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Wow, it's the new Robert Fripp album! It's 4 seconds long, costs $99.00 and comes with an operating system. > Nov 10, 3:12 PM EST > > Long Process Leads to Short Vista Sound > > By ALLISON LINN > AP Business Writer > > > > SEATTLE (AP) -- Some musicians spend 18 months working on a whole album. > At > Microsoft Corp., that's how long it took to perfect just four seconds of > sound. > > Of course, this isn't just any four-second clip. It's the sound - a soft > da-dum, da-dumm, with a lush fade-out - that millions of computer users > will > hear every day, and perhaps thousands of times in total, when they turn >on > computers running Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Vista operating system. > > To set the right tone - clean, simple, but with "some long-term legs," > according to Microsoft's Steve Ball - the software maker recruited > musician > Robert Fripp. > > Fripp, best known for his work with the '70s rock band King Crimson, > recorded hours of his signature layered, guitar-driven sound for the > project, under the close direction of Ball and others at Microsoft. Then, > it > was Ball's job to sort through those hours of live recordings to suss out > just the right few seconds.Fripp's involvement is not surprising. His > occasional collaborator, Brian Eno, recorded sounds for Windows 95. Also, > Ball, the Microsoft group program manager for WAVE - Windows Audio Visual > Excellence - has in the past been Fripp's student and business partner. > > Ball, a self-proclaimed renaissance man who is both an engineer and a > musician, considered the work of about 10 musicians for the project. Some > of > those people were influential in the final four seconds as well. > > Redmond-based Microsoft seriously debated several other sounds before > settling on the final startup sound about three weeks ago. The rejects > included a longer, lusher clip and a quick, techno-sounding piece. While > many people liked an upbeat ditty with a clapping rhythm, it was > eventually > nixed for sounding too much like a commercial. Ball said the >hand-clapping > also seemed like too "human" a sound when paired with the new graphic for > Vista. > > "There's nothing that's especially human about our new Windows >animation," > he said. > > The short startup clip that was eventually chosen is meant to evoke the > rhythm of the words "Win-dows Vis-ta!" and Ball hopes the sound will >serve > as a calling card for the operating system. It also consists of four > chords > - one for every color in the new Windows graphic that appears as the >sound > plays. It's no coincidence that it's also four seconds long. > > There are a total of 45 Vista sounds that Microsoft has spent the last > year > and a half perfecting, including the dings you hear when you get a new > e-mail, receive an error message, or log off your computer. Generally, > these > are more muted, less jarring variations of the prompts familiar to >Windows > XP users. > > If it seems like overkill to go to all that trouble for a few seconds of > sound, consider this: Microsoft estimates that the clips such as the > e-mail > alert will be played trillions of times in years to come. That's a lot of > opportunity to annoy, offend - or, if the job is done right - please or > appease computer users the world over. > > One major concern was that the startup sound not grow grating after a > time. > > "You want a sound that people will love the first time they hear it, but > it's a paradox to also say, 'Oh and by the way, we need people to love it > the tenth, or the hundredth, or the thousandth time they hear it,'" Ball > said. > > That's one reason he was glad to have 18 months to choose the clips. > > "We had time to live with the music," Ball said. > > Still, for all the time Ball has spent on the sounds, he says one measure > of > success would be if people noticed them very little, if at all. > > Ball is the first to admit that the percussive beeps in past Windows > versions could be jarring enough to bother nearby workers or interrupt > others in a meeting. With the number of intrusive sounds from cell >phones, > handheld devices and other gadgets only increasing, that's something Ball > and his colleagues were keen to avoid with Vista. > > "We want you to know they're there, and you would miss them if they were > gone, but we would like them to be just barely noticeable, almost like > they > are part of the environment or part of your wallpaper," he said. "We want > them in the background, rather than the foreground." > > © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. > > _________________________________________________________________ > Get FREE company branded e-mail accounts and business Web site from > Microsoft Office Live > http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/mcrssaub0050001411mrt/direct/01/ > >