This wired video looks at how Amon Tobin and the Sony Music team used found objects to create a dark and grimy video game score for Infamous.

Jeff Rona discusses the use of Rob Papen synths while making a new film score.

via robpapen

Avid has released version 6 of Sibelius music notation software.

The update includes new layout features to speed scoring, version control, keyboard/fretboard windows, classroom control and ReWire support.

Details below.

New Features:

• Magnetic Layout – designed to cut the writing time between the moment of inspiration and the final printed score — all individual objects are positioned conventionally on the score where musicians expect to find them. The software automatically spaces and lays out scores to look professional and clear from the very first note. Previously, aligning individual score objects required time-consuming manual adjustments which now occur transparently to the user.
• Versions – enables educators to track student progress, spot plagiarism and promote collaboration. Students can record progress and submit creative commentary with their final coursework. Professionals now have a effective way to track changes or collaborations with copyists, orchestrators and publishers by saving, manipulating and comparing revisions of a work piece within a single file.
• Keyboard and Fretboard Windows – provide a visual approach to the music education process, allowing aspiring musicians and composers to follow lighted key and finger positions as a score plays back, reinforcing the relationship between staff and tab notation with real instruments. These windows also create a new way for customers to input music directly from an on-screen piano keyboard or guitar fretboard, as opposed to using conventional methods such as clicking on the staff of the note or typing the note names on the computer keyboards via a separate MIDI keyboard.
• Classroom Control - offers a simple and single window for common classroom management tasks. This enables educators to keep students on subject by creating a streamlined approach for sharing files across the network during review cycles and facilitating daily classroom instruction. Messages sent by the educator appear on the student’s workstation screen. Now, educators can easily attract attention despite any challenges in the teaching environment, such as students wearing headphones.
• ReWire Support – simplifies the once challenging process of incorporating audio tracks into notation-focused projects, making it an ideal tool to facilitate a film’s orchestral session. By synchronizing Sibelius software with Pro Tools software (or other DAWs running on the same computer,) customers can start real-time playback in Sibelius and the DAW will follow, or vice versa. Further, composers or orchestrators can easily add a vocal to a song created with Sibelius or augment an existing recording for enhanced creative options.

Sibelius 6 is now available for $599. Avid also offers educational pricing of $329 per copy with additional discounts when purchasing bundled multi-seat licenses. Current Sibelius customers may take advantage of upgrade options of $169 per copy or $129 per copy for current customers who are educators and students.

Descriptions:

• Symphonic Effects contains over 400 orchestral effects for film, tv, games and popular music styles. From scifi/suspence/horror hits, drones and intertwining melodies to emotional build-ups this collection offers a wide assortment of symphonic effects you can use in stereo or surround.
• Global Atmospheres contains over 350 samples of exotic sounds from all over the world – from tribal Native American drums to Ancient Aztec Ambience to rare sounds from the Mediterranean.
• Dimensional Effects features over 450 special effects and dimensional rhythms for music and multimedia production. Featuring special 3-D sound encoded wooshes, deep booms, big bangs and various electronica effects wiz by with a futuristic sound ideal for modern production.

This is the beautiful opening scene from Chariots Of Fire, which introduced the music of Vangelis to many in the world for the first time.

True Strike Tension is built on sample material that has been carefully selected from ProjectSAM’s acclaimed True Strike 2 library. It draws upon various  percussion instruments from Africa, Japan and the Middle East, including the Kenkeni, Darabuka, Bendir, Okedo-Daiko and others.

All sounds in True Strike Tension are designed to add suspense, tension and emphasis, with a special focus on Hollywood-style film scoring.

The sound shaping and preset morphing features in Kore 2 and Kore Player let you adjust and animate all sounds in True Strike Tension to make them better fit the dramatic requirements of any scene.

True Strike Tension is available for download purchase in the NI Online Shop for a suggested retail price of $79/€69.

Audio demos are available at the NI site.

Currently it supports 4 music notations: ABC, Guido, Lilypond, Mup.

For latest version, detailed usage instructions and demo cases, visit the ScoreRender site.

Speaking to BBC 6 Music on the Shaun Keaveny Breakfast Show, Palahniuk explained it all came from his love of the band’s music, saying:

“Clark Gregg, who directed the movie version of Choke which comes out on September 26 (in the US), he knew that I’d written Choke while listening to Radiohead’s Pablo Honey, with Creep, over and over and over,” said Palahniuk.”

“So Clark got Radiohead to contribute a song; to write a song for the very end of the movie, the final credits. Apparently Radiohead liked the movie so much, they’ve written the score, most of the ambient music throughout it,” adds Palahniuk.  “So it’s ‘Choke – with the music of Radiohead’.

Sounds like it should be a treat for Radiohead fans.

Update: false alarm

via ateaseweb

The International Music Score Library Project is a cool site that lets you download public domain music scores for free:

MSLP attempts to create a virtual library containing all public domain musical scores, as well as scores from composers who are willing to share their music with the world without charge. You can read the full list of goals that IMSLP will try to achieve.

IMSLP also encourages the exchange of musical ideas, both in the form of musical works, and in the analysis of existing ones. Therefore, feel free to create/edit a page with your analysis of a particular piece (please use the “Discussion” link on the work page of that particular piece).

The site already offers over 17,000 scores.

Unfortunately, the “modern” category (post 1945) is woefully underrepresented, because of copyright laws.

I was able to download a PDF of Terry Riley’s In C, one of the seminal works of minimalist music, but only 69 composers are currently represented at all in this category.

If you’re creating music that uses traditional, or even non-traditional, notation, check out the IMSLP and consider sharing your scores via the site.

Each concert will feature an 8.1 speaker diffusion system. Any composer regardless of region, age or nationality may submit one work for consideration in the following categories:

1) Two channel works for tape alone
2) Up to Eight channel works for tape alone
3) Instrument(s) and tape or electronics
4) Works for video
5) Sound Installations and Interactive Media (composer must provide all non-standard equipment)
6) Live Laptop works
7) Live Interactive works

In addition, submissions for research and technical papers, panel discussions, and technical demonstrations are also requested. Student submissions are strongly encouraged.

Deadline: June 1, 2007, postmark deadline (scores must arrive by June 15, 2007)

Entry Fee: none

Submission Guidelines:

1) Accepted formats for consideration are CD, DTS CD, DVD, DVD-Audio. Multi-channel works, up to 8 channels, may be submitted as individual mono files (aiff or wav) on data-CD or data-DVD. A diagram must also be included describing the speaker assignment or placement of the sound files in a multi-channel sound system.
2) For consideration, applicants must complete an online submission form available at http://www.emmfestival.org.

The Chariots Of Fire theme performed by Vangelis as an encore of the Mythodea Concert at the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens on June 28, 2001.

The soundtrack of “Chariots of Fire” won the Oscar for Best Original Music Score back in 1981. It spent 5 months in the US Billboard and it was the biggest-selling single of the year in Japan. It was also used by the BBC as the opening theme for the coverage of the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games.

Mythodea: Music for the NASA Mission: 2001 Mars Odyssey is a choral symphony composed by Vangelis. It was made the official theme music of the 2001 NASA mission to Mars, involving an unmanned spacecraft orbiting the planet.

Music Composed, Arranged and Produced by Vangelis.

Electronic Keyboards by Vangelis.

The London Metropolitan Orchestra

Blake Neely, Conductor.

via babylonianman