Nice article on the creation of Vista's startup sound

G

Guest

Seen some of this here before, but not all...

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20061110/D8LADQHG0.html

SEATTLE (AP) - Some musicians spend 18 months working on a whole album. At
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), that's how long it took to perfect just four seconds
of sound.

Of course, this isn't just any four-second clip. It's the sound - a soft
da-dum, da-dumm, with a lush fade-out - that millions of computer users will
hear every day, and perhaps thousands of times in total, when they turn on
computers running Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Vista operating system.

To set the right tone - clean, simple, but with "some long-term legs,"
according to Microsoft's Steve Ball - the software maker recruited musician
Robert Fripp.

Fripp, best known for his work with the '70s rock band King Crimson,
recorded hours of his signature layered, guitar-driven sound for the project,
under the close direction of Ball and others at Microsoft. Then, it was
Ball's job to sort through those hours of live recordings to suss out just
the right few seconds.

Fripp's involvement is not surprising. His occasional collaborator, Brian
Eno, recorded sounds for Windows 95. Also, Ball, the Microsoft group program
manager for WAVE - Windows Audio Visual Excellence - has in the past been
Fripp's student and business partner.

Ball, a self-proclaimed renaissance man who is both an engineer and a
musician, considered the work of about 10 musicians for the project. Some of
those people were influential in the final four seconds as well.

Redmond-based Microsoft seriously debated several other sounds before
settling on the final startup sound about three weeks ago. The rejects
included a longer, lusher clip and a quick, techno-sounding piece. While many
people liked an upbeat ditty with a clapping rhythm, it was eventually nixed
for sounding too much like a commercial. Ball said the hand-clapping also
seemed like too "human" a sound when paired with the new graphic for Vista.

"There's nothing that's especially human about our new Windows animation,"
he said.

The short startup clip that was eventually chosen is meant to evoke the
rhythm of the words "Win-dows Vis-ta!" and Ball hopes the sound will serve as
a calling card for the operating system. It also consists of four chords -
one for every color in the new Windows graphic that appears as the sound
plays. It's no coincidence that it's also four seconds long.

There are a total of 45 Vista sounds that Microsoft has spent the last year
and a half perfecting, including the dings you hear when you get a new
e-mail, receive an error message, or log off your computer. Generally, these
are more muted, less jarring variations of the prompts familiar to Windows XP
users.

If it seems like overkill to go to all that trouble for a few seconds of
sound, consider this: Microsoft estimates that the clips such as the e-mail
alert will be played trillions of times in years to come. That's a lot of
opportunity to annoy, offend - or, if the job is done right - please or
appease computer users the world over.

One major concern was that the startup sound not grow grating after a time.

"You want a sound that people will love the first time they hear it, but
it's a paradox to also say, 'Oh and by the way, we need people to love it the
tenth, or the hundredth, or the thousandth time they hear it,'" Ball said.

That's one reason he was glad to have 18 months to choose the clips.

"We had time to live with the music," Ball said.

Still, for all the time Ball has spent on the sounds, he says one measure of
success would be if people noticed them very little, if at all.

Ball is the first to admit that the percussive beeps in past Windows
versions could be jarring enough to bother nearby workers or interrupt others
in a meeting. With the number of intrusive sounds from cell phones, handheld
devices and other gadgets only increasing, that's something Ball and his
colleagues were keen to avoid with Vista.

"We want you to know they're there, and you would miss them if they were
gone, but we would like them to be just barely noticeable, almost like they
are part of the environment or part of your wallpaper," he said. "We want
them in the background, rather than the foreground."
 
G

Guest

It would be interesting to know what compensation Robert Fripp got for his
work.

It would be interesting to know the total budget Steve Ball had for this
'sound' part of the project, and how much it will affect the bottom line..
ie, the final price to consumers.

It would also be interesting if any of the 'out takes' for the Vista sounds
ever make it to the general public!
 

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