Well, appart the fact that, at least the bucolic scene with the horses, is indeed quite
rubish music. But what interests me the most is how is this music generated, as this is
not explained nor in the website nor in the demo video. It explains how your video is
analyzed in terms of colours and "rhythm patterns" (I believe this latter should be based
on scene breaks), and how, from that analysis, the music that best fits your video, is
selected. But where is that (very cheesy) music coming from? Probably it's a horizontal
compilation of samples that match together in terms of harmony and general mood. By
horizontal I mean that samples are aligned together one after the other (reversely by
vertical I would mean that a piano track would be put over say a drum and a bass tracks;
but it seamed to me that this was not the case. If this was the case, than you can say
that there is a little touch of "automatic composition" on that music... but it doesn't
seem to be the case.).
Being easy to find nowadays loads and loads of royalty
free samples, the Juke bot, really does not impress me at all. It may be of help for
beginners in the video making art, who really have no budget to spend on creating music
for a video, and might be satisfied with this kind of "cheesy samples", though. But I
still believe that we are still decades away of some software being able to build complex
musical patterns to fit some complex image situations.
One other consideration
is this: usually, creating a video finalized product (say a short movie of 5 minutes, or a
long one of 60m) costs quite a lot more than creating a music piece (5mins) or an album
(60 mins, say). But that cost comes for making a video requiring so many people and skills
together from the camera-man, through the actors, the director, the huge road production
team, to maybe another huge editing team, and so on. And in the middle there is a (or a
group of) musician(s), to create a soundtrack. Now, for a video maker to be able to create
is first master piece he will probably invest years to get there. Movie after movie he
will slightly improve is skills on
directing/production/writing/and-whatever-else-he-might-do-for-his-videos. But little
learning is done in that process. The Video maker is indeed facing mostly a budget
restriction that will usually loosen (budget will increase) with time as he becomes more
famous or producess better results. That improve comes from he being able to spend more in
a very big and always more skilled team.
Instead, the musician, who probably
will do the composing job alone (and besides he could even work mainly with midi and some
self made recording stuff and probably be will be able to deliver the final product all by
himself), he as probably been investing decades in order to learn how harmony works, how
rhythm works, how a melody can be built, how a sound is polished after recorded, how you
can create different moods with different combinations of those four essential elements.
Decades, my friends, decades. Do you have an idea of how many years have a piano player
spent studying and practicing piano before he graduates? And I'm just talking about a
piano player not a composer... OK if he got to the point of taking a degree on the art of
playing a piano, he probably started early in his life. At least by 10 years old he was
already starting but probably he did start at 6 or even earlier. Then he spent 8 years
studying the basics of music like solfeggio (how to read a score), music history, music
chamber practice, harmony, some basic composing + at least 3 for his degree on piano. I'm
assuming the minimum would be these 11 years (it may change depending on the country's
musical academic program). A movie maker will probably never face anything related to
video before he ends his basic school studies and decide he want to take a degree on movie
making or a professional faster course for it. So he will probably spend a 3-4 years
studying video making... at most!... And I'm just talking about forma studying of course,
because both musician and video maker will probably be studying informally for most part
of their lives. So this just to give an idea on how much time was invested in a musician
career.
This studying investment plus the technical time to compose and produce
a short piece of music will justify a fee of 400-500 $ or € or pounds. It includes years
and years of studying and practicing. Besides if you're talking about a 60 mins movie,
than that would take probably more than a week to do, and hopefully the musician will ask
at least 1/4 of a decent monthly salary as he has to do 4 of those to survive to the next
month. So I don't think the prices being asked nowadays are high. I really think they are
quite low giving the complex intelectual skils a musician is required to have in order to
be able to compose a decent piece of music.
Finally, I would leave two short
comments in order to demonstrate and prove how difficult is to compose music, and why one
making movies in the era where we got used to assume that music is for free, and probably
that music is so easy to do... It is not. And here I leave 2 situations to demonstrate
it:
1st. Why is it so difficult for a video maker to explain to the musician
what he really wants? Why is it music considered the art of all the arts? That is probably
because music is the most powerful human created language and way to communicate and
express feelings as no other art (not even poetry or literature using words can do). And
yet so poorly known by people. Every one (every single person in the world that can hear)
loves music. Every one. Really every one. Do you know any person in the world that claims
to hate music? I don't. I don't like all kinds of music, but I do love music in general.
This is because while video is kind of "lets make art with reality" making art with what
reality can offer. Music instead is like the opposite. It's 100% intelectual. Comes out of
you, from your skills to your feelings or mood. That's what makes music so complicated to
create. Moreover, if music would be our only way to communicate, we would be leaving in a
world where only a few would know how to speak and the most would be only downloading
speaches to listen and to be delighet with. Music should indeed be part of every national
shool program. And not only a few years playing flute, xylophone, or a tambourine, but
really teach everyone how to read a score, and know how to basically communicate with
sounds.
The second example is the following and strongly connected to the
first. If you ask a musician to create a 5 minutes short movie he will take his camera and
as bad as he can be to select scenes and angles and so on, he (or any other person in the
world) will be able to find something that may represent a subject or a short story to
tell. And even with bad technical quality he will be able to do a coherent output. Now,
ask anyone - but for our pourpouse ask a video maker - to play in a piano, or a synth
keyboard. For a few minutes he/she will be very excited with this magic way of making
sounds. "look if i press this C3 key there's a sound coming from the speakers! Wow... And
if I switch this knob it makes it a stranger sound... This is crazy!!!! And so much fun."
Now, if you defy him with this "Hey, what about this. I'll pay you 400€ if you create to
me a short music of 3-5 minutes and you can take all the time you want. You can delivery
it to me in 80 years if you want." He will immediately give up. And that's because he will
in a few minutes realize that there is a very big enormous huge difference between having
fun on a midi keyboard and actually composing a piece of coherent music of 3-5 minutes,
regardless the genre or mood of that music. He will see immediately by playing a bit with
that midi keyboard that those Gigabites of mp3 he has accumulated downloading them free
from the net, all those Gb add up to Teras and Teras and Teras and Teras and Teras of
minutes composing, recording and polishing those Gigas of mp3...
Music is
really a very hard thing to create and that is what justifies time and money to who does
it. But I will be very glad if one day a software will be able to compose (really
composing I mean) automatically some good music. I'll be glad to listen to it and I wont
be worried as I do believe that computer automatic generated music will always sound
different from a human mind composing music. And therefore there will always be a market
for both human and computer. Till then, keep sending your requests to we musicians,
because in the end, we do love creating music, otherwise we would spend so much time of
our lives learning how to do it, even though we know a priori there will only be one
Mozart in history, and we're not the one. ;-)
Hugs to you all video and music
people!
NTS
https://www.facebook.com/SoundsRealProductions
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