Nao Tokui

先日紹介した「iPhone×Music」、予約していただけましたか？ さっそく10数名の方が予約を入れてくださったようで、感謝感激です。発売が待ち遠しい… 一方でどんなレビューがつくのか怖いなぁ、という気持ちも正直あります。

さて、今回はその本の中から。

本の中でたくさんのアプリケーションをレビューしているとお伝えしました。150近いアプリのなかでも特に力をいれて、詳しく分析・解説したアプリケーションが10個ほどあります。その一つが

RjDj です！

#ご存じかとは思いますが、RjDjとは環境音を取り込んで音楽に変換する「反応音楽」アプリケーションです。

今回は、永野・金子の二人によるレビューだけにとどまらず、RjDj開発元へのインタビューを行いました！お話を聞かせてくれたのは、プロジェクトの最初期のメンバーで、RjDjの開発を統括するで、Gunter Geiger氏です。ここでは本に収録されているインタビューの一部を本から転載するとともに、原文の全文を紹介します!!

“iPhone×Music iPhoneが予言する「いつか音楽と呼ばれるもの」”
(徳井 直生, 永野 哲久, 金子 智太郎)

Webサイトには、1999年にRjDjのアイデアを最初に思いついたとあります。同じ記事には、技術的な制限から思いついたアイデアをいったんはあきらめたとあります。現在と当時を比較して、RjDjを可能にしたテクノロジーの進化の最大のポイントはなんでしょうか。

(Gunter Geiger: G) 技術面での最大の進展と言えば、やはりポータブルデバイスのサイズと計算能力でしょう。あともう一つ、テクノロジーとは関係ない面もありますが、こういったデバイスがメインストリームになりはじめているということも付け加えなければなりません。昨今、だれもがmp3の入った携帯電話をもっています。いずれ近いうちに、RjDjシーンを再生できる電話をみなが持つようになればと願っています。

自作のシーンを追加できるようにする予定はありますか？　それとも、一定のクオリティを保つためにオープンにはしないつもりでしょうか？　RjDjをシーンを売るためのプラットフォームとして考えていますか？

(G) オープンにします。RjDjはもともとオープンなプラットフォームとしてつくられたものです。現時点でシーンが追加できないのは、iPhone上でのシーンの配布に関して未解決の問題があったからです。App Storeを介さない方法でiPhoneの上にコンテンツを入れるのは、一筋縄ではいきません。Appleだったら話は別ですが。

ただし、もうすでにこの問題は解決できました。新しいバージョンでは自由にシーンを追加できるようになるはずです。そうなれば、たくさんのクリエィテブなユーザーを引きつけることでしょう。シーンの作者が自作のシーンを販売できるような仕組みも用意する予定です。

BjörkやRadioheadのような大物アーティストのシーンをリリースしてみてはどうでしょうか。

(G) そうですね。今、ちょうど複数の大物アーティストと交渉中です。近いうちにリリースの計画もあります。

sprint (RjDjのsceneを作るワークショップ) を日本で開く予定はありますか？ 楽しみにしているのですが。

(G) 地元でサポートしてくれる人が必要です。あとは日程を決めて、やるだけですね！ 日本でsprintができたら最高です!

Bloomと比較されることが多いのではないですか。Bloomについてはどう思いますか？

(G) Bloomは大好きです。すばらしいアプリケーションです。ブライアン・イーノの考えは、RjDjのコンセプトと一致していると思っています。競争というわけではありません。

ただ、RjDjの方がより一般的です。きっと近いうちにBloomを生成するシーンを書く人が出てくるでしょう。それはすばらしいことです。なぜなら、私たちも(Bloomのように)生成的なプロセスを使ってすばらしい音楽を作れると考えているからです。

RjDjやBloomのような音楽ソフトウェアが一般化したら、レコード会社はどうなるでしょう？ ミュージシャンの友達にギターやPro Toolsは捨てて、プログラミングを勉強するように勧めるべきでしょうか？

(G) いや、そんなことはないでしょう。サンプリングしたアコースティック楽器の音を使ったシーンも作りました。他の音楽アプリケーションと比較して、RjDjの長所はマイクを使っているという点です。生音は電子音楽をより人間的にします。あなたの友達には、Pro Toolsは捨てる必要はないけど、もう一歩踏み込んでみようとお伝えください。(Pdの)プログラムを学んでRjDjに音を入れてみたらどうでしょうか？

以上の日本語訳は本に収録されているインタビューの一部です。以下に全文を転記しておきます!!

青字が質問です。Last.fmとの連携など、かなり踏み込んだ答えが返ってきています。

お忙しい中、質問に答えてくれたGeigerさん、ありがとうございました。Thank you very much, Gunter.

<インタビュー全文>

I read an article on RjDj website, which said you came up with the

idea of RjDj back in 1999. How did you come up with the idea? How

different is the current version from the original idea?

RjDj is a very open system. Although I can’t exactly tell what Michael had

in mind when he

did the first tests for RjDj, I think that it is maybe that openness that

is different from the

original idea. Those who know the power of PureData and Max can maybe see

what I want to

say with that. With RjDj we have a musical platform for portable devices

that can be used

in a creative way and expandend in every direction.

The article also said that you turned down the idea because of the

immaturity of the technology available at that time. What’s the

biggest improvement in terms of technology, which made RjDj feasible?

The main technical improvements are the size and the power of protable

devices. One aspect that

should be mentioned and is not strictly technical is that just now these

portable devices start to be mainstream, almost everyone has a phone with

mp3 nowadays, soon most of these phones will be able to playback RjDj

scenes, we hope.

You defined “Reactive Music” as “a genre of music using sensory input

to generate and control the music you are listening to”. I feel like

you intentionally avoid the word “interactive” that people often use.

Do you have any explanations? What is the difference?

For us “interaction” is something where the user has to act in order to

influence the music. We call it reactive music because it not only reacts

to the input of the user but also to the environment that surrounds him.

The listener does not really interact with RjDj (although you can write

interactive scenes) but most of the time the music is generated as a

reaction to your environment. Thats why we call it reactive music.

Do you have any future plans to release scenes, which react to other

inputs than microphones and accelerometers.

Yes. And its not only us who can release scenes.

Why did you chose PureData as a platform?

I have plenty of experience with Pure Data through my PDa project. And

then, pure data is so flexible and expandable that it seemed to be a good

choice. We are trying to create a new kind of music and it is not easy to

foresee where it will be heading to in the future. We want to give to

artists the most powerfull tool we can imagine. We are also planning to

release a library on top of Pure Data which will make it a lot easier for

non-PD or Max programmers to write scenes.

Do you have any plans to make it possible for users to add their own

scenes on RjDj?

Or do you keep it closed to maintain the quality of scenes and try to

use RjDj as a platform to sell scenes? In the later case, do you pay

to the authors of the scenes?

We will not keep it closed to maintain quality. RjDj is meant as an open

platform, the fact that it looks closed at the moment is because we had to

solve some problems regarding distribution of scenes on the iPhone. It is

not straightforward to put contents on the iPhone if you are not apple,

except through the Appstore, which is pretty open to do this. And authors

of scenes can also choose to sell their scenes through our upcoming

framework.

I think “scenes” by big names like Bjork and Radiohead would be cool.

Is such a thing on your future roadmap?

Yes, we are talking with several “big names” and are planning to release

something soon.

Are you interested in making an open environment, such as PureData for

iPhone, which enables users to make and run their own PureData patches

freely?

RjDj is exaclty this. As I said, the main problem that we are trying to

solve now, and which is not that easy is how to get the scenes onto the

iPhone. But I can tell you, we have solved it and a future release will

hopefully attract lots of creative users who want to make scenes.

PureData is an open-source programming environment. So, in theory,

other geeks like me;) CAN make their own version of RjDj on iPhone.

How do you respond to this if it happens?

I think this is not a problem, because RjDj is already an open

environment. So the question is rather why would someone want to do

something like this, and not just instead write scenes for RjDj.

My friends in Japan and I are really looking forward to having a

“sprint” in Japan!! Any plans?

We need someone who supports us locally, the next step would be to try to

fix a date and go for it. A sprint in Japan would be great.

I guess people often try to compare RjDj to Brian Eno’s Bloom. What do

you think about Bloom?

I like bloom a lot. It is a nice application. I do not see it as a

competition, but for me the ideas of Brian Eno are very much in line with

the ideas of RjDj. RjDj is more generic though and I bet that people will

soon generate Bloom like scenes for RjDj. That would be great because I

think we can create wonderful music using the ideas of generative

processes.

I think what you and Eno are trying to do is to propose a new genre of

music and also a new way of distributing music. Do you think music

softwares like RjDj and Bloom will be common?

Yes we hope so. In fact we hope to be able to set a standard, some sort of

format that can be used in order to create this new kind of music. I also

think that there is still a lot to explore with these kind of systems.

RjDj wants to help with that and foment “reactive music”

If so, what about record companies? Should I try to convince my

musician friends to forget about guitar and/or protools and start

learning programming? ;-)

Haven’ t you done that already during your years of teaching max ? :)

No, seriously. We already made RjDJ scene with sampled acoustic

instruments and one advantage of RjDj over other music applications is the

usage of the microphone. Live sound makes electronic music more human, so

tell your friend to not forget protools, but to go a step further, learn

to program and put their sounds on RjDj.

I think it would be great if I can “scrobble” scenes I’m listening to.

Is there any chance to have audioscrobbler features for Last.fm on RjDj?

We are working on a framework like this. Basically what we are planning to

do is to scrobble scenes and recordings of scenes. One important aspect of

RjDj is that the user can be creative and make a unique musical

contribution to RjDJ by recording a scene in his environment.

What was the biggest headaches in your developmental process?

CoreAudio API?? :-)

:) Yes. Sort of. What we are trying to do was not something that apple

thought people might want to do with the iphone. If you program under

these conditions you always face problems that you do not see with

standard applications. We need lots of CPU too.

What do you think the most fascinating feature of iPhone from a

developer’s point of view.

For me being someone who comes from a Unix environment I appreciate the

clean OS interfaces. This makes it a lot easier to develop for the iPhone

than doing it for, lets say, Symbian.

In general the iPhone is well made and using the hardware features like

touchscreen and accelerometer is really easy. And, the iphone CPU is

really fast compared to other phone CPUs.

That helps a lot if you want to do real time audio processing like we do.