@lolo Wonderful animation - can't see the Vimeo stuff at the moment as I'm on my iPod (there's just a big blank space). And nice to see such a lively discussion about techniques.

I'm a big fan of putting together real sampled sounds of everyday objects to make interesting musical textures, along with conventional or synth sounds and like @lolo says, there's a point where music composition does become a bit like editing (I would argue it's exactly like editing - you're manipulating events in time, with music and with editing).

Whether it's sound effects, narration, images or music, it's all stuff that you are organizing to tell a story. Also it's nice to be talking about how things relate to each other as sequences of events - it feels liberating, like we're going somewhere with this amazing stuff. I appreciate all the testing that's going on on this forum, of course, but it's refreshing to get away from talking about static test shots and learn about what people are doing with their gear to tell stories.

@zarone "But, on the other side, I think music for picture doesn't always need to be a masterpiece by itself, but suport the image it accompanies. For example, listen to David Julyan soundtracks to Memento, The Prestige... they are not Rachmaninov like pieces, but they fit the overall athmosphere of the film quite well IMHO."

+1

I actually find those older "big orchestra" soundtracks quite annoying and cliche now. I'm a huge fan of melodic and rhythmic ambient scores.

Hans Zimmer has also done allot of great stuff lately with the Dark Knight and Inception. Epic... but not traditional overpowering brass and strings crap.

@Mike_the_Harp @Vitaly: the music of the kitten video is not composed for the video.

While I was listening, I found it too much familiar to me, and it didn't sound anything like samples (don't think anyone is gonna pay a professional orchestra to score an amateur video).

Then, I found the answer in the end credits. It's the score of Aliens, by Jerry Goldsmith and Elliot Glodenthal

http://www.youtuve.com/watch?v=8-1F-CokXNU#t=1m48s

(I've intentionally written youtuVe so it doesn't embed the video in the post) It has a link to the correct time where you can see the credits (1:50 aprox)

Maybe there's some fragments of different parts of the scores (since Goldsmith scored Alien, and Goldenthal Alien 3) seamlessly blended.

So, this is an example of really well edited music!

My friend recorded this track for on a simple 4 track he even "intentionally" left the tv on to add some ambient sound he liked....I think he did a great job for a 8 hr turn around ...I told him to do something playful and fun... I was just tossing clips together from the camera to show off the the 20mm pancake and it evolved into this....what do you think ?

Here's a great example of what music can do - some YouTube kittens - standard stuff, but with music composed to fit. Wonderful.

@Stefanos "I mentioned it mainly cause it pertained to my personal situtation and is very broadly speaking, true"

Hhehe, I feel totally the same. I work full time as a web developer. Audiovisual world has interested me since long time, but is now that I'm trying to make things. I started with music: electronic first, and then "orchestral". I put orchestral between quotes because I'm just using orchestral libraries / synths, but I have not formal music training (harmony, counterpoint, orchestration...). Serious orchestral music is something someone could dedicate his/her whole life and not get to master. Then, my interest shifted towards 3D and graphic design, photography... I wanted to do so many things, I liked so many things, that I did none of them.

Then, the video capable DSLR arrived, and I thought I could pack all my artistic interest into filmmaking. That way, you don't have one hundred projects in your head, but one which consists of several areas, interconnected. My idea is to start with simple projects, trying to do as much as I can myself, just to grasp knowledge of every aspect (writing, directing, filming, sound recording, sound design, VFX, editing, color grading...). But, if I ever want to do a serious project (be it commercial or just for fun), I will be a "Rebel WITH a crew" TM :-). I'll try to find people who shares interest for the same aesthetics, writing, themes... and to focus in the area which I'm better at, or the one I like the most.

If I were writing a script instead of posting in forums, I could have written 5 pages today! :D I can't help myelf...

Greetings!

Anyone thats into guitar at all really should know about www.warmoth.com

they are licensed by Fender to make "replacement" parts, but the stuff I've seen from them is top-notch, and you can certainly source a whole guitar from them, you just have to put it together. And they offer options and combos you will NEVER see from fender, like raw wood necks and strange pickups.

@zareone
I agree with all that you say from your response to "jack of all trades, master of none". I mentioned it mainly cause it pertained to my personal situtation and is very broadly speaking, true. As much as I value the importance of sound design and music, and I like to think I have a really good taste in music, I have no formal education on music and would require a sick amount of effort to learn even basics of composing etc, so I'd rather focus on improving what I'm best at-visual arts. For unimportant stuff I'd do the sound stuff myself but for any important stuff, I'd seek collaboration. But I really admire people who attempt and can combine 2 disciplines that are so diffirent, cause they're completely different skillsets. Like, I maybe have a wide skillset being half-decent in stuff like photography-editing-color correction-directing etc, but they're still in kind of the same visual group, if you throw in sound arts in there for me, there would be no space:)
I think it comes down to standards of excellence and aspirations. I think when one starts to go beyond "good" and wants to reach for excellence (and I'm talking Ingmar Bergmann, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa etc kind of excellence:) ), then it becomes almost mutually exclusive to do both at such high level of excellence.
BTW, I digged the music you did for that film :) very good.

and speaking of 1 of my top five directors of all time, the genius that was Andrei Tarkovsky, I think "Stalker" is extraordinarily interesting when it comes to sound design and film score, really really worth studying. Eduard Artemyev did a spectacular job. read the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_%28film%29 and ofcourse see the film!

I leave you with some of Andrei's own words:

"I would like most of the noise and sound to be composed by a composer. In the film, for example, the three people undertake a long journey in a railway car. I'd like that the noise of the wheels on the rails not be the natural sound but elaborated upon by the composer with electronic music. At the same time, one mustn't be aware of music, nor natural sounds."
Andrei Tarkovsky in an interview with Tonino Guerra in 1979

@Vitaly: http://synful.com/RPM.htm

This technology makes something similar, but with single instrument recordings. It would be possible to make a database with musical passages (rythms, hooks, arpegios, melodies and tuttis), categorized by mood, original tempo, type of texture... and blend them on the fly.

I phoned my wife, who's in a meeting with a generative music expert, to ask her about your earlier request, so she might have some ideas from him when she gets back.

Your last one is probably no more difficult than the "How can I get 1000fps video at 1Tb/second on a class 2 SD card" type of thing!!

The Ghostly one is fun!

@Vitaliy http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix will produce little sequences of sounds, but limited to one sound. Not quite what you're after unless of course you create the sound first and then shoot and edit inspired by the music!

The Game world is the place for rich, seamless, shifting music tied to action, and there's a lot of interesting development going on. I'll see if I can find anything that does what you were asking about - "real-time generative music" seems to be a good bunch of words to search on! But the reason I'm keen on the ipod is that multitouch interfaces would be great for what you're asking.

@zareone Nice to have these - didn't know any of them. I think your reply was in response to mine rather than Vitaliy so this is my reply to Vitaliy...

@Vitaliy That would be cool! I know there are some ambient sound creators for ipod which do that - you set the mood at the start. But what you're asking for is something that you can control, with an easy interface, and that's responsive but in a controlled way, in real time.

That's a really good idea. If something like this doesn't exist, then there's a big gap in the market for someone to create something like that. In my experience there are things that "nearly" do what you're asking. Reactable for ipod/ipad can do something like this, or Trope can. With Trope you draw on a screen and the music changes slowly in reaction to your drawings. Beautiful sounds, but not immediate, and limited to "ambient"-type music.

I'd do a search around the app store but my wife's taken my iPod today (coincidentally to this topic, she's in Bristol UK, having a conversation with a team about developing a real-time musical interface for use by young children) so I can't look up what's available. But a lot of exciting developments seem to be happening on these mobile touch-devices.

I've also done something where a webcam feeds an XY midi controller and you can leap around the room and create sounds in real time. Probably not so practical though!

It's a fantastic idea, Vitaliy. Much more positive than my rant!