Steve Ball

Happy Birthday Derek

Birthday Today: musician and former SB Roadshow guitarist and bass player, Derek DiFilippo.

In honor of Derek's birthday, here is one of the highlights of Knotwork featuring Derek's clean and beautiful guitar alongside the guitars of myself and Travis Metcalf, also accompanied by Tony Levin's brilliant acoustic bass line:

Happy Birthday Derek. We miss you in Seattle.

* * *

Snail Mail from Duncan

Received a long hand-written mail from my friend Duncan Weller today. Setting the stage for more projects together later this year.

* * *

Windows Vista Launch

After over five years of work, today is the day that Windows Vista is launching to the general public. There are launch events going on all over the world, but the real action is in New York City:

* * *

Sonification Book Brewing

Afternoon: re-read and edited the outline for a book (and accompanying CD) on Sonification and Sound Branding that flew by while on vacation last week. Shared the outline with friends Buzz and Scoble for comments and ideas.

The idea is inspired by the feeling that it may be useful to document and share some of the learning and process behind the Windows Vista brand sound project in book form. This could also be an interesting distribution outlet for the hundreds/thosands of alternates that we did not select.

* * *

Meantime, one more reminder of a week at the Grand Wailea:

* * *

More from Maui

Backtracking: Made time to pull a few more pictures from Kauai and Maui.

And one more from January 1st, 2007:

* * *

Ultrasound

Evening Work: Ultrasound (5.0M mp3).

Wisely stayed home sick today with no voice and a very sore throat.

This quick sketch derived from that which showed up during evening practice. Recorded five parts played back to back, almost no editing.

May also be a future song lurking inside this sketch.

* * *

Airport Exercise Maui

Backtracking: I practiced the Airport Exercise in three different airports over the past two weeks:

Seattle, Kauai, and Maui.

* * *

Email to Long

Good comment and follow-up from blogger Long Zheng regarding the recent Fast Company story. I spent some time this evening responding directly to Long via mail.

Excerpts below:

_____________________________________________

From: Steve Ball
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 10:46 PM
To: Long Zheng
Subject: Thanks for comment!

Hi Long –

Thanks so much for your comment and post.

FYI, I’ve been an admirer and reader of your blog for a long time. And many thanks for your ongoing insights, fun-poking posts, support and excellent comments and questions. ... you raise some good questions that may be answered gently over time as more of this process is discussed and shared over the next few months.

FYI, there is a second RF Channel 9 video “in the can” that was recorded last May during his second visit to MS Studios that is going to make the first Ch9 video (already in the top 4 ‘most watched’ videos on Ch9) look like a short dark frustrating teaser. It’s about 60 mins long and includes unprecedented live footage and multiple interviews that answer (and may invite) many additional questions about the process.

In the end, the Windows Vista startup sound is deceptively simple (four notes, actually eight if you count the fact that each of the four notes is actually two notes, in dual ascending melodies that map directly to the rhythm of "Win-dows Vis-ta"), as you’ve eloquently noted – that said, often the process to get to ‘simple’ involves incredible scaffolding, and deep planning and hundreds of iterations during the process.

Our process, from the beginning, was planned to be executed in four distinct multi-month phases: a) exploration, b) orchestration, c) refinement, and d) selection.

The main fact to consider about the ‘cost’ of this project has more to do with the fact that branding something as huge as Windows is, by definition, a very complex process that involved collaboration, education, and buy-in across product teams including developers, testers, PMs, executives, designers, marketing experts, lawyers, not to mention hundreds of diverse customers with radically different aesthetics and taste. The primary reason this process took 18-months was because I knew well in advance, to deliver something truly unique, innovative, and appropriate it would take multiple stages of education, reviews, iterations, orchestration to deliver a sustainable long-term Windows brand sound that was more than just a ‘standard predictable Hollywood agency’ sound design.

And compared to many commercial sound branding projects, or even ‘music for film’ or game design projects, this one was also done on a relatively tiny shoestring budget.

This project was not even close to my full-time job – it was actually more like a ‘charity’ project that I did as on the side from my own initiative as I was also GPM for Windows Audio and Video infrastructure during this period, managing a team of 12 PMs and delivering other major WV features like the new Volume Mixer and Sound CPL (not to mention the Audio and Video resilience infrastructure, Media Foundation, DXVA, the new User Mode Audio engine, a new user mode audio driver architecture, and the other major AV updates that are baked into Windows Vista.)

The main thing we learned from our usability studies in this process was that we could never never ever please everyone because we each have radically different tastes, expectations, likes and dislikes. Multiply this fact across 100's of millions of customers, and it’s clear that millions and millions of people will not like whatever we design.

The usability findings, while useful in that they helped us develop a common language for measuring the aesthetic and functional aspects of a brand sound, did not actually directly influence the final decision: the final decision was really a purely aesthetic decision made primarily by me (built on the raw materials from the Fripp / Mastelotto / Martine sessions) confirmed by Jenny Lam, Tjeerd Hoek, Allison Dew, Mike Sievert, JB Williams, and finally ‘approved’ by Jim Allchin in late September. The final orchestration decisions were really based entirely upon perception of specific orchestrations that ‘worked’ with the Pearl Animation in the product (while meeting the other very clear brand goals.)

The aesthetic direction was also directly driven by the very clear and articulate AERO (Authentic, Energy, Reflective, Open) design principles that are also evident in the rounded corners, transparency, lightness, smooth, soft light of the rest of the AERO ux designs.

What was the ‘cost’ of the project? For me, this is not really a relevant or interesting question. The quick answer is: trivial, miniscule compared to the cost of developing even a simple feature for Windows. A more interesting question that may generate even more useful discussion and answers may be this: what was (or is) the value of this project?

Something subtle I learned directly from Robert Fripp many many years ago:

That which is necessary has value.
That which is optional carries a cost.

This is my paraphrase. This was the topic of a very useful dinner conversation at Red Lion House (Robert’s Guitar Craft house) in 1988.

From this view, focusing on the ‘cost’ of this project might imply that a Windows brand sound is an optional, unnecessary luxury, or a useless ‘throwaway’ design element – a tradeoff for some other higher value opportunity. However, in our now media-centric world, I view this sound as 100% necessary and ‘un-tradable’ for some other feature. Ignoring sound (or considering it ‘optional’) in product design is foolish and, IMHO, out of tune with the primary brand and media-driven changes going on in technology and user interface design today.

And that could be a topic for another very long interview or blog post.

But enough for tonight.

Please keep writing and doing your great work.
Best wishes,
-Steve

* * *

Crossfader Kickoff

During a Holiday dinner just before Christmas, my friend Darek asked me to contribute a blog to the new Crossfader site.

The new site launced in sync with CES and NAMM last week while I was on vacation. From a quick glance, there are still a few bugs in the site (and typos to fix) but great to see this kick-off.

From the intro blurb there:

My name is Steve Ball. If find it challenging to write these kinds of brief bio-degrading-blurbs because I feel like I’ve already lived about four parallel lives as musician, engineer, entrepreneur, and designer. Either I'm just really old, or I’ve done a lot of stuff. Or both.

The past couple of decades are kind of a high-def blur, and I’m not sure I really fit very cleanly in one little box or paragraph. Most recently, I’ve been Group Program Manager of the WAVE (Windows Audio Video Excellence) team at Microsoft, responsible for the new sounds in Windows Vista as well as the audio and video infrastructure (drivers, APIs, control panels, user experience) in Windows and Windows Vista. Many in and around Microsoft know me as an engineer, people and program manager. Many others all over the world know me as a musician and guitarist. Some know me as a sound designer. Some know me as a graphic designer and cartoonist. Others know me as a serial entrepreneur having been on the ground floor of Adaptive Networks (early powerline networking startup out of MIT,) Guitar Craft Services (support business for the League of Crafty Guitarists), Rockslide (screen savers and websites for the music industry) and BootlegTV (media transcoding + management + distribution + monetization startup funded by Sandhill Road during Bubble 1.0) and Ximer (stillborn startup doing dynamic music for game consoles.)

I spent close to a decade the late eighties and early nineties practicing, performing, teaching, and recording with Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists and various League spin-off groups. A large part of my world-wide network of friends is still based on many of the contacts I made as part of the ongoing Guitar Craft project. I almost burned down Robert Fripp’s house while living there through one cold winter in 1988, heated only by a small coal burning stove.

Coincidentally, Tobin Buttram also stayed there the following winter and almost destroyed Robert’s car by putting water in the gas tank. In fact, Tobin and I have much history in common as you may discover if you are bored enough to keep reading our blogs on Crossfader.

I believe one of my most useful talents is in assembling unlikely teams to take on seemingly impossible projects and translating between disciplines. And I still feel like both a student and fascinated kid most of the time. Because I often act as a sort human crossfader between these disciplines, perhaps it’s appropriate for me say ‘yes’ to Darek’s request that I blog here.

I hope that I can help demystify the process and hard work associated with being an allegedly creative person who has often simply been in the right place at the right time.

Postings on the new site still appear to be handled manually, but I've given Darek a few advance posts that begin to share some of the diverse stories and histories around my work and play as a technology-driven musician.

* * *

Flying Home

Thanks again to saint Buzz for meeting us so late at the airport.

Next: the strange and difficult transition back to Seattle.

* * *