notation software itself (see the new instruments), or simply sync Sibelius to an existing project. Avid is naturally talking all about Pro Tools, but because the integration is with ReWire and not just Pro Tools, Ableton Live, SONAR, Logic, DP, and the like all become possible, too. I’ve never much liked the notation facilities in standard DAWs, so that’s good news – and this should be huge for the composer just wanting to record a quick mock-up with virtual instruments as well as someone doing film score.
Notation improvements: Slurs have always been reasonably elegant and automatic in Sibelius, but when it comes to manually overriding those controls, they’ve been more challenging. Sibelius 6 includes (appropriately enough) six handles for controlling slurs. There are also optional stemlets when beaming across rests (hugely helpful for people who write complex, cough, rhythms in their music), automatic feathered beams (instead of the hack we’ve been using), and smarter articulation placement. There are new jazz repeat bars, and cautionary accidentals are finally added automatically. These are minor things, but quite frankly, it’s little details like that that often make the biggest day-to-day difference. (The cautionary accidentals alone might be worth an upgrade.)
New integrated instruments: Profiting from Sibelius’ acquisition by Avid (formerly its Digidesign unit), Sibelius now acquires the lovely virtual instruments from the AIR team who have been doing soft synths for Pro Tools. There’s a new player, plus M-Audio’s General MIDI sound player. This replaces a previous player from Native Instruments. I love NI, but the NI player in Sibelius often wasn’t quite plug-and-play, and this promises to be an improvement. (See additional notes below.)
In the thrilling conclusion of our chat with Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin, Matt Ganucheau and I explore deep thoughts about the roles of interactivity and adaptivity in music and game design — then attempt to dance in giants Katamari Damacy hats. (Note the use of the word attempt — those things were more than a bit tricky to move in. Hilarity ensues.)
Prior to leading a dance dance Revolución, we talk a bit about the ways in which game design relate to gesture in musical interface and how musical scores could become non-linear. The gesture issue really goes well beyond games to the fundamental question of how to relate to music physically — and, in a way, awkwardly-dancing musicians may be a fitting metaphor. Or parable. Or something or other.
We do it all for you.
I really did find this a fascinating way to promote discussion, so if you’ve got suggestions for future broadcasts, I’d love to hear them. You can even think of new silly things for us / guests to do.
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