Open Music?

jareth780 asks: "One of the wonderful things about MODs/S3Ms is that they can be taken apart and the various pieces used to make a new song (much like source code). With the advent of software such as FruityLoops, it's now possible to make high-quality music on your desktop PC, with exporting directly to MP3. I'm wondering, if someone started an open project where all developed music (in FruityLoops, it's .flp files) and samples were published and freely modifiable, would anyone take to the idea of adding to the project?"

Re:Is it totally necessary?

[Bryce]

The nice thing about doing it as part of a project is that you have a way to get immediate feedback, and to commune with other like-minded individuals. When something is released for free external to any community or central project, then sometimes it might seem like you're just casting wine to the wind. With a project you have a close nit audience to give encouragement and praise.

Okay so you're probably thinking, "Praise is irrelevant; if it is good it doesn't matter what people think." For some types of people (programmers are an excellent example), the pride and joy is in the work alone. But for others (esp. artists and musicians), the work is more fun when they know other people are or will be enjoying it too.

At WorldForge ( www.worldforge.org [worldforge.org]) we have a small team of musicians and have been accumulating Free Music for use with our games (or to just listen to, we're open). One of the reasons we do well with art and music is because we recognize that even though it might seem irrelevant to the programmers, everyone is good about showing appreciation and encouragement to the media folks. It works well for us. Also, I suspect that the fact that the media is being created for a specific purpose helps give the artists and musicians a conceptual framework to operate within.

So anyway, based on my own experience I'd say a project organized around open/free music production would be a stellar idea. And it'd certainly help out WorldForge so you could count on our interest. :-)

High Quality Music

[Knos]

I'm sorry you can do high quality music already with trackers, just substitute your MOD/S3M by XM/IT/Buzztracker.

Is it totally necessary?

[Frizzle Fry]

I'm not totally sure we need a "project" to do this. If people want to write music (in whatever format) and release it under this kind of license, they are free to do so. In fact, they could be doing so right now. What would a central "project" do to add to this?

The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land