Microsoft windows 95 startup sound composer windows#

Microsoft windows 95 startup sound composer windows#

Furthermore, Microsoft lit the Empire State Building in the United States to show the Windows logo, and similar efforts were made in the largest markets across the world in order to mark the launch of Windows 95. The OS launched with a promotional video that used Rolling Stones’ Start Me Up single, and Microsoft released additional material featuring Friends stars Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry. Microsoft invested heavily into making Windows 95 a hit, and marketing played a key part in the company’s strategy. Their most recent launch is called Reflection. Additionally, he worked together with Peter Chilvers on generative music apps for iOS, including Bloom. Windows 95 wasn’t Eno’s only computing project, as he also created a substantial part of the music included in Spore, a game launched by Electronic Arts in 2008. Furthermore, the Microsoft Sound also ended up being used as a ringtone on smartphones, as its length made it just the perfect choice for a text message or email alert. There are now several copies of the audio file uploaded to YouTube, each with hundreds of thousands of views, while many people exported the file to use it in later versions of Windows. Truth be told, the Windows 95 startup sound, also known as the Microsoft Sound, has become of the most famous ever included in a Microsoft product. No specifics were provided on the app used to make the sound, and the source was never published publicly for a reason that’s not hard to figure out.Ĭreating such a short sound file for Windows 95 changed Eno’s perspective about this work, he admitted, because returning to “working with pieces that were like three minutes long seemed like oceans of time.” I don’t like them,” he said in an interview with BBC Radio 4 in 2011. All of these samples were made on an Apple computer for a reason that you’re not going to believe. The musician created not one, not two, but 84 different samples, out of which Microsoft picked just one. “We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,” Eno cites the engineers as saying, adding that one of the last things they mentioned was the sound had to be just 3 seconds long. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, ‘Here's a specific problem – solve it,’” he said in a 1996 interview.Įno explains that Microsoft designers Mark Malamud and Erik Gavriluk had very specific requirements for the Windows 95 sound.

“I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually.

Eno recalls that Microsoft’s request to create a startup sound for Windows came just at the right time because he was “completely bereft of ideas.”