From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V1 #103 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Sunday, December 29 1996 Volume 01 : Number 103 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Alloy: Cable TV Interview with Thomas ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1996 01:51:19 GMT From: Bill Hargreaves Subject: Alloy: Cable TV Interview with Thomas I'd noticed there was a weekly program called The Web on the UK SciFi cable channel, so I thought I'd record some of it for later viewing. It turned out to be a disappointment and I recorded a three part documentary on ITV called Cyberspace over it without looking at most of it. As I worked my way through Cyberspace, (the program, not the place) I found that some of The Web was still there and I came across an interview by one of the presenters, Justin Gunn, with Thomas Dolby. I had no idea it was on the tape and I could easily have fast forwarded past it . It wasn't particularly earth shattering, but as we don't see nearly enough of Thomas on TV, I thought you might be interested in it, so here's a transcript. Happy New Year Slarv *********************************************************************** Justin: We all remember Thomas Dolby from his pioneering music videos and of course that favourite number of mine "She Blinded Me With Science." Well, now he's back with his own interactive production company, Headspace, and here to blind us with er some of the science today is Thomas Dolby (Shakes hands). Thomas: How are you doing? Justin: Thanks for joining us. Tell me a little bit about your company. Thomas: Well, Headspace has been around for about three years. It came up really because I'd been getting increasingly frustrated with the conventional music business. It seemed like the more successful I became the more they wanted to sort of force me into a formula, you know, and it was always the excitement and the exploration of working in a new medium that really stimulated me. So I was getting asked more and more to work in things like virtual reality and games, and I decided to build a business around it. Justin: OK Now where is reality of all of this sort of hype, er you have a site on the World Wide Web called Offworld. Er can you tell us a little bit about that and what it encapsulates? Thomas: Offworld actually came about because we'd been doing some work with Netscape Corp, and they wanted for the first time to actually build the ability to play sounds and midi files into their browser and they needed a way to showcase it, to bring it to the attention of their users, and so they asked us if we'd consider creating a site that would show it off. Justin: Now this is some of it here, can you just sort of show us what we're seein'? (On a Netscape browser screen behind them a ten second extract from the Offworld site loops repeatedly about four times, which Justin ignores after about five seconds in the first loop.) Thomas: Yeah, well, Offworld has a kind of mist like navigation interface which has never really before been possible on a website, er you're actually looking at a browser window here, in this case playing a piece of Quicktime, erm, but it's possible to navigate around North, South East & West around the space... Justin: And the most exciting part is the fact that the music changes depending on where you move, and certain objects have their own sounds and unique er you know vocal characteristics... Thomas: That's exactly right. You don't need a T1 line to do this. The graphics are very small. They average about 28k per page and the music files are tiny, they're like 4 or 5 k in a lot of cases. Justin: Well now you've developed your own file format, in fact, in order to make this happen, right? Thomas: Well, the file format is a work in progress, called RMF which stands for Rich Music Format. During the course of Headspace's work in different projects, we've found that there is no easy way to deliver a large library of music to a complex project such as a large website or a CD-ROM game .. Justin: But you're making that possible now. Thomas: We're making that possible, and so RMF is really a super set of existing file types like midi and .... Justin: Now you're confusing me, I gotta know, how does a musician, you know, a guy who plays on MTV get so involved with this kind of tech? Thomas: He keeps using the tools he's already using, you know, like midi sequencers and hard disk recorders, and when he's finished making the files, he encapsulates them into an RMF file and he delivers that to the customer ... Justin: But you yourself, you got into this, I know that there's a kind of interesting reason that you weren't quite as proficient as you'd like to be on keyboards so you turned to computers to help you? Thomas: (Laughing) You could view it that way, you know which came first, the chicken or the egg? I mean, on another level, I got off on working with computers so much that it was never necessary for me to sit there and practice scales all night. Justin: Now very briefly, before we go, I wanna ask you what's your sort of vision for the internet and music, will we be, er, not going to the record store any more, will we be downloading our favourite new songs right off the internet? Thomas: I think it's an alternative. I think it's a new way to deliver music and I think it's going to get more and more exciting for people like me who get a kick out of being out there on the edge of music. It beats the hell out of going out on the road for ten months of the year. Justin: Are other musicians sort of getting all of this? Thomas: I think so. This really kind of resonates among musicians and I'll tell you why. Musicians have been used for years to giving 90% of the proceeds of their sales to A&R men, to radio programmers, to record store buyers and those are the people we have to get our music approved by before the public get to hear it. Justin: One more question. CD's, the 8 track of the 90's? Thomas: (Laughing) I think actually computers are going to be the 8 track of the 90's. There's food for thought. Justin: Thank you very much Thomas Dolby, appreciate it. Switch to twenty second video clip from Nuvogue then fade to next item. ************************************************************** ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V1 #103 ***************************