Robert Fripp to Compose Vista's Soundtrack

brainstem writes "Recently, King Crimson founder, guitar master, and all around eccentric musical genius Robert Fripp spent a few days at the MS Campus recording soundscapes for Vista. Fripp, who has been at the forefront of electronic guitar composition for more than 35 years, first using analog tape delays, then with digital effects. He infused his unique brand of Frippertronics on the MS crowd. The Channel 9 site has posted a 25 minute video, chronicalling the event. Now I guess I finally have a reason to leave the default Windows sounds enabled."

Comments

Not to bash

[phorm]

While having actual guitar riffs sounds cool, but as cool as a blaring guitar might sound anything that's not melodic will soon begin to sound very annoying after a few hundred repetitions.

I've gone through a lot of sound schemes, and while the initial concept is cool most of them get really redundant and annoying after awhile. Also, one of the nicest things about KDE is the ability to set the 'theme sounds volume' accordingly, so that at normal they're a dull whisper, and when I turn up to hear my quiet DVD or VOIP conversation my speakers don't blow up at the next exclamation error sound... (hopefully this might be a Vista feature, as well?). Maybe a few nice strums of the guitar for starting or stopping windows will help, but an all-out guitarfest might be a bit overboard.

Then again, some of the music such as the background during the windows install I found very well indeed... it's just the effects that were a bit annoying.

Re:Meanwhile midi lovers are crying

[Anonymous Coward]

While it wasn't midi, 3drealms' Terminal Velocity used amiga modules (sort of like midis, but with digital samples contained within the file so as to preserve the musical integrity of the track).

Also, Kings Quest 6 (heir today, gone tomorrow) included a cd quality music track (1992).

Total Annihilation (1997) and Fallout (1997) both had CD quality music as well. In fact, Total Annihilation's score is so good, I still listen to it today. One of the best game scores I've ever heard - right up there with Diablo.

Diablo (1996) also had CD quality music. I do believe composed by Matt Uelmen.

Tomb Raider was not the first to use CD quality music; it was just the first to do it poorly.

Brian Eno

[Centurix]

Composed the Windows '95 startup sound. I always get this image of him wearing a sparkly cape thinking hard in front of a modular Moog while staring hard at a PC. The image is accentuated by the long hair and bald patch.

Re:Fripp? nah, Something with a kick please!

[Weird O'Puns]

Something with a kick?

Perhaps you should listen the latest stuff from King Crimson. Hell, go and check out Red and keep in mind that it was done in the 70's.

Now, I must go back to listening Strapping Young Lad and Opeth....

Re:Interesting choice...

[pyota]

i recalled this interesting interview snippet with eno regarding why he agreed to the project:

The thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long." I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel. In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.

The Gates of Paradise?

[stardancer]

This can also be noted: (from krimson-news.com) "Microsoft's Steve Ball (better known to many KN readers as member of the League of Crafty Guitarists) was also in attendance and provided some good comments on the significance of sound themes--and Fripp's soundscapes--to the user experience."

The League of Crafty Guitarists is "the performance wing of Guitar Craft", and Guitar Craft is Robert Fripp's guitar school-thingy. So, the circle is complete.

Anyway. Now at least we know that the sounds in Vista will be nice. That's good. I'm a little worried though, that perhaps the Blue Screen of Death will become Red and "One More Red Nightmare" is blasted out your speakers every time an error/BSOD occurs!

What's scarier is the fact that Robert Fripp's soundscape album from 1997 (not his only soundscape album, no) is so aptly titled "The Gates of Paradise"! amazon link

And perhaps the song titles of that album can give us a hint as to how Fripp feels about mr. Gates:
"The Outer Darkness"
"Abandonment to Divine Providence"
"In Fear And Trembling Of The Lord"
"Acceptance"

I mean, since Microsoft/Gates does rule the universe, or at least one might think that Fripp believes so, we here have a possible explanation to why he agreed to make this Vista "soundtrack"/soundscape/whatever... The other possible explanation is obvious: Fripp likes money.

Re:In the Court...

[vought]

When I read about Fripp doing the Windows sound earlier today, I was a little disaffected.

I mean, I thought he had better taste than that. I've been a Crimson fan for quite some time. I know folks who have studied under Fripp. He strikes me in the third person as very un-windows-user-ish.

But I guess everyone has their price.

I wonder if they'll use another one of Nathan Mhyrvold's shitty pictures for the background picture in Vista? He's a decent photographer, but the background picture for XP was badly interpreted. Freakishly over-saturated...you name it. Looked like crap.

RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

So now you'll not only get sued by the BSA for using a copied Windows, but also by the RIAA ?

Warezed?

[coolnicks]

I wonder if they will use warezed software to record it again?

http://slashdot.org/articles/04/11/13/0036243.shtm l?tid=133&tid=201&tid=109&tid=1

Yep, but artists lose again.

[CarpetShark]

Yes, it's just a gimmick. But, it's a gimmick designed to cooperate with many other gimmicks as a way of keeping a monopoly in power. Sadly, artists like Fripp and Justin Timberlake are being drawn into battles they don't understand, and therefore they don't get to properly choose a side. If only they knew that MS will destroy the industry they love.

Re:Microsloth bandwidth

[baadger]

Not that I care all that much, but THEY set up some goofy "mms" protocol that makes me download their entire !@#!@ movie before playing it, instead of streaming over HTTP like any other sane person... so I'll download the entire thing before watching 10-20 seconds of their 20 minute video...

MMS is a streaming protocol. Streaming over HTTP is just plain dumb, if you want to skip forward/backward in the stream you have to interrupt communications to issue a new request and the protocol offers no resilience to changes in streaming rate.

Think yourself lucky you can download it at all, on Windows you have to use 3rd party software (that doesn't always work) to save an MMS stream to a file.

I think that is incorrect

[superid]

" The Audio Home Recording Act makes most copying of music for personal use legal."

I am pretty sure that the AHRA actually says "it's still illegal but we agree not to prosecute you". I'll try to find a real reference for that.

not the first time he has "sold out"

[justins]

People might have heard Fripp or Crimson music in a Gilette commercial, on The Maxx cartoon on Liquid Television, or in some porn movie that stole the music. (Fripp sued them to get royalties) With regards to the commercial, I know he said something to the effect of "Why not? I use their razors, and people will get to hear something a lot better than the music they ordinarily use in those things. And I can use the money."

As a Fripp fan who will probably end up using Vista at some point I'm cautiously optimistic about this. I'm also skeptical that the little noises an OS makes can have any musical quality whatsoever.