~~ Music Performance and Interpretation Software ~~
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~~ Music Performance and Interpretation Software ~~
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 What
is SuperConductor?
With the unique and special algorithms, SuperConductor gives you complete global control over every nuance of every instrument in the orchestra, and over the general feel of the performance as a whole. The musical insights that make this possible have astounded and fascinated computer scientists and musicians alike.
By adjusting the Pulse of the piece (described in detail below), you can make a global change in the performance of your favorite quartets or works of chamber music. The "instrumentalists" respond as one to your desires. You can alter the tempo of the entire "ensemble" as well, causing the computer to flawlessly animate the music according to your own feelings. You can isolate just the violins, as well, and modify their performance even more exactly than a conductor could in rehearsal with live musicians. You can adjust the way the violins are phrased, the vibrato used, the way each individual note is played, and the way the notes flow together. And yet, creating this and even more complex interpretations is simplicity itself with SuperConductor. You make global changes to the feel of the music and the individual instrument's interpretation of it. You do not need to modify each note played by each instrument individually; the artificial intelligence character of the software allows you to modify the music by means of the most intuitively clear controls. When you play the piece on your Pentium or Macintosh Power PC, the concerto, quartet or chamber music comes to life with astounding character and emotion. You can visit the same piece over and over again, refining the sound until it matches the sublime music you have known was trapped in the score. You can play the piece and see a scanned copy of the original score on the screen, the pages turning automatically as the music plays. You can share the performances of your interpretations with others over the Internet, as easily as sending email. Never before has such a creative musical experience been available to the general public. SuperConductor will cause a revolution in the appreciation and understanding of classical music. Every moment you spend working with SuperConductor is a creative musical experience unlike any you have ever had before. Composers and others who have used it praise it enthusiastically.
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Dr. Manfred Clynes, the renowned concert pianist, neuroscientist, and inventor of the CAT (the first computer to reveal the brain's responses to particular sensory stimuli, which has been used the world over since the 1960s) has developed a software product that will place in your hands unprecedented creative control over the orchestral performance of your favorite composers, and their chamber music. |
When you decide to pursue this wonderful creative experience, you will become a member of International SuperConductor Artists. As a member, you will receive a complete copy of SuperConductor, including all the interpretative functions described here. That version includes the two hundred classical music pieces, and their scores. As a SuperConductor subscriber you will be able to receive additional works, as they become available, for a small fee. You will also become eligible to enter our International Contest for SuperConductor artists. Once you have created a performance you truly love, send us a copy of it. A specially selected committee of distinguished artists will select one symphony and one instrumental or chamber music performance next summer. The winners will be featured at our web site, and they will receive a substantial prize to be announced. We expect SuperConductor will revolutionize the understanding and love of classical music around the world. It will greatly deepen your understanding of music, and will allow you to open whole new realms of growing relationships with your favorite composers, and with others who share your love for music. Become one of the International SuperConductor Artists!
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Here are just SOME of the remarkable features of SuperConductor. |
The concept of Hierarchical Pulse, and its application in SuperConductor, is truly one of the most remarkable innovations in computer technology and artificial intelligence. It came about as the result of years of painstaking work and unique insights by Dr. Clynes. Any lover of classical music can tell the difference between Mozart and Beethoven. They have different ways of shaping their music, and their ways are distinctive and consistent among all their works. Dr. Clynes has succeeded in eliciting subtle underlying dynamic forms, and preserving them mathematically, to evoke the "presence" of the composers. As the computer generates each note on each instrument (which it does in real time, as if playing the music "live"), it does so in accordance with the composer's own intimate personality as induced through the Hierarchical Pulse. This is one of the reasons SuperConductor music is so animated and emotionally communicative. Each composer's Pulse influences the entire character of their music. It is manifest on three levels, the first affecting groups of notes, the second smaller groups of notes, and the third affecting each individual note. Put simply: The first level determines how bars of the score will be differentiated. Some bars are lighter, some are heavier, some more animated, some more subdued, and there are infinite gradations in between. The second determines the character of each bar played. The performance of each bar is unique, and yet they must meld together into a beauteous whole. And the third determines the way each note within the beat will sound, at what volume, and how each is to be stretched or compressed relative to the beat. The computer takes all of this simultaneously into consideration for each note on each instrument, and plays them all together perfectly. The three levels of pulses are like three conductors, simultaneously and flawlessly conducting error-free instrumentalists. Each level controls the one below it. SuperConductor includes a given Pulse for each well known composer, and each instrument partakes of this pulse. You can modify this Pulse to your own tastes. The opportunities for delicate modifications of the music are literally infinite.
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Live musicians bring a great amount of unconscious structure to their performance of great music. They enact a multitude of subtle techniques to bring their music to life, and to make it emotionally meaningful and "musical". SuperConductor allows you to provide these unconscious actions by means of several ingenious controls. Predictive Note Sculpting is one of the paramount insights into the unconscious part of a musician's performance. The control's interface gives you a two dimensional representation of a note's "shape." Creating an expressive performance requires that each note is "sculpted" in anticipation of the next note. Each note has it's own shape, but that shape is determined by what note will follow it. A musician's unconscious ability to sculpt notes in this way makes his performance flow beautifully through time, and gives it meaningful coherence even as the shape and duration of each individual note is unique. The Predictive Note Sculpting function allows you to direct how each instrument will be played. In what way should the "musician" approach the music? You decide. You can isolate any instrument and modify any or all of itĚs characteristics, so that itĚs performance reflects your personal tastes and understanding.
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When a violinist shakes her wrist as she bows a string, she causes the note she is playing to tremble very quickly (five to eight times a second). With this Vibrato effect she enhances the emotional impact of the music. In SuperConductor, the entire creative realm of Vibrato is opened to you. You can explore the subtle way this technique adds magic to the music. Each note has its own individual vibrato in SuperConductor, and global controls allow you to shape how this happens. |
Of course, as the music rises and falls we are carried along with it. The Crescendo/Diminuendo function allows you to supplement the way this emotive characteristic is realized. |
With this, you can assign instruments their relative balance and placement. "Balance", of course, allows you to assign each instrument a loudness relative to the others -- one of the conductor's most common and straightforward tools. And "placement" means just that -- you can actually position each instrument in space, assuming you are playing the music in stereo on at least two speakers. This function, combined with Reverb described below, creates a eloquent replication of concert hall sound. |
When you are sitting in a huge concert hall listening to a performance, sound arrives at your ears from different directions and at different times. This is because of the size and acoustics of the building. Live performances fill the space with sound, and sitting in the midst of it allows the music to overcome you. This reverb function allows you to mimic the concert hall or chamber music acoustic experience. It requires nothing more than your two speakers, and is simple to set. |
If you choose, SuperConductor, as another world first, will display the original composer's score of the music it is playing. The scores displayed are scanned copies of the urtext or original editions. The Bach scores, for example, are copies of the Bach Gesellschaft edition, and others are copies of the definitive scores published by Breitkopt and Hartel. A red bracket moves along with the music, showing you which bar is being played. |
You can silence any instrument, so you can listen only to the others. It is also possible to silence all the instruments except one, as a solo, or to listen to any desired combination of instruments. If you play, you can play together with the computer, and read the score from the computer screen. |
Sometime next summer, we will hold a friendly contest. Everyone who has submitted an interpretation, or a performance in which they play together with SuperConductor, will be entered. Two interpretations and two performances will be singled out for praise. Their authors works will be included in this web site so that others can enjoy what they did.
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