The Composition Development Kit
Pieces written for Quintet.net can employ a variety of different approaches from free improvisation to precise notation, which can be mixed freely. Since composing for the environment can be cumbersome, a composition development kit has been added to facilitate the creation of pieces. Ideally, the composer will first collect and organize his/her audio and video materials, for instance by simulating the piece in an editing tool such as Final Cut. Appropriate samples are either atmospheric or gestural in nature, and often include spoken text, processed instrumental, “extended technique” sounds as well as rich synthetic sounds.
The Composition Development Kit consists of several editors: a Bank Editor is a visual editor that lets the user arrange a chosen set of samples into instruments with defined pitch and envelopes for each sound. Instruments, in turn, are organized into banks.
Another visual editor, the Score Editor allows the creation of scores, which consist of unlimited numbers of parts.
These parts can be selected by the conductor during the performance or sent automatically from a timeline.
The materials which make up a Quintet.net composition (title, references to bank, score and timeline files, as well as a list of timeline triggers to be executed during the performance) are referred to by a “.cond” file, which can be dynamically loaded into the Quintet.net Conductor. It shows on the bottom of the Conductor window.