A friend of mine brought the latest product of Bill-soft (aka Microsoft) to my attention: Microsoft Songsmith. Songsmith immediately generates a musical accompaniment after a voice is recorded. The user can either go with the choices of Songsmith, or the user can adjust tempo, genre (such as pop, R&B, hip-hop, rock, jazz, or reggae), and overall mood (e.g. to make it joyful, sad, jazzy, etc.)
Well… That is of course loads of fun… for about 5 minutes! 😉
Luckily the creative minds of people quickly came up with a more interesting way to use this program: Instead of making a fool of yourself and singing yourself they discovered it’s a lot more fun to take vocal tracks of well-known songs and run those trough Songsmith, resulting in unusual chord sequences that are nevertheless generally in the correct key of the vocal melody.
The first results have appeared on YouTube:
- Billy Idol – White wedding
- the Police – Roxanne
- Survivor – Eye of the Tiger
- Eagles – Hotel California
- Marvin Gaye – I heard it through the grapevine
Each one is… interesting, to say the least! It’s a good thing Bill made his money in computers. I don’t think he’d do very well as composer or record producer…
Loads of fun nonetheless! Get a copy, and try it out on your greatest hits collection! 🙂
(it is commercial software, but the trial version will let you mutilate 6 hours worth of music before you have to pay Bill…)