DirectMusic: A Foundation for Interactive Audio

Representatives from Microsoft demonstrated and discussed how you can use Microsoft's new DirectMusic technologies to create compositions that can change in real-time, quickly prototype and audition complex harmonic and rhythmic variations, and produce hours of music in a fraction of the time required using traditional methods. The presentation included a number of live demonstrations.

DirectMusic is a comprehensive framework for creating an arsenal of original musical patterns and instructions that respond to user events. This approach allows composers to create musical elements that are combined and modulated in real-time based on the shifting requirements of an application. So, the music that users hear, can always be original, making repetitive audio loops and static MIDI files a thing of the past.

DirectMusic Producer is the authoring tool you use to create those music files. DirectMusic Producer gives you many options for incorporating variability into your pieces. This means that as the piece plays, there are multiple possible paths it can follow, including different chord progressions, alternate melodies, changes in rhythm, and increased or decreased intensity. This keeps musical scores fresh while remaining completely under the composer's control. Producer also provides composers with tools to abstract and isolate musical parameters that can be applied to a musical environment in real-time. Key changes, program changes, layered textures, volume, tempo and intensity level are can all be interactively shaped to the desires of the composer. You can design transitions to move immediately to a new sound or move gradually, blending old and new together.

Presenters included:

• Chanel Summers, audio technical evangelist in Microsoft's Developer Relations Group, who presented an overview of DirectMusic, and how non-linear or "interactive" music will impact fields of music beyond games.
• Steve Ball, program manager in Microsoft's Consumer Windows Division, talked about using DirectMusic for creating interactive sound effects and ambient soundscapes.
• Guy Whitmore, composer and sound designer at Whitmoreland Productions, demonstrated music from the PC game, 'Sanity', arranged for DirectMusic and discussed the entire process from conception to composition to implementation.
• Brian Thomas, software test engineer in Microsoft's Consumer Windows Division, described his use of DirectMusic in live performances.
• David Yackley, program manager for DirectMusic Producer, and
• Scott Selfon, software test engineer for DirectMusic Producer, were on hand to answer questions and demonstrate real-time techniques.

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