December 25, 2024

Skylight Webzine

Online since 2000

New Music Format Ensures You Never Hear The Same Track Twice


Dr Mick Grierson, from the Department of Computing, and his team were approached by musician Gwilym Gold, former frontman of indie act Golden Silvers, and producer Lexx and were tasked with creating a new music format.
Their solution, BRONZE, enhances the listening experience by altering the musical components of a song every time it is played whilst ensuring the track is still identifiable to the listener. Aimed at producers and composers, BRONZE is the first commercial music format of its kind and has been used by Gwilym Gold for his debut album, Tender Metal.

Dr Grierson explains: “BRONZE is a brand new creative process, where the composition and production of a musical piece no longer requires the final work to exist in a static form. It can be used for any genre, including organised, highly structured music such as rock, pop and dance music.

“The quality is equal to that achieved through professional authoring tools. The track will be subtly different each time, whilst still retaining the quality and balance of the original mix.”

Dr Grierson led a team from Goldsmiths as part of his ‘Sound, Image and Brain’ project, which is committed to developing accessible audio-visual software and trying to improve commercial brain computer interface technology through algorithms. Sound, Image and Brain is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Gwilym Gold is the first artist to use BRONZE to release music. BRONZE and Gwilym Gold’s album are currently only available for Apple formats (iPhone, iPad and iPod), with support for Android, PC and Apple desktop in the pipeline.

To find out more about Gwilym Gold and BRONZE format, visit http://www.bronzeformat.com/. To find out more about the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, visit http://www.gold.ac.uk/computing/.

Source: http://www.gold.ac.uk/computing/