Robert Fripp to Compose Vista's Soundtrack

brainstem writes "Recently, King Crimson founder, guitar master, and all around eccentric musical genius Robert Fripp spent a few days at the MS Campus recording soundscapes for Vista. Fripp, who has been at the forefront of electronic guitar composition for more than 35 years, first using analog tape delays, then with digital effects. He infused his unique brand of Frippertronics on the MS crowd. The Channel 9 site has posted a 25 minute video, chronicalling the event. Now I guess I finally have a reason to leave the default Windows sounds enabled."

If the sound is THAT good,

[glomph]

I'll use it for my KDE start sound...

In the Court...

[Exluddite]

of the Redmond King?

Re:In the Court...

[doxology]

Here are the songs that Fripp is composing for Microsoft:

21st Century Schizoid DRM including Smoke and Mirrors
I Talk to the Windows
Epitaph, Including Bloat for No Reason and an Exploit Tomorrow
Sunchild Java Machine (Including the Dream and the Illusion of compatibility)
The Court of the Redmont King including the Return of the BSOD and the Dance of Clippy

Hint for the unacquainted [wikipedia.org]

Re:um

[Alwin Henseler]

who is fripp

Ehmm, the only person contributing to Vista that actually delivers on time?

Re:hmmm...

[antifoidulus]

Obligatory Simpsons quote:
Hans Moleman to Apu after being locked in the Kwik-e-Mart for 4 minutes: You wasted 4 minutes of my life and I want them back! Oh, I'd probably just waste them anyhow.

preliminary meetings...

[santaliqueur]

Ballmer to Fripp: If you don't compose in the key C#, perhaps this flying chair will help you to B-flat!

Microsoft should save the money ..

[Entropy]

That they'll spend on this guy and just record the sounds of broken glass! :D

Ok this is fine

[RickPartin]

As long as they don't put out "Vista: The Soundtrack". That would rip a hole in space time... or something equally not good.

Re:Meanwhile midi lovers are crying

[John Miles]

Anyone remember the day when you bought a creative soundcard because it had proper midi support

No.

Re:If the sound is THAT good,

[ewhac]

No, you won't. The sounds will be in defective (copy-protected) Windows Media audio files. You won't be able to play them on anything but Windows.

Schwab

Re:In the Court...

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista shutdown sound: aethereal background synth and a hollow voice whispering 'confusion will be my epithaph'

Re:What the...?

[jacksonj04]

C#? What are you on about, John Williams never composes in C#! Try E, or maybe A Minor.

Re:Not to bash

[imdx80]

>Maybe a few nice strums of the guitar for starting or stopping windows will help, but an all-out guitarfest might be a bit overboard.

I've heard that vista is going to ship with lighters to hold up during some of the more poignant effects

Re:If the sound is THAT good,

[shreevatsa]

Actually, it might not be a good idea...
Obligatory quote from I-don't-know-where :

People say Microsoft paid $14M for using the Rolling Stones song 'Start me up' in their commercials.
This is wrong.
Microsoft paid $14M only for a part of the song.
For instance, they didn't use the line 'You'll make a grown man cry'.

Re:45 mins solo

[Anonymous Coward]

So the fit is mutual; that being the projected average required duration for the Vista startup chime.

Re:um

[basingwerk]

How about 21st Century Schizoid Man?

Cat's foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door.
Twenty first century schizoid man.

Blood rack barbed wire
Polititians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty first century schizoid man.

Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty first century schizoid man.

The Conversation

[Anonymous Coward]

B. Gates: Hello there, Mr. Fripp.

R. Fripp: Please, call me Robert.

B. Gates: Okay, Robert. Call me Bill. I'd like to make you a proposition.

R. Fripp: Sure, Bill, fire away.

B. Gates: I'd like you to make a number of various sounds for our latest OS, and in exchange for less work than it would take for you to make one of your many albums, we will hand you this enormous pile of money. How does that sound?

R. Fripp: That... uh, that actually sounds rather nice.

Somewhere Yngwie Malmsteen laments...

[tyrione]

Give it to me! I'll get ten times the notes in there whatever Robert plays.

Re:um

[Riktov]

He's an old guy who performs weird and boring music that was popular waaaay before you were born.

OK?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Vista: the lyrics

[Richard W.M. Jones]

I hear when it bluescreens, it's going to play 21st century schizoid man [lyricsplayground.com] ...

Rich.

Making windows even slower

[gotw]

Brilliant, I can picture the scene now. I shut down windows only to be greeted by a 35 minute piece incorporating 13 minutes of silence (interrupted by the occasional triangle, or burst of bassoon) and incorporating works by Holst playe on the mellotron.

I think it would be more appropriate for there to be some King Crimson inspired wallpaper [paipai.net]

Microsloth bandwidth

[mcrbids]

What is it about using a few MB of Microsoft's bandwidth to download their .WMV file to play in XINE on my Fedora Core 3 laptop that makes me, eh, happy????

Not that I care all that much, but THEY set up some goofy "mms" protocol that makes me download their entire !@#!@ movie before playing it, instead of streaming over HTTP like any other sane person... so I'll download the entire thing before watching 10-20 seconds of their 20 minute video...

I guess they can afford the $0.01 or two this download will cost them.

Re:If the sound is THAT good,

[Weh]

man, OSes have soundtracks now? What's next? Soundtracks for toasters? Where is it all going?

Obligatory Strongbad reference:

[grolschie]

Or how about using the geddup noise [homestarrunner.com]?

Re:Vista: the lyrics

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I have a really good idea for some wallpaper to replace that boring BSOD [paipai.net], that matches the theme, too.

Can't wait for the BSOD sound!

[commodoresloat]

It will just be Steve Ballmer chanting maniacally "I repeat myself when under stress! I repeat myself when under stress!" over and over until you restart the machine.

Explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

When Windows 95 came out, the big joke was, Windows '95 = Mac '84 ... back in 1984, what wasn't produced by Brian Eno?

Re:In the Court...

[DreadfulGrape]

And don't forget...

Larks' Tongues in ASP

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Should've got Dick Dale instead....

[lbmouse]

...they could have used "Wipe Out" [amazon.com].

Re:Meanwhile midi lovers are crying

[SydBarrett]

Nobody ever loved midi after formats like MOD or S3M came out. Who wants to be limited to a small set of instruments with hardly any effects avalible? You can't even load your own samples with most sound cards. The only good thing about it was the small file size.

Yeah, go on and rock out to CANYON.MID, grandpa.

We should consider ourselves lucky

[Digital Vomit]

We should consider ourselves lucky: I hear negotiations with Justin Timberlake for the creation of the Microsoft sounds broke down.

"Vista, I feel for you..."

Re:If the sound is THAT good,

[Alioth]

I wish operating systems *did not* come with frigging sound tracks. Every morning at work I have to listen to "Ding d'd'ding derr derr" as people log on, and "Ding ding doo ding!" when they go home and all other associated unnecessary sound. It would be nice if these sound tracks were off by default. Mind you, it used to be worse with Windows 95 - dong bllllllooob BING BIng Bing bing...

Oh no... not again

[TwistedSpring]

I wouldn't care if Microsoft had Jimmi Hendrix doing their startup sound, let alone Fripp. I have never been able to tolerate any of the Windows startup sounds for more than a few weeks. Every Windows startup sound has an air of grandeur that does not befit an operating system. Every time my computer boots it yells "I AM WONDERFUL" at me, rather than "I am ready" or "welcome", right back from "TA-DAAAAAA" in Windows 3.1. Every time it starts up my OS feels the need to tell me how impressive it is. Every time it starts up, I know that its air of self satisfaction is misplaced. Douglas Adams predicted this.

Why are Microsoft getting old prog rockers to make their startup sounds? I watched the video and they're all so full of horse shit. I would like to personally inform Microsoft that an operating system should not be an experience, and it certainly should not aim to be one. An OS should generally work so well that the user doesn't even think about it. Talk to any Windows user, and ask them what their experience of Windows is. They'll tell you that it's a bastard when Windows search doesn't find stuff you know is there, they'll tell you that it's annoying when autorun won't remember to take no action on CDs that contain one jpeg, or when popups appear asking you whether you want to run ActiveX controls, or that it's slow to start up, or whatever. They probably won't list anything good about it, and you know why that is? It's because they use it every day, and bad things carry so much more weight than good things.

So, when Microsoft considers what its OS should sound like they should remember one thing: if the user notices the sounds, they're crap. If the user even remembers the sounds easily, they're crap. A six second sample on boot is an exceptionally bad idea.

I'm not a Mac zealot, but they've got it right. Turn it on, and it goes 'bong', and that's it. 'Bong' says it all. It says 'I've turned on, I'm booting, and everything is cool.' It's a simple, reassuring noise. Microsoft's equivalent is 'wooowooowooowoooziiininininintiwiwiwiddlewiddlewi ddlewoo', which is too long, slightly sinister, and suggests an air of flakyness, a slightly misplaced attempt to sound impressive. It's certainly not a sound that conveys solidarity or reliability. It suggests that the OS is crap, but we've given it a really impressive boot sound in the hope you won't notice.

This post has turned out rather long and rambling, especially since it's about something as simple as a windows boot noise, but I'll finish off with some points for Microsoft to follow when considering their Windows Vista soundscape:

1. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
2. Boot/shutdown sound no longer than 2 seconds, informational/alert sounds no longer than a second.
3. When you talk about confident sounds for Windows, please don't try to make Windows Vista sound like it is confident, but try to give me, the user, a feeling of confidence. Reassure me.
4. Don't hire old prog rockers. They have spent too long trying to be noticed and trying to sound impressive. You can use them for the sound that plays at the start of your keynotes, but not the sound that plays whenever I turn on my computer.

Re:If the sound is THAT good,

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Alioth,

Please cease and desist from publishing the lyrics to Microsoft Windows or we shall be forced to sue you for theft of our client's IP.

Thank you,

The RIAA.