Re: Fripp provides 4 seconds for MS

[Joshua Carroll <josh@infinivert.com>]

Wow!  I heard about this on NPR today, and actually heard the clip, but 
I had no idea who it was.  It is a cool sounding little clip and less 
intrusive, though perhaps not as catchy as the current start-up sound 
for XP IMHO.

--Josh



samba - wrote:
> 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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