Conference napalm::commusic_v1

975.0. "Spoof on CIM and Music" by PLAYA::MERLIN (Music AI = *CERO MUSICIANS*) Sun Oct 11 1987 18:20

To all COMMUSIC friends...

From : Some other conference (Dick Danek, BPO)
thru : Orlando Saez (AME SGO/#5)


My friend, Dick, wrote this topic which I think you may enjoy. He thought
about DEC CIM (Computer Integrated Manufacturing) strategy as our big boss's
(Ludwig Von Kenolsen) biography. If you're somehow involved with CIM...
go ahead is a little long but you'll enjoy it. Any inputs are welcome.



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Note 24.0              Another Look At Working Groups...              No replies
BPOV09::DANEK                                       261 lines   6-OCT-1987 23:21
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Once upon a time there lived a very wise man.  He was a master musician and
composer, and his name was Ludwig Von Kenolsen.

His was a world of musical beauty.  From his earliest years, Ludwig would com-
pose and perform melodies for his family after their evening meals.  He was a
constant source of pleasure and pride for his parent this way.

When he grew older, his father sent him to a conservatory of music, the
Medoldia Interestinga Tunesia (MIT) conservatory.  His training there gave him
the skills to transcribe his wondrous melodies onto paper...and while there,
he made many such melodies and transcriptions.

So great was his skill, and successful the education at the conservatory, that
other gifted musicians would eagerly approached him, wanting only to be able
to reproduce his music on their own grand and expensive instruments!  They
knew they could greatly please the multitudes in their lands this way...for
the people at large, themselves, were already learning to crave the "next
generation" music from Ludwig's great mind.

As the years went by, the musicians playing Ludwig's music grew in number,
but they also grew in a very disorganized manner!  They would work in small
groups and would compete amoung themselves, playing loudly and aggressively
but not cohesively.  This often made them sound much worse instead of better.
Although they thought they were playing Ludwig's music properly, the sounds
would just not fit together!  You could hear a cellist fingering a delicate
melody in one cafe, for example, while in the one next door you could hear an
electric guitarist fuzz boxing a strong beat (sometimes know as the Kenolsen
New Age Sound).

It became obvious to Ludwig, as he would walk through the village streets,
that this was not good.  He believed that his music needed to be better pre-
sented to the world.  Perhaps if his music were more connected with the musi-
cians and the musicians with each other...perhaps that would work!  In time,
Ludwig Von Kenolsen realized he would need to organize these musicians!

                         -----------------------------

So Ludwig built a great music center.  Here he could bring the musicians to-
gether, people who were now only islands of musical opportunity, and he could
begin to orchestrate a singular, unified way of making music (something we
would, in years to come, call the "Kenolsen Style of Music Making").

For a while things went well.  Musicians learned to work together, to stop
making random, disjointed music, and to start making good, quality music.  But
it was still only coming out in "batches of music"...

...and Ludwig Von Kenolsen knew that yet something else was not working!  For
when all the musicians were together playing "Big Music", then they sounded no
better than when they were alone out on the streets.  

And, although the villagers still came to his center to hear the music...they
would sometimes leave unhappy.  And Ludwig knew that, in time, they would stop
coming altogether.

Perhaps if his music were more INTEGRATED with the musicians and the musicians
integrated each other...perhaps that would work!  Integration was a new idea
for Ludwig!

                         -----------------------------

So Ludwig Von Kenolsen called his best musicians together and challenged them
to participate in solving his dilema.  They pondered and pondered, considered
this and considered that, and suddely came to a single thought!  Why not
create a committee!  The result...

...the Creatively Interesting Music (CIM) Forum was set in motion!

The CIM Forum worked on the problems and, through some genuinely inspirational
and original thinking, created six groups of experts whose jobs were to con-
centrate on the functions and domains within the music center separately, but
fix the whole of the problems that existed there.  The working groups were: 
    
    o   the Business of Making Music and Earning Money Strategy Working Group
    o   the Let's Worry About The Musicians Working Group
    o   the Architecture Of The Place Where We Make Music Working Group
    o   the From Ludwig's Mind To The Musicians' Instruments Working Group
    o   the Music Playing On An Ongoing Basis Working Group
    o   and the Working Group That Prints Tickets, Collects Money, And All The
        Other Stuff
    
                         -----------------------------

THE WORKING GROUPS!!!

The Business of Making Music and Earning Money Strategy Working Group decided
that they needed to have strategies which supported Ludwig Von Kenolsen's
Visions and Goals.  They learned from Ludwig's top musical chief, Amadeus
Billhansen, that these really were:
    
    o   to ensure the villagers were always happy, happier with Ludwig's music
        than with any other composer's music.
    o   to always having the best musical instruments and musicians.
    o   and to make money!

They decided that Ludwig's music should be orchestrated so that musicians
would always play EXACTLY THE SAME MUSIC WHEN THEY PLAYED AND BE ABLE TO PLAY
IT TOGETHER.  Sometimes this would be a symphony, sometimes chamber music
scores, and sometimes rock-and-roll!  But everyone would do it the same way
...having the musicians play TOGETHER...so that the music always sounded
simple, clear, and elegant despite being played by so many different musi-
cians.

This working group worked so hard that, at times, when they were very tired,
you could hear them chanting...

        Link to the Visions and Goals, Oh my!
        Link to the Visions and Goals, Oh my!

        [Sung to a tune made popular by Dorothy and the Scarecrow
        as they walked through the dark forest, wary of lions and
        tigers and bears (oh my!)]


The Architecture Of The Place Where We Make Music Working Group felt that this
strategy stuff was good.  It enabled them to work toward making sure that the
design of the environment where the musicians did their work was JUST RIGHT.
Why it it would even easily let them comply with the notion, "The Right Music,
In The Right Place, At The Right Time"!

So they made sure that everyone knew that, for example, when a symphony was to
be played:
    
    o   that the stage would need to be three feet above the level of the
        audience...and that's where the musicians would work.
    o   that there needed to be 100 chairs for the musicians for a full
        symphony.
    o   that each musician needed a place for the musical design information,
        their scores, to be held in place for them.
    o   that some musicians needed more floor space than others.
    o   that instruments needed to clustered according to the sounds they made
        (so violins were in one place together, and wood instruments were in
        another place, and the bass drums were way in back)

Such were the things the architecture group worried about...and when they
worked, together, often in the background, they could hear...

        Link to the Visions and Goals, Oh my!
        Link to the Visions and Goals, Oh my!


The Let's Worry About The Musicians Working Group made sure that, in light of
the terrific work being done by all the groups, the musicians weren't forgot-
ten!  So, they made sure that the musicians:
    
    o   were always properly trained to read the music scores.
    o   were always given enough time to practice their instrument playing
        before performances.
    o   knew how to take instructions from the conductor...better yet how to
        participate with the conductor in music making!
    o   had an appropriate rewards, weren't overworked, and got all those
        other neat things people think they need.
    o   were given ample opportunity for receiving applause from the audience,
        and that it wasn't just Luwig who got all the praise.
    o   had musical work satisfaction!!!

There were many, many other "people things" this group worried about...

...and when they worked real hard, sometimes they could hear, somewhere off in
the distance...

        Link to the Visions and Goals, Oh my!
        Link to the Visions and Goals, Oh my!


The From Ludwig's Mind To The Musicians' Instruments Working Group worried
about the many different ways Ludwig Von Kenolsen could put his musical ideas
onto paper and then to the musicians.  For there were only a few experts who
could easily read Ludwig's now very complex musical designs.

And so there had to be special ways to transcribe Ludwig's music into all the
forms that all the musicians could easily read, and from which they could
correctly reproduce the melodies.

This group also had to worry about telling Ludwig that, sometimes, some of the
music he was creating was too difficult for the musicians to play!  This was a
particularly difficult mission, some thought it a Holy Mission, because Ludwig
was so much more important then mere musicians.  He might not "like" the idea
that someone should tell HIM what to do!  So this working group had to make up
ways to cleverly trick Ludwig into something called "Writing Music For
Musicability".

...and what made matters worse was that the musicians would occasionally find
NEW THINGS to complain about...so the methods to trick Ludwig had to ALWAYS
WORK and ALWAYS WORK WELL...so that Ludwig could make changes to his music,
and the musicians could learn to play them quickly...so the villagers would
never get upset!

Another thing the From Ludwig's Mind To The Musicians' Instruments Working
Group had to do was to make sure that the music transcribers knew which parts
of Ludwig's compositions to prepare and pass on to which different musician.
This was done so that the bass drum musician didn't get the music information
for the viola, and that the piccolo player didn't get rock-and-roll music!

This was truly a great challenge for this working group...and they had many
other things to do...

...and, yes, often, from somewhere they couldn't quite make out, they'd
hear...

        Link to the Visions and Goals, Oh my!
        Link to the Visions and Goals, Oh my!


And now that the playing of Ludwig Von Kenolsen's music could be done at least
ONCE properly, the Music Playing On An Ongoing Basis Working Group had to wor-
ry about how it could be done over and over and over.

They made sure that musicians had proper access to the center to prepare them-
selves for work.  They made sure the center was clean, that the music scores
were properly sequenced and in place for when the musicians arrived to do the
playing.  

They had to make sure that other processes and activities in the center were
running smoothly.  For example, they had to make sure that if a symphony was
to be played that symphony tickets were printed properly...and to do that the
information that a symphony was even going to be performed next Friday needed
to be controlled (in case Ludwig changed his mind)!  And they always needed to
be able to respond quickly, which made them REALLY DEPEND of some on the
things the other working groups were doing.

Some of the work involved making sure that the production of music was done
predictably, efficiently, and always done consistently with what Ludwig want-
ed.  They would micro balance the breaks between rock-and-roll songs when that
kind of music was being played, and micro balance the length of symphonic
movements when symphonies were being played.  They needed to make sure that
such balancing planning systems were available to do this...

...and they needed to find the source of the recurring sound...

        Link to the Visions and Goals, Oh my!
        Link to the Visions and Goals, Oh my!

...that always seemed to be around just before a performance for the villag-
ers!


Finally, the Working Group That Prints Tickets, Collects Money, And All The
Other Stuff worried about the rest of the business that went on in the center.
Sometimes they thought that they WERE everything in the center, because those
things that they DID worry about, in one way or another, was the same as the
work of the other groups.  But most of the time they concentrated on making
sure that, for example, when the "Concerto Which Is Better Than Big Blue
Music" was being played, that paper for tickets was ordered, that different
paper for the musical scores the musicians needed was ordered, and that tick-
ets sold and collected.  They would even have to find out if the villagers,
who came to hear Ludwig's music, were happy when they left!

Now the villagers would be even happier if they didn't have to hear...

        Link to the Visions and Goals, Oh my!
        Link to the Visions and Goals, Oh my!

...as they were leaving.

                         -----------------------------

And so, in time, the working groups did their work well.  The music center
prospered, Ludwig Von Kenolsen made money, the villagers were satisfied
always...

...and everyone lived happily ever after!