The holy grail of notation programs!

So I was wondering....ideally, for a computer-using composer, there would be some maximum performance/efficiency he could reach; the sounds and playback would be so real that a live performer could essentially be cut out of the picture, and these sounds would integrate perfectly with the program, offering controls to change it simply, intuitively, and is, well, what a "holy grail" would be: perfect.

Basically: When I write in a piece and it's like I have live players, without actually having to get some live players. and these ones do exactly what you tell them to, every time .

I believe that this will be possible in our lifetime. It's difficult to say when, obviously, predicting the future is tricky business, but I'd guess around 15 years, with a good growth of technology and economy.

When it does come around (and believe me, all signs point to it coming ) it will raise interesting issues about the nature of computers versus people; the AI holy grail would be foreshadowed in that of music playback. The question of music's soul will be brought up the same way the question of peoples' souls will be when AI has our intelligence (or much more).

Fun stuff to think about, I think, but not much you can actually do about it but wait .

http://www.garritan.com/Strad/AngryStrad.mp3

It's not far away from the future and it really depends on what you expect. You need to know that samples are being used in film and computer games music, with amazing results already! Blended with a few live instruments, they sound perfect!

The idea is one: To enable someone withhout the budget to get the killer sounds. To enable the pianist to have guitar and violin sounds. To enable to guitarist to a last read notes ( no! I'm kidding, Mark ) To enable any composer to have a better pallete. Some libraries ARE able to deliver the final result, others not so much! Depends on what you want and what you're after.

Mind you, going by your thread title, I think it is ALSO important to note that proper notation would be a HUUUUUUUUGE asset in this case.

I see so many improperly notated scores every day that it's just sad.

By "proper notation" I also don't mean "proper" in the "prim and proper" sense. There are always excellent reasons for breaking notation conventions. Unfortunately, there are more BAD reasons to do so than excellent ones. And before you start breaking conventions it's actually pretty important to understand them and why they exist in the first place.

Originally Posted by Verdi_Lver

So I was wondering....ideally, for a computer-using composer, there would be some maximum performance/efficiency he could reach; the sounds and playback would be so real that a live performer could essentially be cut out of the picture, and these sounds would integrate perfectly with the program, offering controls to change it simply, intuitively, and is, well, what a "holy grail" would be: perfect.

Basically: When I write in a piece and it's like I have live players, without actually having to get some live players. and these ones do exactly what you tell them to, every time .

I believe that this will be possible in our lifetime. It's difficult to say when, obviously, predicting the future is tricky business, but I'd guess around 15 years, with a good growth of technology and economy.

When it does come around (and believe me, all signs point to it coming ) it will raise interesting issues about the nature of computers versus people; the AI holy grail would be foreshadowed in that of music playback. The question of music's soul will be brought up the same way the question of peoples' souls will be when AI has our intelligence (or much more).

Fun stuff to think about, I think, but not much you can actually do about it but wait .

It's here already - you may want to check out Sibelius 5 (Sibelius home page). Sibelius allows you to write a score in the "classical" manner, entering notes onto staves. You can choose the type of score (pop/rock, classical orchestra, brass band, choir, barbershop, et cetera). Sibelius also allows for accidentals and articulations - and guess what, you can play everything back, and then it sounds exactly the way you entered notes into the score. If you hook Sibelius up to high end music libraries (eg Eastwest Symphonic Choirs, Eastwest Symphonic Choirs, www.soundsonline.com) you can create a full blasted professionally sounding right from your laptop or desktop (I am in the middle of doing that now - upgrading my hardware this week). You will have to invest in separate and very powerful hardware, think about a very fast quadcore pentium processor coupled with massive hard disks and lots of RAM, and the software is expensive, too - and you will have to figure out how to configure it all to make it work for you (takes some due diligence and patience). And yes, you still have to compose the music, the computer will not assume that task. ;-)

(I am not associated or affiliated with either Sibelius or Eastwest, by the way).

And yet again... sibelius is NOT the proper software to use sample libraries! Just because it can does not mean that it will produce decent even results. You don't have enough control in Sibelius to do a good audio work.

Sorry.

EDIT: BTW, the way I see it since 2000 or so, notation is fine and can produce excellent results. Finale and Sibelius, both are the professional software for notation and they are used for professional reasons! And they are not emulating real life, like samples do, so there is no real comparison.

nikolas: yes, I know samples are used professionally, and that they sound really good .

peter: Finale does the same thing...sounds pretty good, but any decent musician can tell the difference between that and live, I'm sure.

QCC: yes, I'm assuming that the composer knows how to notate the music, adding slurs and dynamics and articulations and all the details. I don't expect a score with just a bunch of notes to sound perfect .


I agree that these libraries' sounds are realistic, but to get them to playback realistically it requires a decent amount of work, usually in a sequencer to get the best control. I'm talking about simply notating the music and having it play back realistically (as in, sounding like humans are playing it). I'm talking about a notation program that takes care of everything, where we can hardly tell the difference between what's real and synthesized without an enormous amount of input. Because in today's case, it's not the computer that performs the music, it's the composer (inputting different samples, playing with dynamics and tempo, etc.), the computer simply plays it back. What I'm referring to would know automatically what to do, and be able to manipulate the samples to get the sounds just right. In 15 years or so I think we'll have this software/hardware (the hardware to run it, obviously ) and it will be at least as accessible or affordable as software today.

I'm not saying that this will be ideal for music (I certainly prefer writing for real players), but I'm quite sure that that's what computer notation/playback programmers are aiming for, and they will reach that goal eventually .

Originally Posted by Verdi_Lver

....ideally, for a computer-using composer...the sounds and playback would be so real that a live performer could essentially be cut out of the picture...

This is possibly the worst potential for technology imaginable.

And it is impossible, since scores are NOT designed to give exact instructions, but allow the performer to input their own personality.

Yes, I know. Instead of the performer inputting his personality the composer would . That's what I meant when I said the program would offer easy, intuitive controls to fine tune the performance in whichever way he chooses. You might say that this is impossible, unfeasible to do with computers, but it's likely simply an issue of power. Given the rate of growth in technology it seems like within 10-15 years, or sometime relatively soon (my lifetime, I'd say) computers will be powerful enough.

Like I said before, the question of the "soul" of performance comes in. Is it something that can be calculated? I dunno, but I'm pretty sure programmers are trying to calculate it. Hell, what do you think "Human playback" is ?

Oh, and I agree with you Robin, I was just talking about composers using only computers, who'd send their sampled music as the finished product.

But this is ALREADY possible with sequencers. And the amount of work won't be hugely reduced really, I don't think so.