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Extended Audio

The improvements in multimedia performance also extend to sound. In particular, two companies are working to make  Windows 95 a true competitor to the Macintosh for MIDI music production. Opcode Systems' Open MIDI system has been available to Mac users for years and has significantly contributed to the Mac's popularity among musicians. Blue Ribbon SoundWorks has developed an interesting new system for adding music to games. So whether your a music professional, hobbyist or a game player, Windows 95 means more better MIDI!

OMS (Open MIDI System)

AudioActive (MIDI for Games)


OMS
OMS (Open Music System)

The development of Opcode’s Open Music System into the architecture of Windows 95

will extend the benefits of Plug and Play to MIDI devices such as keyboards, synthesizers, effects processors and drum machines.

OMS is an industry standard for professional musicians, multimediadevelopers and music enthusiasts that provides an environment for MIDIprograms and hardware to work together. OMS-compatible software enables communication with a wide range of hardware devices such as external MIDI and SMPTE interfaces, sound cards and MIDI syntesizers.

"Microsoft teamed up with Opcode in an effort to respond directly tomusicians' needs," said Paul Osborne, director of multimedia technology at Microsoft. "The people at Opcode really know MIDI. By integrating the OMSarchitecture into Windows 95, we will be able to offer MIDI device control

that is easy to work with, and more flexible and more accurate than ever before."

"Opcode's music software is an important reason why many professional musicians have used Macintosh computers," said Chris Halaby, president and CEO of Opcode. "Opcode is excited to work with Microsoft to help makeWindows 95 a powerful platform for musicians, multimedia developers and others in the creative community."

The first OMS MIDI implementation for Windows 95, including Plug and Play, will be available as an extension to Windows 95 after Windows 95 has shipped. Subsequent versions of Windows will include OMS MIDI as an integrated feature of the operating system.

See Also:

AudioActive


AudioActive

Introducing AudioActive,  the world’s first real-time music composition engine and API for Windows. Using this new technology, any Windows program can create original, dynamically-changeable music effortlessly. AudioActive composes, performs and makes MIDI management simple and elegant.

Jukebox Jackpot

Pics 'n Licks

How Does AudioActive Work?

Key Concepts

Who Uses AudioActive?

Contacting Blue Ribbon

OMS

© Copyright 1994, 1995 The Blue Ribbon SoundWorks, Ltd.

All Rights Reserved.


Jackpot Jukebox

Jackpot Jukebox demonstrates AudioActive’s ability to compose music, based on endless combinations of musical elements. Specifically, AudioActive combines a musical style, personality and preset band of instruments to create a unique, enjoyable piece of music. Just click on the slot machine’s handle and go. Note that AudioActive never composes the same thing twice!

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Pics ‘n Licks

How Does AudioActive Work?

© Copyright 1994, 1995 The Blue Ribbon SoundWorks, Ltd.

All Rights Reserved.


Picks 'n Licks
Pics 'n Licks

Pics ‘n Licks demonstrates how AudioActive can provide musical accompaniment to a collection of scenes, each with a different musical style, four optional moods (personalities) and two motifs. Pics ‘n Licks also demonstrates how AudioActive can compose an instant musical between any two scenes.

Instant Transitions

Pics ‘n Licks associates each scene with a specific style of music. To choose a picture, click on the associated radio button to the left. Once a new picture is chosen, AudioActive composes a musical transition, which leads to the next scene, and synchronizes the visuals as they relate to this transition. This simulate the use of AudioActive in an interactive product, where scene transitions can occur at any moment because of user interaction. Although AudioActive provides 16 different ways to transition between two scenes, Pics ‘n Licks gives you just two options - Morph and Quick. When Morph is selected, the transition blends the mood of the music from the current scene into the mood of the second scene. When Morph is not selected, the transition cleanly ends the first section and starts the second section. Quick sets the transition to one measure, otherwise the transition is two measures. Typically, a morphed transition works well in one measure while a non-morphed transition resolves very nicely in two measures.

Motifs

Pics ‘n Licks also associates each scene with two musical motifs, represented by the two buttons in the bottom left corner. Click on a button to hear the motif. Notice that the motif plays musically in step with the rest of the performance. Click again and notice that the motif changes as appropriate to fit the music. You can also click on the picture and Pics n’ Licks randomly picks a motif and plays it. Although Pics ‘n Licks provides only two motifs per scene, there is no limit to the number of motifs per scene.

Mood Changes

The four buttons across the bottom represent a sampling of musical moods, called personalities, that control the mood of the music composed by AudioActive. Click on a different mood and the border around the picture changes color to reflect the new mood. Listen to the music and note that the overall harmonic structure has changed to reflect the new mood choice. This demonstrates AudioActive’s ability to change the personality of a musical segment that has already been composed.

See Also:

Jackpot Jukebox

How Does AudioActive Work?

© Copyright 1994, 1995 The Blue Ribbon SoundWorks, Ltd.

All Rights Reserved.


How Work?
How Does AudioActive Work?

What is AudioActive?

AudioActive is, in essence, a musical expert system. Because of its inherent intelligence, this patent-pending technology requires no knowledge of music.  Your application communicates with AudioActive in much the same way that a movie producer might communicate with a composer: just describe the shape of the scene, the style of music, and the musical mood and AudioActive composes an appropriate musical piece and starts playing it.

An Extensive Knowledge Base

AudioActive acts as a delivery system for a knowledge base created by talented composers and performers. AudioActive behaves as if the accumulated talent is at your application’s beck and call, encapsulating the knowledge required to create original music. Because of this expert system-based design, the process of preparing music for interactive media (such as a game) follows a completely different approach from flawed decision tree-based systems of the past.  Instead of writing linear clips of music, a professional composer prepares the knowledge base, which described how to compose and perform music under various circumstances.

Simple, Plain English Commands

Once the knowledge base is prepared and linked with your application, the application gives simple commands to the AudioActive engine. In many ways, your application tells AudioActive what it wants in much the same sort of language that a producer might talk with a composer. The AudioActive engine uses the prepared knowledge of the composer to create unique, original music on the fly, under user or code-level command.

Why is AudioActive Better?

AudioActive requires less content preparation than traditional methods. Instead of preparing fully orchestrated linear segments of music for every conceivable scene, the composer creates several musical styles which AudioActive interprets to fit each scene as appropriate. AudioActive can compose and perform a wide variety of music, with styles ranging in scope from jazz to classical to pop to ethnic. And AudioActive's music is always fresh and original, yet designed to fit the requirements of the application. As a result, the music track doesn't become irritatingly redundant. Even if your application performs the same previously composed section over and over, the music stays fresh. AudioActive interprets its musical instructions in real time and emulates the methods of a live musical performance. real-time response AudioActive, with its transition, motif, tempo, personality switch and other mechanisms, responds to almost any imaginable musical requirement with little or no preparation required. Best of all, AudioActive is easy to program. Its API calls are simple and require no understanding of music at all.

See Also:

Key Concepts

Who Uses AudioActive?

Contacting Blue Ribbon

© Copyright 1994, 1995 The Blue Ribbon SoundWorks, Ltd.

All Rights Reserved.


Who Uses?
Who Uses AudioActive?

Game developers can use AudioActive to perform music in real time. Music development cycles are dramatically reduced and the resulting music is fresh and original with every performance. In fact, AudioActive can accurately follow the action and even play a flourish when the villain finally dies!

Interactive multimedia system designers can rely on AudioActive to compose and perform music that flows with the presentation, following the delays and changes of venue that typify the behavior of the user (who rarely come pre-programmed to do what we’d expect them to do.)

No matter what kind of applications you write, from screen savers to word processors, you can use AudioActive to generate background music and accompaniments that give your product a distinct advantage.

AudioActive’s reach spans far beyond the typical PC-based applications of today. Follow your imagination and you’ll discover endless uses: set-top boxes, multimedia kiosks, vending machines, ATMs and even elevators! Soon, anywhere you’ll find interactivity, you’ll hear live music from AudioActive.

See Also:

How Does AudioActive Work?

Contacting Blue Ribbon

© Copyright 1994, 1995 The Blue Ribbon SoundWorks, Ltd.

All Rights Reserved.


Key Concepts

Expert System

In the past, attempts to develop computer algorithms for music composition have failed due to an inability to encompass the sophistication and range of the musical human mind. At best, algorithmic music generators sound stilted and lifeless.

Rather than attempt to teach a computer artistry and expression, AudioActive acts as a delivery system for a knowledge base created by talented composers and performers. AudioActive Technology behaves as if the accumulated talent is at your application's beck and call, encapsulating the knowledge required to create original music.

In essence, the AudioActive engine contains and delivers the musical talent to your receiving application. Its approach to composing and performing music is modeled closely on the methods employed by living breathing musicians.

Because of this expert system-based design, the process of preparing music for interactive media (such as a game) follows a completely different approach from algorithmic-based systems of the past. Instead of writing linear clips of music, a professional composer prepares the knowledge base, which described how to compose and perform music under various circumstances.

Once the knowledge base is prepared and linked with your application, the application gives simple commands to the AudioActive engine. In many ways, your application tells AudioActive what it wants in much the same sort of language that a producer might talk with a composer. The AudioActive engine uses the prepared knowledge of the composer to create unique, original music on the fly.

Sections

The AudioActive engine works with musical chunks called Sections, linear segments of music stored in a sophisticated format that allows intelligent manipulation of the music as it plays. Sections are created either beforehand, using a development tool such as SuperJAM!, or instantaneously by the engine in response to simple requests from the application. The latter is the preferred method because it provides quality music that is always original.

Styles

The real-time performance portion of the AudioActive engine can be thought of as a band of musicians who understand how to perform with the simplest of instructions. A Style describes to the band a particular subset of any musical genre, for example Bossa, Funk, Hip Hop, Beethoven, or Chase Music. Over 90 percent of modern popular music can be encapsulated with extreme accuracy within AudioActive styles.

The result is magical. When you hear a song encoded in the Style format, it sounds like a standard MIDI file. But, when you hear it a second time, it's subtly different, because the real-time interpretation allows for subtle variation, just as a live band of musicians performing would never sound exactly the same twice.

The true power of the Style method lies in its ability to create real-time changes to the music as it plays. Imagine yelling to the band, "start getting tense, the game player is in a tough spot."

The AudioActive Style library currently contains well over a hundred styles. And, new styles are easy to create using SuperJAM!. Styles are very cost effective to develop; it's easy to create a fresh palette of styles for each application, yet they can be mixed and matched for maximum efficiency and variety.

Personalities

When the AudioActive engine performs music in the Style/Section format, it can play pre-composed music, or it can create original music as needed. Central to the creation of appropriate music for the scene is the concept of musical Personalities. A personality contains defines a particular mood, originally created by a professional composer. AudioActive currently utilizes a wide range of personalities, from Upbeat to Miserable, Tense to Majestic. AudioActive's authoring tools allow the creation of new personalities for specific applications.

Templates

When AudioActive builds an original piece of music, it combines three key ingredients: the Style, Personality, and Template. While the style and personality describe how to play the music and what mood to compose it in, the Template describes the overall shape of the section in very non-musical terms.

The template is not part of the knowledge base. Rather it's more accurately part of the vocabulary that your application uses to talk with the AudioActive engine. A template instructs AudioActive how to shape the music in a given scene. The template can be thought of as a road map; it describes when the music should get interesting, when it should get active, when it should calm down, etc.

Shapes

Sometimes your application would rather describe a musical section by saying, "make it rise over time and end with a crashing finale." In these cases, various predefined Shapes, such as "Rising," "Quiet," and "Peaking" can be used to describe its choice for the shape of the music. The AudioActive engine then interprets the shape to build an appropriate Template.

Motifs

Motifs are melodic embellishments that can be played instantaneously and at any point in time. Motifs are usually small musical themes that correspond with visual actors, such as characters in a game, or events, such as clicking on a button. Motifs are usually designed with a particular style in mind, because they integrate with the rest of the music. Key to the power of motifs is their ability to synchronize with the music both harmonically and rhythmically, creating a musical, yet expressive, effect.

See Also:

How Does AudioActive Work?

Contacting Blue Ribbon

© Copyright 1994, 1995 The Blue Ribbon SoundWorks, Ltd.

All Rights Reserved.


contacting
Contacting Blue Ribbon

Headquarters:

The Blue Ribbon SoundWorks, Ltd.

Venture Center

1605 Chantilly Drive

Suite 200

Atlanta, GA 30324 USA

Mailing Address:

The Blue Ribbon SoundWorks, Ltd.

Post Office Box 8689

Atlanta, GA 31106-0689 USA

Telephone:

404/315-0212

Fax:

404/315-0213

BBS:

404/315-0211

CompuServe:

Type Go BLUERIBBON at the $ prompt

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About Blue Ribbon

Trademark and Copyright Notices

Table of Contents

© Copyright 1994, 1995 The Blue Ribbon SoundWorks, Ltd.

All Rights Reserved.