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Tritone Symphonic (+Tritone)

Tritone Symphonic (+Tritone)

Submitted By Christian Cosas (csquared)

Description

Low-quality mono sample (207.3kb MP3). Actual alerts are much higher quality and in stereo.

This is a bundled pair of soundsets. Tritone Symphonic is my first Adium soundset, created in May 2006. It's an orchestral soundset built around the musical interval known as the tritone, aka "The Devil's Interval". It's a dissonant and unstable interval, and has a spooky, off-kilter feel to it. The second set, Tritone, is a minimalist version using only a vibraphone in place of the orchestral instrumentation. Each one used to be available under its own separate heading, but I decided to combine them since they're encoded with AAC (128 kbps) and small enough to fit into one archive.

With version 1.5, I rewrote and rescored the Contact On and Contact Off sounds. I took out the reedy English horn and simplified the movement of the figure (and matched the movement in the vibraphone arrangement). For those who prefer the original sounds, they're still available; just go into your Event Preferences and assign "Off" and "On" in place of "Off1.5" and "On1.5".

This collection, like my others, is a compositional experiment for me. I've designed this set to express a unified musical idea while also remaining simple and functional. Many other soundsets (including the official AIM and MSN alerts) merely resort to using basic major triads and consonant intervals like a perfect fifth or fourth. I wanted to develop something with a little more sophisticated music theory, incorporating dissonances and suspensions.

The sounds activate on the following events: Connect, Disconnect, Contact Sign On, Contact Sign Off, New Message Received, Message Sent, Message Received, Error, File Transfer Request, File Transfer Begin, and File Transfer Complete. The MP3 sample at the top of the description plays the alerts in that order.

Please, if you're going to dock this soundset's rating, leave a comment of constructive criticism on how I can improve it.

Copyright © 2006, 2007 by Christian Cosas. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Changes

v1.5 - 16 November 2007 Rewrote and rescored Contact On/Off sounds.
v1.3 - 8 August 2007 Combined the Symphonic and minimalist arrangements into a single archive.
v1.2 - 7 July 2006 Added File Transfer Request, File Transfer Begin, and File Transfer Complete alerts.
v1.1 - 11 June 2006 Compressed AIFFs into AACs for smaller file size.
v1.0 - 17 May 2006 Initial release.

Comments

You can reply to individual comments by clicking the "Reply" link next to each.

# by SamGwilym on 06/11/06 at 12:26:42

Every event now feels like an alien is lurking around the corner. I live in fear!

Good job.

# by cptyesterday on 06/20/06 at 23:56:44

Awesome sound set, where did you study composition?

# by csquared on 06/21/06 at 00:46:25

Heh, thank you—I'm actually mostly self-taught, but I took some music theory classes at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

# by Cruciarius on 07/10/06 at 16:42:00

amazing sound set, but like most sound sets, i need to turn my volume up very high, in order to hear it. :(

# by csquared on 07/11/06 at 18:33:05

Is anyone else having a problem with this? With all of my soundsets, including this one, I try to master the levels so that they're right on the edge of peaking. I'd increase the volume even more, but I'd prefer not to have the distortion. They're pretty loud when I hook up headphones or computer speakers through the audio jack; most of the time, I have the system volume set to about half. In fact, I don't think they're any softer than Apple's own system alerts.

Cruciarius, are you just using your Mac's built-in speakers, or dedicated headphones/computer speakers? Also, under Preferences > Events, make sure that your sounds are set to an appropriate volume (mine's set to max).

# by Cruciarius on 07/11/06 at 18:42:29

it's an ongoing "problem" that i have with almost every sound set. i made a thread about it, here:

http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopi....php?t=8828

# by adiumlover on 08/10/07 at 00:09:19

I'm assuming you guys have checked the volume in the "Events" pref pane in Adium? That might help if you haven't tried it...

# by andylytical on 11/14/07 at 02:04:27

Even better than Elysium! Very creative use of tritones. I really like the symphonic set. Easily 5 stars (more if I could). This one did get me to switch away from my Starcraft soundset. Ima leave this one on for a while.

# by andylytical on 11/15/07 at 13:38:19

Ok, this one only lasted an hour yesterday morning. With contacts coming and going during the day, the "contact on" and "contact off" sounds quickly become annoying and almost grate on the ears. (Good job on capturing the essence of tritones!). I really like the other sounds, but I think the contact on/off sounds should change. IMO, it's gotta be short, simple, and something that's easy to ignore if you're busy with something else.

# by csquared on 11/15/07 at 15:14:42

Thanks, andylytical. I've thought about changing those for a while now; my Contact On/Off sounds have gotten progressively shorter and quieter with each soundset I write. I think I'd still like to keep them scored with woodwinds, but just simplify the movement to a two-note figure instead of a three-note figure. I think a lot of the harshness comes from some bad equalization and normalization in editing (it was my first one!); I'll make sure to clean that up when I revisit it, too.

Have you checked out my Water Is Wide and Rezso soundsets? Those are the ones I personally keep coming back to (besides Elysium) for usability.

FYI, I created Tritone Symphonic while I was directing the music for a local high school production of West Side Story. Explains a lot, doesn't it? ;)

# by Xjs on 11/17/07 at 10:39:08

Very great sound set. Five ducks, I'm using it for a while now.
The new "Sign on" and "Sign off" are even better.

# by twfarley on 01/29/08 at 18:23:33

Wow, it sounds like I'm playing Luigi's Mansion! Great work!

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860.76kb (10103 downloads)

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3.70 / 125 votes
Current Version: 1.5
Last Updated: 11/16/07
Credits:
MIDI sounds generated with the GarageBand Orchestra Jam Pack

Edited with Sound Studio