A new plugin for Sibelius and Finale music engraving software is taking the music world by storm.<\/p>\n
The new \u201cTitleizer\u201d plugin from Demisoft Technology systematically analyses a piece’s duration, instrumentation and pitch content and automatically generates a meaningless and unrelated title for the piece.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince Haydn\u2019s time, we\u2019ve all known that music sells better when it has a completely meaningless title that is completely unrelated and irrelevant to the piece of music it is appended to,\u201d said Demisoft CEO, Filbert Verdorbenham.<\/p>\n
\u201cPost 1975, when composers world-wide realised the only way to get their music heard was to give their pieces catchy\u00a0but meaningless titles, coming up with those titles has become an ever greater burden to the creative process. With so much at stake artistically and commercially, some composers spend minutes, even tens of minutes, struggling to come up with the right title for a piece they would otherwise have to call Overture in F Major. Nobody is going to program an Overture in F Major any more but \u201cGreen Soundings\u201d is a sure winner, and the Titleizer plugin came up with that title automatically as soon as the composer of Overture in F Major pressed \u201csave\u201d.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Titleizer\u2019s algorithm automatically detects the musical language of a work and assigns a title appropriate to the target audience. \u201cWe\u2019ve noticed that throughout the various lines of the post-Webern high modernist schools there is a preference for single-word titles,\u201d said Verdorbenham. For something in the Ligeti\/Berio\/Boulez vane, we prefer one word of 3-4 syllables. Often it is more effective to reach out to a foreign language, or even to add a meaningless diacritical mark to an English word. When in doubt, we also recommend adding a meaningless number We were thrilled by the success one of our clients had with an otherwise unremarkable 9 minute serial work for 13 piece ensemble which the Titleizer auto-named Invesitg\u00e2ti\u00f3ns 9.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more extreme works in the modernist line, including those of the New Complexity school, finding a suitable extreme title is important. \u201cPost-Ferneyhough music needs a word and a number comination that give the audience a good example of the severity of the musical experience. The people who listen to this music are pretty depraved and won\u2019t settle for the easy-listening stylings of Birtwistle and Stockhausen. These are listeners who look at Boulez the way most classical musicians look at Justin Bieber. \u00a0They\u2019re looking for works like \u201cMutilations X,\u201d which was a big hit for one of our clients, or works that imply deep but carefully mediated disillusionment with humanity like \u201cPrevarications Beta.\u201d It’s got to combine severity, discomfort and pretension in just the right balance”<\/p>\n
Minimalist works are best presented using the time-honored \u201crandom adjective + high energy noun\u201d formula. \u201cOne of our clients made the Pulitzer short list this year with \u201cExploding Vectors,\u201d while another managed to wangle a Proms commission for his otherwise unremarkable 7 minute \u201cLuscious Stampede.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, today\u2019s most popular new music genre, Kitchen-Sink-ism, combines modernist disregard for melody and a minimalist lack of harmonic vocabulary with an over-reliance on film music clich\u00e9s and pitched metallic percussion. \u201cWe\u2019re so excited about the results we\u2019ve been getting for Kitchen-sink-ist works in the last couple of years,\u201d said Verdorbenham.\u201cWe can get great results by just tweaking the minimalist format, avoiding nouns\u00a0of action and replacing them with obscure colors and \u00a0language used on the Weather Channel. Golden Cumulous was a very successful oboe concerto for one of our artists, and we were also very proud of Jade Fog, a very formulaic but heavily over-orchestrated 6 minute concert opener which recently got a $75,000 commission fee out of a plumbing supply oligarch on the East Coast.\u201d<\/p>\n
With such a successful plugin, what comes next? “Well, we always knew we’d have to refine things to avoid overlap” said Verdorbenham. “Titleizer 1.1 was a little overgenerous with titles ending in “ions” because those are so popular with audiences. Some of the early titles in generated by 2.0 Beta include promising ones like “Despicable Crunch” for 11 viola da gambas and “Limpid Rectitude” for Brass Choir.”<\/p>\n
Titleizer 2.0 is being released in June and is adding a new \u201csubtitle\u201d feature. \u201cImportant as catchy but meaningless titles are,\u201d said Verdorbenham, \u201ca good subtitle can help an unknown composer get noticed or help keep a fading brand viable a little longer. We\u2019re already looking forward to 3 major US orchestras performing Invesitg\u00e2ti\u00f3ns 2.3: Exhumed Soundings\u201d in 2018-9.<\/p>\n
For an addition cost, subscribers can also take advantage of the new Instant Program Note feature which saves the composer the minutes of time often needed to come up with a plausible programmatic justification for an otherwise abstract piece of sound art.<\/p>\n
What next for this innovative company? \u201cThe Titleizer has shown that technology can free artists from the time-consuming creative process. We\u2019re now working on a Composerizer which will analyse a given composer\u2019s record collection and blog posts and generate pieces in his or her chosen style in just seconds. It\u2019s a brave new world out there!\u201d<\/p>\n
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UPDATE<\/p>\n
My old friend Daniel Meyers has made satire a reality with this incredibly funny piece\/title generator.<\/a><\/p>\n