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Here are just SOME of the remarkable features of SuperConductor.
The concept of Hierarchical Pulse, and its application in SuperConductor, is truly one of the most remarkable innovations in computer technology and artificial intelligence. It came about as the result of years of painstaking work and unique insights by Dr. Clynes.
Any lover of classical music can tell the difference between Mozart and Beethoven. They have different ways of shaping their music, and their ways are distinctive and consistent among all their works. Dr. Clynes has succeeded in eliciting subtle underlying dynamic forms, and preserving them mathematically, to evoke the "presence" of the composers.
As the computer generates each note on each instrument (which it does in real time, as if playing the music "live"), it does so in accordance with the composer's own intimate personality as induced through the Hierarchical Pulse. This is one of the reasons SuperConductor music is so animated and emotionally communicative.
Each composer's Pulse influences the entire character of their music. It is manifest on three levels, the first affecting groups of notes, the second smaller groups of notes, and the third affecting each individual note.
Put simply: The first level determines how bars of the score will be differentiated. Some bars are lighter, some are heavier, some more animated, some more subdued, and there are infinite gradations in between. The second determines the character of each bar played. The performance of each bar is unique, and yet they must meld together into a beauteous whole. And the third determines the way each note within the beat will sound, at what volume, and how each is to be stretched or compressed relative to the beat. The computer takes all of this simultaneously into consideration for each note on each instrument, and plays them all together perfectly.
The three levels of pulses are like three conductors, simultaneously and flawlessly conducting error-free instrumentalists. Each level controls the one below it.
SuperConductor includes a given Pulse for each well known composer, and each instrument partakes of this pulse. You can modify this Pulse to your own tastes. The opportunities for delicate modifications of the music are literally infinite.
Predictive Note Sculpting
Live musicians bring a great amount of unconscious structure to their performance of great music. They enact a multitude of subtle techniques to bring their music to life, and to make it emotionally meaningful and "musical".
SuperConductor allows you to provide these unconscious actions by means of several ingenious controls. Predictive Note Sculpting is one of the paramount insights into the unconscious part of a musician's performance. The control's interface gives you a two dimensional representation of a note's "shape." Creating an expressive performance requires that each note is "sculpted" in anticipation of the next note. Each note has it's own shape, but that shape is determined by what note will follow it. A musician's unconscious ability to sculpt notes in this way makes his performance flow beautifully through time, and gives it meaningful coherence even as the shape and duration of each individual note is unique.
The Predictive Note Sculpting function allows you to direct how each instrument will be played. In what way should the "musician" approach the music?
You decide.
You can isolate any instrument and modify any or all of it's characteristics, so that itÌs performance reflects your personal tastes and understanding.
Vibrato
When a violinist shakes her wrist as she bows a string, she causes the note she is playing to tremble very quickly (five to eight times a second). With this Vibrato effect she enhances the emotional impact of the music. In SuperConductor, the entire creative realm of Vibrato is opened to you. You can explore the subtle way this technique adds magic to the music. Each note has its own individual vibrato in SuperConductor, and global controls allow you to shape how this happens.
Crescendo/Diminuendo
Of course, as the music rises and falls we are carried along with it. The Crescendo/Diminuendo function allows you to supplement the way this emotive characteristic is realized.
Self-Tuning Expressive Intonation™ (SEI)
SEI tuning is a breakthrough in tuning all electronic, computer and MIDI files. It is a dynamic melodic tuning in which tones are given small specific pitch increments to their equal temperament values, depending on context. Until now those files were all tuned to equal temperament, the tuning of the piano - a compromise in which all keys are slightly and equally out of tune. For example all intervals of the fifths are tuned 2 cents flat and all intervals of the fourth are two cents sharp. Equal temperament is a static tuning in which all notes keep their pitch constant during any song. No longer. SEI gives life to music in a natural way that anyone can hear. The music springs to life, as if a slight fog that was there before were lifted, a fog that people had become used to expect. SEI lifts the fog and lets the sunshine in. For all music - of our culture. The music "grabs your more" and has "more heart", as a piano tuner has said. If Dolby eliminated noise from music, SEI restores natural life eliminated by equal temperament tuning, natural life that only first rate musicians can at best provide.
It is the first real improvement of tuning in 200 years. And it is made possible only through computer technology, and applies only to modern technology. It was first realized in SuperConductor II, and can now be instantly applied to all computer, synthesizer, and MIDI files. Read more about SEI.
Voice Balancing and Panning
With this, you can assign instruments their relative balance and placement. "Balance", of course, allows you to assign each instrument a loudness relative to the others -- one of the conductor's most common and straightforward tools.
And "placement" means just that -- you can actually position each instrument in space, assuming you are playing the music in stereo on at least two speakers. This function, combined with Reverb described below, creates a eloquent replication of concert hall sound.
Reverberation
When you are sitting in a huge concert hall listening to a performance, sound arrives at your ears from different directions and at different times. This is because of the size and acoustics of the building. Live performances fill the space with sound, and sitting in the midst of it allows the music to overcome you.
This reverb function allows you to mimic the concert hall or chamber music acoustic experience. It requires nothing more than your two speakers, and is simple to set.
Score
If you choose, SuperConductor, as another world first, will display the original composer's score of the music it is playing. The scores displayed are scanned copies of the urtext or original editions. The Bach scores, for example, are copies of the Bach Gesellschaft edition, and others are copies of the definitive scores published by Breitkopt and Hartel. A red bracket moves along with the music, showing you which bar is being played.
Solo, Mute and "Music Minus One"
You can silence any instrument, so you can listen only to the others. It is also possible to silence all the instruments except one, as a solo, or to listen to any desired combination of instruments.
If you play, you can play together with the computer, and read the score from the computer screen.
Midi Import and Export
You can Import any of the thousands of standard MIDI files that are found in libraries and on the Internet into SuperConductor and then apply all of the interpretative effects mentioned above, adding vitality and feeling to what are usually dry and synthesized sounding pieces off music. Assign any of our high quality instrument samples to each voice, add a hierarchic pulse, and shape every note automatically with predictive note sculpting. Save your work as a SuperConductor file, or export it back to MIDI with approximations of all of the nuances added by SuperConductor.
With our MIDI Export utility, you can assign each voice to a different MIDI channel, choose which MIDI controllers you want to "shape" the notes and generate vibrato. Once exported you can play your new interpretation using your favorite sequencer and sample libraries.
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