Collaborative Internet Music Project

Introduction

Faust Music On line is an open invitation to participate through the Internet in the musical composition of a part of the sound track of the forthcoming show of the Spaniard drama group, La Fura dels Baus, entitled: Faust v3.0, based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's work.

This new show by the Fura dels Baus will have its first performance in Barcelona on 28 April 1998 and it is planned to do a tour through Spain, other European countries and NYC, giving some 200 performances, during 1998 and 1999.

All the music will be composed by means of a W95 software you can freely download (2 Mb) at http://www.sgae.es/fmol. During the months prior to the first performance a web server will store and update the database with the compositions received and will permit the audition and ongoing development of these compositions, as described below. All communication with the server takes place through this software. At the beginning of April, La Fura will select some (around 60) of the compositions for the play.

Copyrights

The question of intellectual property rights in the new communication media, such as the Internet, is arousing a great deal of confused discussion. It is necessary for initiatives to appear that will provide fresh examples that may be observed and which will create precedents that may shed a ray of light on this new situation. Being aware of the need for these shake-ups, the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (S.G.A.E.) (Spanish Society of Authors and Publishers) backs and produces this project and will simplify formalities for all the writers of the compositions selected by the Fura dels Baus to be registered at the society (if not already members) in order that they may receive their lawful rights.

The Software

The musical composition of all the pieces for this project will be done by means of this program, responsible for audio synthesis and control of the graphic interface and all the communications with the server. This program is not a mere web page with a few multimedia options. It is an independent application, which, when executed, is automatically linked to the page set aside for this purpose in the S.G.A.E. server and interacts with it to exchange information. The page in question controls access to a database resident in the server.

Real-time sound synthesis

The program does not use the MIDI properties of your sound card. To assure an innovative and interesting sound, irrespective of the sound card installed in your computer, the program works with synthetic sound in real time. It is A SYNTHESIZER capable of generating sounds and modulations never heard before on your computer. For this you only need a 16-bit sound card and a compatible PC (based on a Pentium 100) with Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0, and Direct X.

This means that the main task of the composers taking part will not consist merely of "going on adding notes", but of "sculpting sound on line" in a way much more in keeping with current trends in electronic music in general and in the music of the Fura dels Baus in particular. Also, using Real-Time synthesis, the user can listen and compose with peak quality (stereo 16 bits, 22 KHz), but the files he handles, loads and unloads may occupy very few Kb.

Interactive composition

Composition is done in real time by way of attractive graphic interfaces. The program does not handle traditional musical concepts and it is, therefore, open to people whom does not possess this knowledge. The whole control is executed in real time with the aid of the mouse on animated graphic objects that evolve on the computer screen.

However, we have also thought of more advanced and professional musicians and we have tried to ensure that these interfaces should not just be a simple banal interactive game, but potent sound experimentation tools. We may confidently claim that composition and interpretation with Faust Music on Line is not like that with any other current software or hardware tool. Nor the sound results either.

We could consider the instruments forming part of it as intelligent. Their potential is not confined to enabling or disabling a note with a particular timbre. They are macroinstruments that behave as interactive composing tools and which permit a wide range of experimentation, both at the sound quality and formal level.

Collective composition

Each of the compositions done with the program and stored in the server is the product of co-operation between various authors (normally 4) and not the work of a single composer. We consider that group creation is one of the most important aspects of this project and one of the most interesting capabilities - still unexploited - offered by the net.

Whenever a participant accesses the web with the intention of composing a theme, he will in fact be modifying/enriching themes in which other composers will have participated already. In this way a musical game is established in the form of an exquisite corpus, where several composers can create one or more musical themes together. Every intervention by a fresh composer is recorded in the web, so that we may know at any time who the authors of a given theme are and in what percentage the authorship of a particular theme would be divided if the theme in question were selected.

Evolving composition

When an author retakes the piece produced by another to enrich/modify/distort/deconstruct it, he will not be modifying the original but working on a copy. Thanks to this mechanism, an idea or musical germ generated by one author may evolve in countless directions at the same time, although all of them (including the initial one) are equally accessible in the form of a tree (like the Windows Explorer) in the database.

Owing to hardware limitations, the maximum number of users (or layers) per piece is reduced to four, but there is no limit to the number of variations that each layer may generate. This means that we have a maximum of four generations but with an unlimited number of offspring in each one of them. Similarly, the number of initial themes (highest level) is not limited either, and any participant will be able to initiate one when he likes.

Performance

By means of the Direct Sound and Direct Draw technologies, the program is capable of synthesising in real time eight 16-bit, 22-Khz stereo voices with different fully parametrizable effects (reverb, panning, delay, pitch shift, resonant filters, ring modulation, etc.) for each of these voices, as well as to control and generate all the graphic interface animations at the same time. For this the minimum requirements are a Pentium 100 with 16-Mb RAM storage capacity and a 16-bit sound card. It is also necessary to have Microsoft DirectX libraries installed (versions 3.0 or higher).

Credits

Faust Music on Line has been conceived by Sergi Jorda and la Fura dels Baus, and developed by Sergi Jorda, with the sponsorship of FUNDACION AUTOR.