By Tom Mulhern
During the first half of the 1990s, I often found myself in arguments over the meaning of "multimedia." For some reason, the World Wide Web was silent, overwhelmingly text-based, and–inexplicably–widely touted as a rich multimedia experience. I asked, "How is it a rich multimedia experience?" After all, it was mostly text with hyperlinks. A few static images were placed on bland, gray pages, with the drab fonts resident in the user’s computer supplying the "look and feel" of the text. Good, but about as close to multimedia as thumbing through a book with a good index. The answer from others was, "Because you can interact with it." Well, that makes it interactive, but multimedia? There’s more multimedia going on at a baseball game, with visual, audible, and smell- and taste-based experiences all converging at once. Scrolling text without other sensations is hardly what could accurately be called multimedia.
Today, the World Wide Web is still a disappointing place if you’re used to getting your music from places like MTV or MuchMusic: Even if the sound quality is good (it often isn’t), it’s not going to get your pulse racing too fast. With decent cable reception and a stereo system hooked up to your TV, you can get full audio fidelity and a smooth, full-motion image limited in size only by the dimensions of your TV’s screen. So far, no computer can compete with that. However, the Web and the computer offer something you can’t get from a TV: an unparalleled delivery system and almost unlimited choice. Five hundred channels? Hah! Try 500,000–or more.
While the cable TV companies and the TV networks decide what your choices are, the Internet has no such constraints. Want to hear Javanese ceremonial music? Do a quick search, and you’ll find it. Blues? There’s a ton of it. Early Edison cylinder recordings from the late 1800s ? Just click. What you hear is pretty much up to you. In this regard, TV lags considerably.
The Napster-spawned legal morass opened up a lot of eyes to the reality and power of the Internet as a delivery system for music. But even more important, it opened up a lot of eyes to the future reality of movies and TV shows being delivered over the Net. Furthermore, the convergence of Internet and TV is another factor that’s looming over the horizon (WebTV and Liberate are providing some of the best early glimpses of this). What’s this got to do with those of us who produce audio? Lots. Like the explosion of Internet music sites in the past year or so, there will soon be a vast proliferation of video sites. Not just movies, but videos for bands (a la MTV), artistic audio/video/text montages, commercials, and just about any other combination of sight and sound.
There will be more demand for video and audio (mostly music), and therefore there will be more need for sound and, logically, sound production. For each of us who records for fun or profit, and for each of us who plays music or works in sound as our chosen medium, there are easily as many graphic artists, animators, and independent movie makers who are also seeking an outlet for their creations. It’s up to us to make alliances with these people, because the expectations of anyone who’s grown up since commercial TV’s first faint flickers in 1948 are clear: Audio and video not only coexist, but they are intertwined experiences.
Until recently, there were two main obstacles to delivering high-quality combined audio and video over the Internet: slow transfer rates (14.4k ,28.8k, or 56k dial-up via modem) and a reliable codec (coding/decoding scheme). More and more people are getting DSL, cable modem, or fiber connection, allowing speeds of up to millions of bits per second, the first steps to eliminating the interminable downloading times. In the meantime, Quicktime, Microsoft Windows Media, and MPEG3 have evolved to the point where they’ve taken care of the codec problem. Streaming video, complete with high-quality audio, is now a reality, and it comes in a variety of flavors.
Like audio on demand, video on demand is both a current reality and the wave of the future. And the good news is that you don’t have to be aligned with a major movie or record label to create or distribute audio/video. This opens up a whole new world for those making and those listening to music. You can still struggle to make your way into the "mainstream" world of the Sonys, Warner Bros., or BMGs, but you can also produce your music or music/video without budget, permission, or filtering by anyone else, and then make it available yourself, or via one of the many independent or emerging websites devoted to new works. An example of this is InterneTV (http://www.internetv.com/html/music.htm), which has techno, ambient, hip hop, alternative rock, industrial, and country streaming videos. Another example is Launch (http://www.launch.com), which is connected with many of the big-name CD or movie labels and the major search engine companies (as well as AOL and Tokyo Broadcasting System).
So, where do you begin? Music majors often have to learn the rudiments of film scoring, as well as arranging. If you’re a musician, then get really familiar with the fundamentals of what makes music for film work or not work, and the basics of how music and images intertwine. A knowledge of SMPTE time coding and synchronization will help you here, as well as in many cases when you’re using high-end sequencers. And learning from the masters of the big and medium screens–movies and TV–will serve you well in your quest to understand the best ways to create suspense, set moods, and help to propel the images’ message to an audience. Teach yourself to think in visual terms, so that you can relate sight and sound more easily. Watch a lot of commercials and music videos, because the message is often so tightly scripted and so solid–both in terms of visual/audible connection to the viewer and in terms of "stickiness" (making the message attach firmly to the viewer’s subconscious, like an infectious groove).
If you can, either learn or work with someone who knows Quicktime or other computer-based video. Familiarity with programs like Adobe’s Premiere and Apple’s Final Cut Pro, or even any shareware programs for editing video and audio together, will help you to understand the ins and outs of the audio/video creation process from the "nuts and bolts" perspective. Practice with home videos, rock videos, whatever you can get your hands on. Then start sniffing out opportunities, because there will be many for anyone who knows how to put music and images together for delivery over the Internet.