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Researchers Create an Automatic Backup Band for Singers
Researchers at Microsoft Labs are hoping to allow untrained singers to have their own automatic backup band in the near future. A new piece of software, "MySong", promises to take a sung melody and using a probability computation algorithm, generate an appropriate chord accompaniment. There is also a video of the process on the Microsoft Labs website. "'The idea is to let a creative but musically untrained individual get a taste of song writing and music creation,' Morris told New Scientist. 'There was nothing out there that could take a sung vocal melody as an input and then generate appropriate chords to accompany it. [...] Since people rarely sing at precise frequencies, MySong compares a sung melody to the 12 standard musical notes. It then feeds an approximate sequence of notes to the system's chord probability computation algorithm. This algorithm has been trained, through analysis of 300 rock, pop, country and jazz songs, to recognize fragments of melody and chords that work well together, as well as chords that complement each another.'"
Linkin Park songs...You'll be amazed at how different they aren't.
Somebody took two songs, pitch-shifted one (and probably tweaked the timing a bit) and built an MP3 with one song in each speaker.
That is and it isn't true. As someone who's often responsible for improvising harmonies to match a melody, it's quite possible to provide an interesting harmony to a boring melody and vice versa.
My personal favorite example here is the popular song "Turkey in the Straw". The traditional harmony goes something like this (assuming the key of C):
verse: C-C-C-C-C-C-G-G-C-C-C-C-C-C-G-C
chorus: C-C-C-C-F-F-F-F-C-C-C-C-C-C-G-C
However, this is a very nice more complex harmony:
verse: C-C-C-C-C-Am-Dm-G-C-G/D-C/E-C/E-F-D/F#-G-C
chorus: C-C-C-C-F-F/E-Dm-G-C-D-D#dim-C/E-F-D/F#-G-C
The melody works either way, but the harmonies are quite different.
I am officially gone from
If somebody asks to be accompanied on an unknown song, most musicians will initially try the 4 chord progression known as Rhythm changes (named for Gershwin's "I've got Rhythm"). Often it works, and in listening to MS kludge it seems they likes their Rhythm changes.