DESCRIPTION – HOW THE SOFTWARE WORKS

The CinePrompt® software functions as an unconventional musical score for improvising musicians, giving them the possibility to synch and connect visual content to instructions, displayed on a screen or a monitor.

While a traditional musical score determines the What, When, How and Who of musical events, the instructions on the screen for the musicians offer an “alternative” score that gives a vast variety of different types of information on the When, How, and Who events, leaving the What to play entirely to the musicians choice. CinePrompt® thus provides the musician with great freedom of personal musical expression, making it a great tool for the skilled improviser.

The film itself as well as all important additional information, instructions and various other stimuli for the musical performance are displayed in various windows and fields of the musician’s video screen.

There is the field of the “Instructions Bar” (for functional musical instructions that incorporates elements of various concepts of conducted improvisation and instant composition like Walter Thompson’s “Soundpainting”, Butch Morris’ system of “Conduction” and John Zorn’s “Cobra”).

Other fields include a number of “Sliders” (for specific musical instructions, determining: dynamics, tempo, rhythmic clarity, articulation, pitch range, melodic skittishness, phrasing, harmonic clarity and chordal density), the “Mood Bar” (description of emotions), a field for “Dramatic Category”, “Musical Comment Instructions” (instructions on how to convey the emotional content of a scene), “Instrumentation”, various “Timers” that make the structure of the film easily visible, “Title” and “Description” of each scene.

In order not to distract from the action of the film on the main window, nearly all additional info is displayed using simple symbols and graphics easily recognisable to the musician with a quick glance at the monitor screen.