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Fripp provides 4 seconds for MS



Nov 10, 3:12 PM EST

Long Process Leads to Short Vista Sound

By ALLISON LINN
AP Business Writer



SEATTLE (AP) -- Some musicians spend 18 months working on a whole album. 
At 
Microsoft Corp., 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."

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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