Abaltat Muse - music by colour

Not sure if this is the best place to post this, but since I'm linking a sample, I thought it best.

I've just been messing with an interesting little program called Abaltat Muse (yeah, not really a catchy name). Basically, what it does is to analyse your clips and then compose a piece of music to fit it. I'm not really sure of the ins and out of how it works, cause frankly if I can't get something working in half an hour to an hour with minimal instructions I tend to lose interest, but here's a sample of a song it (and I) composed for a 30 second spot.

[members.iinet.net.au]

Note how it manages to work off the beat. That's quite cool.

It's pretty basic, the demo is around 400MB download and it only lets you use a couple of instruments, so hard to say how much more useful it would be without hearing the other instruments. But the result is interesting, and you own it. Royalty free.

Apparently it does not use loops or a library of songs. It actually composes, somehow based on the colours in your clip. You can change the pitch, the tone, the instruments, the complexity, the repetitiveness and a bunch of other stuff.

Maybe a review of this would be cool, Mike?

[www.apple.com]

P.S. Anyone who wants to use this song for any purpose is welcome. You have my full permission, no charge.

It's interesting but also scary...I can already see wheels turning in some penny-pinching producer's head somewhere:

"Ooh...I don't have to hire composers anymore."

Or, even worse:

"Ooh...I can now force even more composers to work for free!"


www.derekmok.com

How cool

I actually interviewed the creator of this program at IBC. Irish fellow I met at a Apple party. He demoed it to me on the show floor. I was floored to say the least. It is scary. It is also expensive. Too expensive for what you get in my humble opinion. At least with this version. And yes I'd love to review this product.

Jude?

Michael Horton
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Yeah I'd be happy to review it, Mike. But, since I'm not really into 'this product is excellent you should buy two immediately' reviews, I would prefer to do a 'how to'.

I'm also unsure if it's worth the money, since I couldn't use a lot of the instruments, which is why I thought a review of the full product might be useful.

But what happens if I think the full product isn't worth it?

I know what you're saying too, Derek, and since a large proportion of my friends are professional musicians, I love to send them copies of what I make just to freak them out. They love to tell me Soundtrack is 'clip-art' music (which it is, really). They also cut stuff on iMovie to show me any idiot can make movies It's war here, I tell ya.

For my money, I'd still go with a composer anytime, but this stuff is at least as good as a lot of production music you can buy for large amounts of money per use.

I'll write the guy and get you a NFR if you want. I assume you dont have a real copy right?


If you think the product sucks real bad we just dont publish and you dont write it. If it has promise but you have caveats, then we publish.

Michael Horton
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Cool. I don't think it sucks real bad. I think it has promise, but I don't know if it's yet worth AU$3,000. Kind of scary.