Computer-Music.com contains articles and product reviews related to making music using computers and creating 3D computer animation in sync with music. Computer-Music.com is also the home page of  Donald S. Griffin, an experienced professional composer, sound effects designer and audio consultant with an emphasis on computer games,  video games and internet music and sound effects. For pricing and contract availability send email to: DGriffin (@) Computer-Music (.) com

Computer-Music.com  contains articles and product reviews related to making music using computers and creating 3D computer animation in sync with music.
Computer-Music.com is also the home page of  Donald S. Griffin, an experienced professional composer, sound effects designer and audio consultant with an emphasis on computer games,  video games and internet music and sound effects. For pricing and contract availability send email to: DGriffin (@) Computer-Music (.) com

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New Article: Graphics For Music.

Quick Picks, products that are worth taking a quick look..

 

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What's Here?

[Bullet] If you've been here before then check out What's New? to see how the site has changed since your last visit. New articles, sounds, music, reviews, and great links are constantly being added. The 'What's New?' section will soon be expanded into a more comprehensive News area with bits and pieces of industry news in addition to the usual site update information. I am still trying to determine the most visitor-friendly format so you can visit the site often and grab the latest headlines in a few seconds.

[Bullet] Click Quick Picks to find links to computer music and 3D computer graphics related products that are worth a quick look. The 'Quick Picks' section is brand new but it will grow very rapidly. Since a Quick Pick is just a Name, Comment, and Link they are easy for us to post and easy for you to read. So they will be updated often. Possibly as often as every day. You can read more about Quick Picks on the Quick Picks page.

[Bullet] Click on Spot Reviews to read reviews of computer music and 3D computer graphics related hardware and software while they are still being reviewed. There are so many cool products piling up that we found it necessary to create the Quick Picks page to take some of the load off the 'Spot Review' section. The advertising on this site was added to help pay for the time it takes to review these products but ad revenues are very low all over the web so this has not panned out. Therefore, though Spot Reviews will not be as plentiful as originally planned. The new Quick Picks page will try to take up some of the slack and its information will be more timely. People who know me will tell you that I have a tendency to say exactly what I think and I am pretty bold about it. Visitors to this site often say I explain difficult concepts in ways that make those concepts easy to understand. I hope these two things you will keep you coming back to this site. Some visitors have pointed out that some of the Spot Reviews look like advertising copy from the makers of the products. We never cut and paste information from press kits. Some visitors even get confused and think we are selling these products. We are not. One reason they tend to look like ads is that they are much more brief than a typical magazine review just as an advertisement usually is. The reason many of these reviews look so positive is that no product even begins the review process unless preliminary investigation shows it to be very promising. There is no time for reviewing products that show no promise in the first place. In that sense you could consider it a 'brownie point' for a product to appear in a Spot Review at all.

[Bullet] Click on Articles to read technical articles on making music using computers. The numbered articles #1, #2 & #3 start you off at the very beginning but contain some information that may be helpful even for advanced users.  For computer music professionals Musical Techniques for Interactivity is an advanced article about how to make interactive music for computer games and other interactive products. I, like so many other musicians, have been looking for ways to create visuals to go along with my music. Over the past year this has caused me to dive much more deeply into my long interest in 3D computer graphics and animation. This has lead me to spend many long hours with many different 3D software packages and online with users groups and even collaborating in design and testing of plug-ins to add capabilities to 3D software including music and sound effects synchronization and even allowing music to control the graphics directly I quickly found that many computer graphics artists are musicians also. Many computer musicians are also interested in 3D computer graphics. So many musicians want to create something visual to go along with their music or music video that articles for beginners about how to make 3D computer graphics will start appearing on this site. They will be just as easy for beginners to understand as the numbered computer music articles for beginners already on this site. During my experimentations I often discover things that may not fit neatly as beginner or advanced topics. In email groups they have garnered a lot of interest so I plan to start writing those of and adding them to the site. I am just not sure what to call them, maybe case studies, and where to put them, maybe in their own section. Let me know what you think. Additional articles for beginners, professionals and even a few for the rest of you will be added as time goes on. Several are already in the works.

One reader pointed out that computers have changed so quickly that some of the comments in the numbered articles (pertaining to CPU speeds and hard disk sizes) are out of date so they will soon be checked and updated.

[Bullet] Click on Sound to hear examples of original music and arrangements by Donald S. Griffin as well as a recorded radio interview on Gig-A-Bytes.

[Bullet] Take a look at the new Graphics section. A launching pad for all 3D computer graphics related material on this site. Much of this material will have an emphasis on integrating music and sound effects with 3D computer animation. Here you will eventually find news, reviews and articles about 3D computer graphics for beginners and for composers who want to integrate their music and sound effects with animation. There I also share my experiments with various CG (Computer Graphics) applications in a sort of laboratory gallery format.

An article (or series of articles) is planned outlining my computer graphic odyssey of discovery in order to show the things I learned as I passed from one graphics package to the next over roughly 10 years.

[Bullet] The Links page has been slated for renovation very soon. I have a lot of plans for it. In the past I have had difficulty finding the time to maintain this site so I thought you would be more interested in my maintaining this site's content than pointing you towards other sites. However there are many, many neat sites out there with useful products, services, tutorials and even a few that are very good resources for specific programs. Search engines never seem to work as well as you would like and I have often benefited from a well organized links page. In the near future I hope to provide the same at this site. Especially useful should be links to specific product tutorials and examples of their use as well as the home pages for plug-in designers who are often given very little attention on the pages of the products which their plug-ins are designed to support.

[Bullet] Click on Services to learn what Computer Music Consulting can do for you. Here you can also find many cool links to software, hardware, people & organizations in the computer music and 3D computer graphics industry and just plain cool sites on the internet. Some of the products listed here will be moved to the new Spot Review area as soon as their reviews are finished.

[Bullet] Click on Credits for a page listing and showing many of  Donald S. Griffin's music, sound effects, and consulting credits including comments about many of these projects.

[Bullet] Coming Soon: Look for answers to your most difficult questions or post a question to be answered publicly in the new Letters To The Editor section. I previously tried a Forum format but it became to difficult to maintain due to the state of the software at that time. It also occurred to me that I would have to constantly monitor it for language or subject matter inappropriate to the young children whom I encourage to share in this wonderful new technology. So I decided a Letters To The Editor format would be easier to maintain. With all that is happening this new section may take a while to begin showing up. It will probably appear under the enhanced news section I am planning right now.

[Bullet] Then, when you are done looking around please send me a note at dgriffin (@) computer-music (.) com with comments about your first impressions of or past experiences with this site If you already know me please say hello. It is fun read comments from my friends. If you have a specific question that you would like me to answer then please ask it. Many visitors have sent some very encouraging and heart warming comments back when we had a guest book. We used to have an active guest book with many wonderful user comments but abuse by spammers forced us to remove it.

[Bullet] Finally, if you think there is a new feature, article, or resource you would like to see added to this site or if you have a question you could not find the answer to anywhere else on this site feel free to send email to the address at the bottom of every page. We will try to answer your questions via return e-mail as soon as possible so if you are not sending from your own computer please say so and include your e-mail address with your question. If your question might have wide appeal and if you do not mind if we use your letter as a Letter To The Editor then please say so in your email. When that new section of the site opens yours letter might be one of the first letters listed. Your letter will also be answered directly via return email as described above.

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About Computer Music Consulting

Computer Music Consulting (C.M.C.) has produced lots of great interactive music and sound effects for many of the best games and game publishers since the days of the PC XT, including the music for Aladdin for the Sega Genesis and more recently American Civil War and Destiny for Interactive Magic. Even more recent projects include music conversion for Rampage Universal Tour for Game Boy, sound consulting and hundreds of sound effects for a location based motion simulator game and editing of thousands of voice clips for an upcoming sports game. Donald S. Griffin who is the main creative element of C.M.C. has lectured at many conferences including the Computer Game Developers Conference in '94, '96 and twice in '97. In '95 he moderated their War Gaming Round Tables and in 1996 he moderated the Music Round Tables. He has also written several articles for Computer Gaming World and Gamasutra on computer music software, hardware and related technical issues as well as content production (that's composing and sound effects design to us normal folks.) The following magazine quote is typical of the clients reactions "PC Multimedia & Entertainment rates Destiny sound 94%! "Beautiful Music", "Superb"  Email us at dgriffin (@) computer-music (.) com about adding interactive music or sound effects to your next project.

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[Under Construction] Always Something New.

MIDI Music and Sound Effects are still in the works as I continue to wrestle with new and intriguing formats that hold the promise of allowing sound and music to be heavily compressed while retaining a high sonic quality as well as offering some degree of protection from piracy and copyright theft.

The 'Spot Review' section is no longer in its infancy but you will see a lot more reviews there as I ramp up the activity level on this site. Unlike product reviews you are used to reading a Spot Review it will not try to detail all the features of a product. This can be done easily by visiting the manufacturer's web site and often by downloading working demos. I will be focusing on the key features that are either unique or uniquely well designed that make you decide to purchase one product over another. Because of this format I will be able to review a greater number and variety of products and you will be able to spend much less time reading the reviews. Hopefully this kind of review will be of greater help, in making a difficult decision, than lengthy feature lists that seem to make all products look alike. Because of this format you may see a review of only a paragraph. This format will also allow me to continually update a review as I find new features that are useful or well implemented. In other words each review may change from time to time as I become more familiar with the product. (In fact, since I first wrote this several product reviews have seen several version updates.)

In the past I have attempted to search the web for great computer music related links. I eventually learned that browsing the internet is a bottomless pit into which you throw your precious time so I will be relying more heavily on your input as to which sites I should list. To allow a larger variety of interesting links I will be creating two separate links pages. One with friends of CMC and links to recommended products. The other will have links that may be interesting to or useful but have not been checked by CMC so they do not come with any kind of recommendation. Link to this second list of sites at your own risk. Sites they you submit for addition to this second list should be either tremendously cool or very useful as a resource for people making music on computers or they should advertise a product that is so outstanding as to make it stand out in a crowd. I am sure these improvements will take a fair amount of my time but I still welcome suggestions as to how else I might improve this site.

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Tell Us About Your Cool Computer, Music, or Gaming Site!

If you have a cool site and want us to check it out then leave us an e-mail by clicking the address found at the bottom of each page. We will check it and, if we like it, may give you a link or even a review. Positive reviews only. Trashing people is not what C.M.C. is all about. If we don't like you site we simply won't mention it.

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Tell Us About Your Great New Hardware Or Software!

If you have a product you would like us to review please leave us an e-mail. Donald S. Griffin has written several software and hardware reviews Computer Gaming World magazine; was the 'Audio Guru' and the Click Conference on Windows Game Development; Lectured at the International Interactive Communication Society in San Francisco and Sacramento; Lectured at the Bay Area Computer Entertainment Developers Group; moderated War Gaming Round Tables and Music Round Tables at the Computer Game Developers Conference and Lectured there four times; and is a member of the Interactive Audio SIG of the MIDI Manufacturers Association.

Unsolicited products will not be returned and may not be reviewed. On the other hand we love to try new games and sound equipment. C.M.C. has a large collection on both counts (all of it legally acquired.) C.M.C. is not into piracy or theft of any kind so don't even ask. We know and love computers, computer games, music, MIDI and digital audio.

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We Will Help Students And Educational Institutions.

If you are a teacher or a student we will give special consideration to your requests for information. If you are a student and need information for a school project on music, computer-music or computer gaming we will do our best to help. If you are over 18 years old we would enjoy hearing what school you are attending. If you are under 18 you should never tell anyone on the Internet anything about where you live and that includes the name of your school or the name of your teacher. If you are a teacher and your class would benefit from any services we may be able to provide please let us know. A good education is everything! We would rather donate our time and effort to improving education than anything else. If you want to be anything in life you have to learn how to do it. In school you learn how to learn. Then you can begin teaching yourself.

In the past year there have been lots of questions from teachers and students. We have tried to answer them all in a timely manner but since this is a free service it must sometimes wait until we can take care of our paying clients. Still it is one of the most popular features of this site and we will try to keep it going as well as we can.

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For questions or comments contact the webmaster at
(you will have to remove the parentheses and  spaces; sorry but spam is a problem)
 dgriffin (@) computer-music (.) com
Copyright © 1996-2004 Donald S. Griffin - Computer Music Consulting. All rights reserved.
Revised: February 04, 2004.
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