Category Archives: Branding

It’s easy to take it for granted, but if you use a PC at work or home, one of your most frequent daily sonic experiences is the Windows startup music - that brief moment of ear candy as your machine boots up.

In production terms, you might think this music’s fairly trivial.

But over the last couple of decades, as version after version of Windows has hit the market, startup music has moved inexorably from software development afterthought, to major Hollywood-style throw-money-at-it extravaganza.

Think I’m exaggerating? I’ve just stumbled across this video, which gives an insight into the production process for Vista’s theme music. In case you need reminding, this “theme” is a flimsy four notes (not especially hooky ones, at that) over a wispy chord. Pleasant enough – probably an afternoon’s work.

Except that to create this theme, Microsoft brought legendary guitarist and ambient music guru Robert Fripp over to Redmond to lay down a day’s worth of “soundscapes” which would then be edited down into (as far as I can tell) a single chord underpinning the tune.

Or to quote Microsoft themselves:

This single session resulted in over six hours of multi-channel raw tracks including hundreds of melodies, textures, soundscapes, and orchestrations.  After this session, it took another three months of orchestration, iteration, remixing and refinement to select the final four seconds that became the final Windows Vista startup sound:  a “glassy” Fripp melody, a harmony by Steve Ball, and a “Win-dows Vis-ta” rhythm contributed by composer, Tucker Martine.  This all on top of a brief Fripp Soundscape that fades out as the user lands on the Windows Vista log-on screen.

Nice work if you can get it.

But let’s step back for a moment, and see how we got to this point. Here’s a compilation of Windows themes from version 3.1 to the present day. I guarantee you’ll find it more evocative than you expect.

Underneath: my “professional” opinion on each one. I’d love to hear your take on them too.

Windows 3.1

Look in the dictionary under “rudimentary”. You’ll find this.

Windows 95

The music which launched the “superstar muso” trend within Microsoft – created, as it was, by everyone’s favourite egghead (well, mine anyway) Brian Eno. In Eno’s words:

The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I’d been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, “Here’s a specific problem – solve it.”

The thing from the agency said: “We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,” this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said “and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long.”

I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It’s like making a tiny little jewel.

In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I’d finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.

Windows NT Workstation 4.0

Rather evocative of this 1980s “digitised thistle” ident for Scottish Television. What d’you mean I carry too much musical trivia in my head?

Windows 98

This one is most notable for its use of stereo. About halfway through, the theme suddenly spreads super-wide in a frankly gratuitous way (like a character in a 3D movie sticking their hand ostentatiously out of the screen). But no matter – it does sound gorgeous.

Windows 2000

I have a major soft spot for the Windows 2000 music, largely because it feels – out of all the themes – the closest to an old-school TV ident. Like this beauty:

Windows ME

Like the operating system itself – barely worth acknowledging.

Windows XP

Can’t help but be disappointed by this one. Neither hooky nor atmospheric, it falls frustratingly between several stools.

Vista (Beta version)

Now this one I do like -it’s classy, reassuring and substantial. I can’t quite understand why it was dropped in favour of the eventual Vista sound package, other than (my best guesses):

• This package was thought to be “not airy and translucent enough” for Vista’s brand values;
• Someone at Microsoft thought getting Robert Fripp in would make for better press.

Either way, I’d like to shake the hand of whoever composed this one. Now, where are those settings? Control Panel… Hardware and Sound… Change System Sound…