[ANNOUNCEMENT] Resumed maintenance of libmikmod and mikmod.

[Nadav Har'El]

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012, Nadav Har'El wrote about "Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Resumed maintenance of libmikmod and mikmod.":
> hard disk. I think, though, that today mod files still have value, as
> "open source" music :-)

I've been wondering, how far are we, technologically, from being able to
produce free, open-source, *classical* music.

Unlike newer popular music, classical music is too old to be copyrighted
(see signature below ;-)), so it should be legal to freely distribute
new performances of this music. And unlike the typical "esoteric" music
on the tracker-module scene, classical music is actually popular in a
significant part of the population.

Would it be beyond the current state of the art to sample orchestral
instruments or simulate them, and synthesize their sound? Then contributors
would input the music's score, add performance instructions to the various
instruments according to their own interpretation (just like a real
orchestra's conductor would), and recorded classical music would come out.

I don't think that with current technology, this is science fiction.
Does anyone know if anything like this has been tried? With free
software?

The end-result of such a project will not only be free, and royalty-free,
classical music for all, but also an incredible tool for aspiring composers 
who do not have an orchestra at their disposal - and haven't (yet)
mastered the ability to imagine what their composition would sound like
with a full orchestra playing it. I don't think it will be a
death-sentence to real-live orchestras - I don't believe many orchestras
actually live on royalties from the 20-shekel classic CDs on the market.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |                   Tuesday, Apr 17 2012, 
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Classical music: music written by a
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |decomposing composer.