Every October for the past 13 years, I've traveled to Texas to join the “premier interactive audio think tank,” Project Bar-B-Q. Over a long weekend, 50 musicians, engineers, professors, tech executives, and sales guys plot the future of music on computers, aiming five years out. We come from a variety of companies: Dolby Labs, Karma Labs, Open Labs, Microsoft, Intel, DTS, Beatnik, Dell, HP, IDT, and more.
We meet on a ranch, far from soul-sucking convention centers. Host George “the Fat Man” Sanger and his crew set up piles of musical instruments (and spicy food) to grease the mental wheels, and we break into workgroups, brainstorm, argue, jam, and finally collaborate on a series of written reports.
After months of polishing, those reports finally hit the web this week, and you can read them here. Workgroup topics include:
- Creating a middleware marketplace for digital entertainment platforms (this was my group, codenamed “Run DSP”)
- Developing easy-to-use music-creation tools
- So you want to work in game audio? (Includes a detailed list of college programs)
- Creating a new form of acoustic monitoring for the PC that can improve user experience (“Smart Ambient Sound Sensor”)
- Understanding the new ways to make music (“New Creators and New Creative Tools”)
- Working as a creative professional in a corporate environment (an oral history conducted by O’Reilly blogger Peter Drescher, who's now doing just that at Microsoft)
- Game consoles as musical instruments
As I said, I've been attending this conference for 13 years, and this edition was definitely one of the best. Where would you like digital music to be in five years? Please leave a comment below, and I'll present it to the BBQ Brain.
Categories
Audio
Read More Entries by David Battino.
Become an O'Reilly Member
Visit the Digital Media Forums
Subscribe to the Digital Media Blog Feed
Subscribe to the Digital Media Newsletter
An addendum to Daves invitation for me is admittedly outlandish.
But I think people will be seeing either a Morph or a marraige of elements along this new tech and music respectively.
I'm talking bout "fpga" cpus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fpga
*see the 2nd to last pargrph here:
http://74.125.47.132.sharedcopy.com/search/802a7af8098f8825be6f7822a52b473f.html?q=cache:bEVruo26WJIJ:gcn.com/blogs/tech
thank-you.
Sincerely,
jpeek345
To me, digital musics pinnacle was embodied in a DENON cassette made by my rich classmates stereo equipment of this single:
"Out Out" a collaboration of Peter Gabriel and Nile Rodgers (woops almost said Nathan East)
http://popdose.com/tag/gremlins/
Using the trinity- Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony and the belief that the human voice and the spoken word is the compass from which all supporting instruments come from we end up with music in "1"s and "0"s.
Now add the great divide of the musicians performance and the musicians producer and you've got all published music that you don't get for $2 LIVE at your local coffee shop open mike.
Depending on your economic orientation around earning an employable, decent, and fair humans wages around music, you would probably have to see yourself either as a portable musician or a permanent fixture of your acrid basement wall musician. The latter content in uploading from his basement to the world and getting his cup-full of recognition that way.
Here are some of my areas use of digital music:
http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/music/articles/2009/02/MUSIC-PROFILE-The-Squires-of-the/
http://rochester.metromix.com/music/article/inside-red-booth/889266/content