Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
This is nothing new. The first piece of music hardware/software I saw that did this was called Vivace or something like that and it came out back in 1994. There are also other programs in the past and present that do this.
Now they just need to have artificial voices sing music, and random word generators to make lyrics, and the music companies can stop paying those pesky artists!
That's about what I was thinking. Actually the first thoughts out of my head were:
"Oh, for fuck's sake! Is creating and playing music really that fucking hard?" I mean, people have been doing this shit for CENTURIES, folks! Millennia even!
I can just see it now:
Seacrest: Welcome to Microsoft Idol! And welcome to tonight's first contestant, Sanjaya! In our last round, Sanjaya blue-screened our backup computer band....can he make a comeback tonight? Let's find out!
My blog
Sure, first you reduce every song to a sequence of twelve standard notes. Then you start applying regular expressions to match the patterns, and before long it's meloncholy elephants everywhere.
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.
...even if you can get it to create long, coherent chord progressions, it still will have to stick to chords that match whatever was sung. Even if the system knows how to do jazzy chord changes and secondary function chords and such, an amateur singer won't sing a melody that will flow well with that.
The melody and the chord structure fit together very intimately. If someone doesn't "hear" the chords they want in their head, they probably won't sing a melody that will need an interesting chord progression behind it to make it work.
And of course, for any given melody, there are multiple possible progressions (do you want a IV or a I chord here? Or maybe a V7/V?). The singer will need to have the musical sense to choose which one they want.
I 'discovered' that the best way to sing in tune (with recordings, or a group) is to cup one hand about one foot (@30cm) in front of your mouth and cup the other hand behind one of your ears.
While singing, your voice bounces off the hand in front of your mouth and then gets redirected into your ear. Then you can adjust the pitch of your voice to harmonize with that of the recording. This really makes a difference in your ability to sing in tune.
I thought that this was my secret trick until I saw the BeeGees on television long ago and Robin Gibb was using the same 'hand behind ear' technique to get his complex falsetto parts just right. The studio monitor fed his voice towards his ears.
I know, I know, the BeeGees, don't laugh, during the years 1975 to 1979 they were best male ensemble vocalist group in the popular music world. Dorks maybe by current standards, but who are Slashdaughters to judge in that regard?
Anyway, I realize that the last thing a Slashdot reader will ever do is sing. But most Slashdot readers have an obsession with doing things right, should the need ever arise, then in regards to singing, this is how it can be done right.
I suspect that this Microsoft program, like all Microsoft pop culture products, will go nowhere and die a slow, embarrassing death should it ever get released. It sounds to me (bad pun) like the auto-play features found on those plastic WalMart keyboards that are too cheap and dumb to have MIDI ports included on the back. Microsoft should put this code into open-source and take a tax write-off on the development costs.
And speaking of which, just exactly WHY is Microsoft researching automatic computer music product generation? If I recall correctly, don't they make personal computer operating systems and business software. I guess that it must be that since they found and eliminated all the bugs in their primary products that they were looking for a new challenge. And they want to get some of the glory that is coming from the Rock Star plastic button guitar weirdness that is currently popular among the less-musically-inclined sector of the population.
Someone did the same with Nickelback (or some other similar crappy band) a few years ago.
Ah-ha! Google found it for me:
http://www.thewebshite.net/nickelback.htm
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.