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Orb Composer - fully automated music composition tool

HiEnergy

Just a human being
As recently Hexachords have released their "it creates music out of thin air" software Orb Composer, I've done a short First Impression screencast.
Watch me using (and struggling with) Orb Composer Pro and coax a short piece of chamber music for three instruments out of it. No narration, no explanation...
Will link further follow-up videos on the topic of Orb Composer in this thread.

I'm in no way affiliated with Hexachords, the company behind Orb Composer.

 
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Here's my next video on Orb Composer: How to route MIDI from Orb Composer to the DAW (I'm using Ableton Live here).

This screencast has english narration and english/german subtitles.

 
Oh man. This sounds like a video of an old groggly person who wants to persuade me to buy the product....
Please, do some professional videos if you pursue a commercial market for this product.

I really like this software, but the explanation videos are crap in my opinion. Please excuse my rude kind of expression. I wish you all the best for your sales, honestly.
 
In case anybody is interested in this product: go to the homepage, there are two 4 minute videos, one with explanation, the other only with orb composer playing, there is not much more you have to know about the software and to see if you are interested or not. And for the routing in your daw there is the very clear manual (the get starting one) on the homepage. I dont think the videos are "official" (no official announcement in here as far as I can see), I point to the official videos here cause I like the product to and are not really convinced from this videos going round here but I wont insinuate any persuasion just personal entusiasm so please be kind....
 
Oh man. This sounds like a video of an old groggly person who wants to persuade me to buy the product....
If you mean my videos - I'm not the youngest anymore and I often sound quite groggy indeed - I also use a crappy microphone. But I don't want to persuade you - I'm in no way affiliated with Hexachords (the company behind Orb Composer).
 
"Amazing, we don't need people to write music anymore! Imagine the savings!"- men's bathroom in advertising agency.
 
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If you mean my videos - I'm not the youngest anymore and I often sound quite groggy indeed - I also use a crappy microphone. But I don't want to persuade you - I'm in no way affiliated with Hexachords (the company behind Orb Composer).

Excuse me. I did not want to insult you. I beg your pardon.
 
Excuse me. I did not want to insult you. I beg your pardon.
No problem. No offense taken at all.
You're totally right, my voiceover audio is crappy. I know I need a better microphone, a better sounding voice (where do I get those?) and a better english pronounciation (I'm not a native english speaker).

Just meant to clarify I'm not affiliated with Hexachords and don't profit in any way from them selling a few licenses more or less.
 
In my latest screencast Hexachords Orb Composer is used for fully automatic composing a piano music tune.
The resulting MIDI is imported into Reaper and played back.

This time there's no narration, the video is intended to show what the music created by this software with only little user interaction sounds like.

 
My latest screencast shows a playthrough of an ambient track composed by Orb Composer.
I made slight adjustments to most of the chord progressions and instrument clip parameters that OC chose.

The editing process took me about two hours in total, including set-up of the DAW and instruments, only final playback shown for brevity sake.

 
I'm kind of intrigued - I often find "song generator" algorithms like this fun to play with and useful for planting seeds for further development. But at USD $430 or $800 for the Artist and Pro editions respectively (converted from the Euro price), I don't feel motivated even to try the demo.

If the developers have success at this price point, I don't begrudge them in the least; I'm sure this involved significant development hours and costs, and they're entitled to make as much from their efforts as they can. But I think I'm going to need a literal 50% discount offer before even considering a purchase, given my needs and workflow.
 
But I think I'm going to need a literal 50% discount offer
They had an "early bird" pre-order offer (OC Pro for the price of OC Artist) until 1st of April. If it weren't for that special offer, I'd probably also not have bought it. (I'm not affiliated with Hexachords, I didn't receive a free NFR and they didn't compensate me for creating videos, so my reviews are honest)

Perhaps they might do a Black Friday offer...
 
I was "caught" by that early bird too, and after "begging" they eaven offered a discount for the Artist version as "early bird" cause thats more then enough money for me and I will never need anything "orchestral" (could never cope with that), but I was just absolutely fascinated from the idea and I am happy so far cause I really feel I absolutely get what they offered (and thats not so usual).

They are very responsive and engaged (as in the case of the Artist early bird), it still IS (for me) a starting point (with lots more to be possible as I would see it) but I have lots of fun just trying it out so far.

It is on the one hand really fun to try out and use, on the other hand I already have lots and lots of requests even if I have not done more then scratching the surface. But this "scratching" just makes fun, it is just "try-and-click-and-listen". For me the uniqueness lies really in the "access" to the composing process. Hard to describe, as I said, I have only scratched the surface so far.....
 
I was "caught" by that early bird too, and after "begging" they eaven offered a discount for the Artist version as "early bird" cause thats more then enough money for me and I will never need anything "orchestral" ...But this "scratching" just makes fun, it is just "try-and-click-and-listen". For me the uniqueness lies really in the "access" to the composing process. Hard to describe, as I said, I have only scratched the surface so far.....

I'd theoretically be interested in Artist too (if they ever offered another very big discount). Just out of curiosity, how "different" can you make different regenerated songs? In other words, for a given set of complexity and structure parameters, when you have the program recompose the song, does it ever sound interestingly different? Or are they more like variations on a theme (again, for a given set of input parameters)?
 
In other words, for a given set of complexity and structure parameters, when you have the program recompose the song, does it ever sound interestingly different? Or are they more like variations on a theme (again, for a given set of input parameters)?

SirkusPI: just to early for me to answer on this. I have managed to adjust some of the parameters on some instruments to let it more go into the desired direction but I just have not understand it deeply enough to even try this out. That would assume a complete song setup the way I want it to go and THEN try this out if I will get "interestingely different" "versions".
 
Listening to this reminds me why I never wanted to teach a first-year college music theory class.

It sounds a bit like a musical equivalent of "paint by number".
 
I did another very short tune with Orb Composer.
This time it's for piano, a flute-like melody sound and a synth pad.

Here's a playthrough:
 
Here's my latest playthrough video with Orb Composer...
This time it's a short piece with piano, female vocalists, male choir and a string pad.
Mike, please excuse my abuse of Realivox Ladies.

No postprocessing, no keyswitches, no anything fancy... it's just Orb Composer playing into one instance of Kontakt running 4 instruments (NI New York Grand, Realivox Ladies, Soundiron Mars, Indiginus Solid State Symphony)

 
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