"ThoughtComposer 1.0" by GD

--

18 January, 2005

Jangro!  Who would have known?

Nine years ago, when Jeff Lim's Impulse Tracker was first released, many
members of the demoscene made a statement such as, "tracked music is going
to change forever!"  And for some, it did.  The powerful features that
Impulse Tracker brought into the realm of Scream Tracker users helped narrow
the technological gaps in the PC music scene caused by Triton's Fast Tracker 2.

Of course, Scream Tracker 3 was the much celebrated predecessor to Impulse
Tracker.  And programs such as Ultra Composer, Farandole composer, and ModEdit
came in a prior demoscene era, helping to spawn the once Amiga-dominated
digital-sample-based module scene to the PC platform.

Another such tracker program battle began in 1999, with UGTracker 1.90 from
Threesome (released in October 1998) and Fast Tracker 4.04 by Frozen Moose
(formerly known as Triton).  The value of both programs was long debated, but
they had nearly identical features with different interfaces.

For a few years, the music scene settled down.  Everyone had their personal
preference and stuck to it.  The number of senseless tracker program debates
on IRC declined.  Each tracker's module format was supported in the two module
players of choice: MikMod 4.02 by MikMak, and Cubic Player 3.51 by Pascal.

Around June 2003, the ThoughtComposer tracking program was conceived.  Beek, a
longtime demoscene member and a computer science major at MIT, came up with
the idea after obtaining the Microsoft Intuition software.

Microsoft Intuition, or MS-I as it is called, claims to duplicate an entire
human brain in computer memory by having the user answer 64 questions.
The software operates on the precept that each set of answers can only result
from one unique brain.  Answering the questions takes less than 15 minutes,
but the software needs about 1.75 hours to complete the brain duplication on a
42.7 gigahertz computer.  The brain data, once duplicated in 19 terabytes of
biplexed soft memory, is already outdated, but is said to exactly resemble the
brain of the person at the time they answered the questions.

After spending countless hours studying the technical documentation for
MS-I, Beek began the software design for his program.  He decided he would
develop algorithms to explore the brain data created by the MS-I software, and
extrapolate music which was imbedded in the brain waves. Thus began the
development of ThoughtComposer, which at release time was comprised of over 18
million lines of Java source code.

The release of ThoughtComposer 1.0 in December 2004 was phenomenal.  According
to the file transfer statistics on www.hornet.org, it was downloaded over
14,000 times in the first 48 hours.

Soon after, of course, came a new flood of uploads.  Archive processes
involving TCMOs, or ThoughtComposer MOdules, have dominated over 93% of the
Hornet Archive's work load during the PNUT (Peak Network Usage Time).

One problem was solved instantly.  People stopped stealing others' music and
calling it their own.  They just loaded up MS-I each morning, answered the
questions (the answers were different each day), and then "tracked" anywhere
from 4 to 20 TCMOs before the night was through.  With that kind of capacity,
why rip anything?

Phluid, the music division of the art group ACiD, switched from releasing
monthly musicpacks to hourly musicpacks.  Defiance has re-formed and now
manages to release a musicpack every two days.  Epidemic volumes 2 through 10
were done in about 2.5 weeks.

A tracking competition has come into existence as a result, too.  Properly
called "ThoughtlessCompo," entrants are allowed two minutes for "tracking" and
two minutes for uploading.  The compo is held every day on IRC channel
#trax11. (The competition has already been banned from channels #trax and
#trax0-#trax10).  (Because of the size of the competition's vote packs, a
dedicated 37GB Internet file server has been set up by Maelcum and
Cruel_Creator, the contest's organizers.  The file server's address is
www.tlcompo.org).

The Hornet Archive has gone *frattons* out of proportion again.  Since the
decision was made in early 1997 to zil the music ratings, the demo section of
the archive was able to grow and narrow its gap with the music section.
However, the demo, graphics, diskmags, party, info, and java code sections of
the Hornet Archive have now been temporarily p-corked as new music continues
to flood in.

"It makes our users scream in hagmin!"  Snowman said.

Four of the five Hornet members met last week in Hoboken, NJ, to discuss a
course of action for the archive.  No decision has been announced yet.

So, being a member of the music scene isn't such a big deal anymore.  New
talent has a greater difficulty now in getting noticed.  In fact, the most any
one song has been downloaded from the demo archive since ThoughtComposer came
out was 4 times: Bargraph's "Impressive Wiggle" (brgr-impressive-wiggle.tcmo).

I have heard ThoughtComposer songs from many of the active PC musicians, and I
have definately heard some excellent work.  New TCMOs from Beek, Pulse, Skie,
and Bargraph *are* worth a listen.  But there's just too much available. The
once "underground" artform has now become easily accessible to anyone who can
download a couple programs on the 'net.  (Both programs, Microsoft Intuition,
and Beek's ThoughtComposer, are free.)

At press time, Beek was busy at work on a new object class for ThoughtComposer
which could generate a random and unused filename, based on the filenames
already in use on the Hornet Archive.  Over 300 filename collisions have been
reported at the Hornet Archive as a direct result of TCMO uploads.

"There will still be a chance of a filename collision," Beek told me, "if two
or more people upload at exactly the same time.  But it will greatly lower the
chances."

What once was thought to be the ultimate goal (to compose music using only
one's mind) has brought about the music scene's downfall.

--

GD / Hornet
gd@hornet.org