Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates' Plan To Destroy Music, Note By Note
theodp writes "Remember Mr. Microphone? If you thought music couldn't get worse, think again. Perhaps with the help of R&D tax credits, Microsoft Research has spawned Songsmith, software that automatically creates a tinny, childish background track for your singing. And as bad as the pseudo-infomercial was, the use of the product in the wild is likely to be even scarier, as evidenced by these Songsmith'ed remakes of music by The Beatles, The Police, and The Notorious B.I.G.."
I checked the links. Now I feel so dirty.
Hey Microsoft, will you please stick with the business that you are good at? You know, Operating Systems?
Oh, nevermind.
I still have nightmares about Miyamoto demoing Wii Music at E3 last year.
...it looks like an older generation MacBook Pro with a sticker over its logo.
Plausible deniability?
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
you haven't heard my wife in the shower
Somebody throttle this nance!
The day the music died.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
What is needed is to do some of the worst songs ever like those were done and see if improves the worst ones.
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
This is what I think music would sound like without drugs. (NSFW, but WTF, it's Sunday...)
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I mean no one, not even Microstoft would think of something that bad
And I quote from the demo video...
"Now I'm gonna sing a demo song, it wont be short and it won't be long! Ohhh I'm gonna sing a demo song for youuuu hoooo"
Please don't listen to it, you won't be able to unhear it. It's like audio goatse!
This is supposed to be a news site. Is there any purpose to this article other than blatant Microsoft bashing?
Music Software - check
Portable Music Players - check
Gaming Consoles - CHECK
Search - check
Online portals - check
Commercials - check
Mobile Phone OSes - check
The remakes don't sound any more hideous than the originals.
But what does it do do if you don't (or like me, can't) sing? What if you just talk or make random hooting noises? (Oh, wait. We know what it does if you make random hooting noises: the "remakes"). Seems to me that this thing has possibilities, though. We need a Free Software clone that runs under Linux, of course.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
... with President Obama's executive orders banning torture by US forces and requiring the closure of Guantánamo Bay, there's a dire need for alternative interrogation tools.
2 hours of those absolutely inhuman renditions of 'Roxanne' and 'Sgt Peppers', together with the MS infomercial, would be enough to break even the staunchest jihadist.
"Please, PLEASE NOOOO!! I'll give you current GPS coordinates for Osama bin Laden! Just turn it off PLEASE!!!"
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
"Bill Gates' Plan To Destroy Music, Note By Note "
Oh please. Next thing you know someone will be complaining that Youtube is destroying the video arts.
I like how, even with Gates gone, everything that happens at Microsoft is attributed to him. If he knew about this product, he would probably call it the dumbest fucking idea he's ever heard.
(But I kinda liked the biggie remix) /just a little. //ashamed
Everyone needs a place to start I suppose. This is about as flashy as an old Casio keyboard from 15 years ago, with the styles and sounds.
And I thought the Korg KARMA technology was a step in the downhill direction when humans were no longer capable of composing their own music, but KARMA is still arguably cooler.
That version is just so horribly wrong (a depressed love song to a happy calypso tune) that it's pretty much impossible not to laugh or at least chuckle and shake your head at the results
Roxanne - The Calypso Version
we'll be back to pick you up later!
Has anyone actually bought it?
Someone should plug Coltrane's "Giant Steps" into Songsmith, and see if their computer explodes. (I'm not volunteering mine.)
There seems to be a lot of flaming here for how the songs sucked etc. , but...
1. Goodness of music is a subjective issue. There may be people who actually like the sound, or the ease of karaoke-ing through it. Kids, perhaps who can be thrilled at the substantial quality of their renditions.
2. I suspect a lot of people are complaining about the examples there because they are comparing it to the originals. Think about how new songs or tunes can be arranged by budding composers using this. Songsmith might offer a lot more customisability making it an important tool.
We should try to look at the bright side once in a while.
Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Bill Gates the Next American Idol?
Notice that Ballmer mentions R&D first in his email regarding MS layoffs:
"As part of the process of adjustments, we will eliminate up to 5,000 positions in R&D, marketing, sales, finance, LCA, HR, and IT over the next 18 months" - CNET "Ballmer's e-mail to employees regarding layoffs" Jan. 22, 2009
Coincidence?
Ohwait, yes, I do. This is Slashdot.
A friend of mine makes music, and whereas the tunes coming out from Songsmith are quite corny, it has helped him in getting some nice chords together.
Of course he is not literally using the music output from Songsmith, but I can see how it might help a lot more (amateur) music makers out there to see what chords can be used underneath their singing.
It's just a tool people: Don't think that the next Britney is going to use this... Come to think of it, her songs might even improve with it... Ok, the idea itself has already been around since about '96, and I also remember trying some software named "Whistler" that sortof did the same, only with you whistling. I'll leave you with an Songsmithed acapella David Lee Roth
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
You will not besmirch the mighty Shiva from Accounts Receivable!
And my ears are bleeding!
Not only is this in bad taste, but somebody up the ladder in Microsoft should have pulled the plug on this abomination long before code was ever written.
This product is what happens when the focus on core products is lost. This is an example of employee bloat and the resulting crap it produces; uninspirational.
"Every security scheme that is based on secrets eventually fails." - Steve Jobs
I teach Linux at a local college. I usually have my rant of the week, usually something stupid that microsoft has done. Songsmith was front and center up on my projector. They barely made it past the 2 minute mark of the 4 minute ad. It was.. painful to watch, yet funny to inflict on others.
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
Seems unlikely to me. What that game does to otherwise respected tracks is truly degenerate.
Three Squirrels
I took a 2nd-level music theory course in college in which we learned a (crude) set of rules to generate a (crude) 4-part chorale. This music, like all music in my opinion, only started to sound good when you began bending those rules and throwing in something that the listener hadn't seen coming a mile away. I could imagine plenty of horrible radio-friendly bands having all their chord changes predicted by a computer, but the Beatles for example could not. (Look up some of their guitar tabs, even from the mop-top days to verify.)
So I imagine the usefulness of this tool comes by being able to objectively demonstrate to the unwashed masses that certain "artists" have never contributed one thing of value to music. Or if that doesn't convince them:
1. Come up with something better than that chintzy MIDI backup.
2. Build a few songsmith boxes
3. Profit from your new crap music empire
4. ????
5. Die in remorse
And yet, the Japanese have virtual singers. Witness Vocalioid 2 (three is better, but there aren't many videos on YouTube):
Clearly, we've lost the digital song war.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
It's a shame that Wesley Willis isn't around any more. I think only he would be capable of utilizing this technology to its full potential.
Rock and roll, Wesley. Rock and roll.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
I couldn't tell. ;-)
In other news, Microsoft is notoriously bad at singing and advertising.
...people wouldn't be ripping on it.
Obviously it won't create great art. Hell, it won't even create songs that I'd call decent. But what do you expect? It's like expecting the Photoshop painterize filter to spontaneously generate the Mona Lisa. For the most part, this thing is a toy, and I think it's an interesting novelty with some nontrivial programming behind it. So I have no intention of ripping on a CS guy just because Microsoft pays his salary. And as for "destroying music" -- well, real musicians will keep doing what real musicians do; in that context this simply doesn't matter.
Note that I specifically decided not to post this as AC so hopefully I won't be flagged as a troll...
But I think this is actually really cool.
Is it going to make any musical masterpieces? Probably not.
Does it sound like a fun little toy to mess with? Yes, yes it does.
Incidentally, I've never heard Sergeant Pepper before (yeah yeah, go ahead and -1 me for cultural illiteracy), and I thought the music worked rather well with the lyrics, even if it didn't sound particularly interesting.
Bill Gates has not been actively involved with day-to-day Microsoft decision for at least a year. He is now involved with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This foundation has relatively little to do with music, although a number of musicians do work with the foundation.
The equivalent to ./ stories like this would be to refer to Apple as "Steve Jobs made music 30% more expensive" (do the math).
And besides the headline was a serious troll.
Just listen to those demos, they're freaking amazing (not that I liked any of them, but just looking at the queues and matchings of everything, this is impressive beyond words). Specifically (and unsurprisingly) the rap song at the end was the clear winner, sounding eerily well-matched to the vocals. (Disclaimer: perhaps I'm impressed because I'm intimately familiar with the first two while I don't know the third song's original intended sound, but I do expect something with less acoustic range/complexity is easier to adapt.)
This gets negative vibe because it comes from our favorite enemy (at least while we transfer our hate to somebody more worthy of it these days), but I think this could be the start of something great, even if it means we have to listen to some crap on the way. Isn't that the big benefit to Creative Commons? Isn't that why we eat up Lessig's remix argument?
This is a good first step. Sad that it's not Free Software, as the next step is incorporating remix and a larger (user-submitted) library of base music to the system (see the intro video on the microsoft.com article link), and perhaps the step after that is in getting the system to automatically figure out things like tempo and an optimized list of suggested music stylings.
To Microsoft (if you're actually reading this) or perhaps otherwise those who wish to re-implement the idea: even as a closed-source solution, if you create a system that would allow (advanced) users to create their own base music, you will start a music revolution.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
than shit by Weezer.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Have a look here:
http://www.menwithouthats.com/micro.html
Men Without Hats knew this was coming.
Pop goes the world!
This doesn't preclude nor prevent creation of better music; it merely provides a simple tool to allow people, who aren't capable or inclined to create something more refined, to at least produce *some* kind of musical track. The people who *are* capable and inclined will certainly continue to produce more refined music. Why would anyone be so foolish as to suggest that those latter folks would "settle" for the output of this software if they know better and can do better? If they can, they will. Isn't that one of the same arguments we use to decry DRM and the MAFIAA tactics and the current industry economic model: that artists who can create and want to create will continue to do so regardless of anything else?
Get off your high horses and STFU, you elitist dirtbags.
Say what you will, but Windows is vastly superior to Linux on both desktops and servers. Get the facts, people.
Here we have a software à la Band-in-a-box with note recognition and automatic music generation from a live recording ... what's so bad about it?
Sure you can cue jokes on it, it's funny to see a calypso version of Roxanne with crappy MIDI-like instruments ... but the user has selected this style of music to start off with so it's not has it has been generated out of the blue. And there seems to be an advanced mode to tweak the instrumentation as well ... so in theory I guess you can create something much closer to the real song.
These kind of softwares are meant to be a kind of canvas to practice music, not to publish songs ... or a fun "karaoke-let's-do-silly-things" thing as Songsmith seems to promote. So what's the big deal here? I find it to be quite an ingenious piece of software for what it's worth (it's a field of research where everything is far from being perfect!)
If this was some obscure Open-Source Project seeking founds people would be ecstatic ... what, you don't like Microsoft being creative for once?
There's an awfully good chance that the music you think is "good" is every bit as generic, cliched, and mass-produced sounding as this. Maybe your music has a veneer of "alternative", but to the ears of someone outside your social pressure group, it's stupid too.
But what does it do do if you don't (or like me, can't) sing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN9pGgg8YlQ
What if you just talk or make random hooting noises?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7qyjLuWVU8
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Maybe it's just me, but the Roxanne version reminds me of the music that came out of the radio in Portal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN9pGgg8YlQ
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Just because people hate Microsoft on Slashdot doesn't mean you can ignore a products features. Let's start off, you have different settings to render your song in, if you insert Notorious B.I.G.'s voice into a polka like filter...the song is going to sound horrible. The software is not intended to be the end result of the music, and these videos are just parodies more or less, if you actually used the correct functions of the software it wouldn't sound that bad. In fact, the idea of the software is for people to have fun with it, and to help musicians with writers block come up with chord progressions for songs using the software. You won't actually use a techno beat in the background if you don't want (though apparently that means a hit nowadays), you can use the same tempo that the software gives you, which makes the song infinitely easier to record in final product. The software is actually very good for what it's price, etc, if you take time to mess around with it, it's very similar to "band in a box", but slightly cheaper and more user friendly. I find the product to be very interesting, and I would love to see them develop it more in depth, with more chords, rhythms and possibly add make-shift lead parts.
Damn for a second there I thought Gates was starting his own band.
or any of those techno stuff, that should make for a new set of musical atrocities... :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypycpKQxXR0 if you didn't see it...
Even crap can be turned into a silk purse with the right artistry .... witness (NSFW)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQp5l4-sfFA&annotation_id=annotation_802743&feature=iv
That's just hilarious. Can I get sliders like that for my Slashdot interface?
Anyone think Apple will copy this for the next version of Garageband?
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
It just worked.
On a side note, that was filmed in the Microsoft Research building, and many people there run OSX. Interestingly enough, you are allowed to use any platform you want as a Microsoft employee (I've even met Linux users who work there), but the Gates Foundation mandates you use only Microsoft products (source: friend who works for the foundation).
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
I think the Slashdot crowd is showing too much of its human side here, and not enough of the geeky analytics that bring me here.
As the old saying goes, it's not how well the bear dances, but that it dances at all. I watched the demo and thought that Songsmith must have some *very* interesting algorithms behind it. Sure, the music sounds trite to the human ear, but aren't you kind of amazed at how much is done?
To analogize, think of recognition technology. I can't tell one raccoon (or orangutang or giraffe or shrew) from another. Anyone who makes software that *can* do so has some mad skillz in my book, regardless of the human utility.
with the right artistry
Witness .....
(wait for it ... it's worth it)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQp5l4-sfFA&annotation_id=annotation_802743&feature=iv
How would it fare with correct settings?
Not just as endless videos of people trying on purpose to make the song sound as bad as possible.
Granted... With settings like "Happy" and "Jazzy" chances are probably low for a decent Roxanne remake.
What this reminds me of the most are those "rhythm" presets on the synthesizers.
Jean Michel Jarre probably never used them, but then again... not everyone is Jean Michel Jarre.
There certainly is a place for something like this in the music world.
Expect it's bigger brother to be used on 99% of pop songs and commercial jingles out there in a couple of years.
No great loss there.
And just as synthesizers didn't eliminate guitars - expect things to stay the same generally.
Do expect things around you to start having more rhythm.
And personal theme songs.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...laughing at the version of Roxanne produced by Songsmith. It could be a classic. Very, very funny.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
I think this would work really well for a group of children that hang out with a large purple dinosaur.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
To anybody who can record Microsoft Bob singing to Songsmith while Clippy dances.
Preferably on a black velvet background.
The Police one is awesome, even if the instruments do sound like cheap general MIDI sounds.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
1. Come up with something better than that chintzy MIDI backup.
2. Build a few songsmith boxes
3. Profit from your new crap music empire
4. ????
5. Die in remorse
??? part goes BEFORE "profit" part.
There is no step 5.
It is all sex and coke parties after the profit part.
Rainier: My new movie is me, standing in front of a brick wall for 90 minutes. It cost 80 million dollars to make.
Jay Sherman: how do you sleep at night?
Rainier: On top of a pile of money, with many beautiful ladies.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Seriously guys, you can't really think Microsoft believes this will replace real musicians. If you do, you've had too much of the anti-microsoft koolaid.
Over at the somethingawful forums i've seen some amazing wierd al style parody with this. Parody and little kids having fun making songs are the real use cases for this software.
... as combined with his existing very heavy use of auto-tune he can just laze in bed whilst still being able to continue his own plan to destroy music, song by song.
It's a freaking toy for christ's sake. The sky is not falling.
So Microsoft Research reinvents Band-in-a-Box which has been around for years and already lets you feed it an MP3 and it'll tell you the chord changes. Then you can use that to have Band-in-a-Box generate a song in any style you choose. Nothing new here. Move along.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
...and if Justin Long was pushing it, preferably wearing a (black) turtleneck - it would be hailed as the second coming of Christ.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I mean no, you aren't going to be composing a movie theme on this. However, it isn't targeted for that. You want to do that you get something like Sonar or Cubase or what not. This is for people with little musical ability who want to screw around. Their advertising is crap, that's for sure, but then I'd have to say it is perhaps honest since that's what you are likely to get out of it.
Regardless, it isn't something amazing for music, but it's a fun toy for people who want to screw around.
Oh my God. The forced PC tax is funding the research that thought up this garbage? Microsoft should lay off its reasearch department.
Only proves what a friend told me: the only justice in this life is poetic...
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It is designed to take MIDI input and text and generate a synthetic voice. Songsmith is designed to analyze a voice and generate music for it. Songsmith might be compared to something like Sony's Cinescore. It is designed to come up with musical accompaniment easily. Vocaloid would compare to the Eastwest Symphonic Choirs http://www.soundsonline.com/Symphonic-Choirs-PLAY-Edition-pr-EW-182.html.
Microsoft gained fame and fortune by putting office automation software into the hands of inexperienced users. In theory, anyone can learn to use MS Office. Having no talent is not that much of a drawback. The product does a pretty good job of concealing the cluelessness of the user. Life is good when your target market is dummies.
Then they put development tools into the hands of inexperienced people. No talent? No English? No problem! If you can click a mouse, you can be a database designer or network admin (well, kind of). Find cheap people, put them through a few classes and BAMMO! A fresh batch of Mouse Clicking Solutions Experts ready to work for anyone who pays more than Walmart.
As the IT industry has been dumbed down, outsourced, and off-shored, it became inevitable that these concepts would be applied to something other than IT. Like music. And who else to do it but the company who specializes in enabling people to use computers to try something for which they have no talent?
I can't wait to go out and get a copy of Songsmith. I hear they have a whole genre of this stuff in R&D: Flightsmith, Medsmith, Boatsmith, CEOsmith, not to mention the beta version of PresSmith (Obama has had the country fooled for months!)
MS Rocks! WhoooHooo!
...because everything else from Microsoft is crap!
when i first heard the concept, being a musician myself. I thought "OMG I'M GOING TO BE POOR CAUSE EVERY ONE IS GOING TO BE WRITING MUSIC LIKE FALLOUT BOY" then i seen the "infomercial" needless to say i see little hope of any serious self respecting artist using song smith. But i did once think that about garage band... *worries again*
Seriously guys, I'm pretty sure I just saw the dad in a porn movie. He certainly acts like it.
With stunned disbelief in what I just saw I have suffered serious injury.
It appears my jaw has become unhinged and smacked the tilled floor in my flat.
I am grateful for this tragic injury as it is now impossible for me to even be forced to use this product.
...must have gotten a pre-release version decades ago.
that little girl's going to get the shit kicked out of her when the kids at school see that video.
(the teachers won't stop it, because they like apple)
THL phish sticks
Jesus MS, you've had years to knockoff GarageBand and this the result. Wow, can't wait to see the updated iMovieMaker.
the slashdot crowd takes what is obviously supposed to be a toy, and can't look at it for what it is. A toy. It has to be some world-ending apocalyptic program written specifically to put someone out of work, or monopolize a market, or some such dark thing.
Because, you know, it won't be someone who isn't a professional vocalist having a little fun in the privacy of their own home. It's going to be the next endless batch of 1-hit wonders! Microsoft is going to be the demon lurking in the shadows attempting to gain a foothold on the lucrative music industry by replacing every singer and band on the market with it's own software and outsourced "musicians"! World ending I tell you! WORLD ENDING!
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Snake: Nobody move, or I'll blow your heads off!
Snake: [singing] A singing family! It's worse than I feared, For hostage purposes, [spoken] you're just too weird. Bye!
"Without curiosity and knowledge, the mind is a vast void. Without the mind, curiosity and knowledge are nonexistent."
If you needed another reason to not buy from MS...
Sometimes people get so worked up when old songs they know get played with in different ways. Think about it: the computer does not know what song you're singing, so of course it's not going to reproduce classics to any degree of accuracy. That's kind of the point.
I like the idea, and I thought the Roxanne cover was actually pretty cool. /posting AC for obvious reasons
If you think these were bad, you obviously have never been to a bar on karaoke night. Now, imagine that, and this, combined into one horrid monstrosity. Yeah. It gets worse. Much worse.
you obviously dont know good music from bad, this stuff totally sucks.
maybe people with no hear cant tell, but that just freightens me more.
any musicial can do this really easy. having software do it automatically is kinda cool, but it is no way music, its basically a differnt kind of karaoke
Wow, they "re-invented" the software they use for making karaoke tracks... the idea of digitizing that music allows you to transpose and change the key/tempo at will. How many years have those been around?
It also reminds me of the hokey midi files in the early nineties. You know, before mp3's, when people were desperate to get music on their computers "oooo... this is good!" They've come this far in two decades?
William B. Gates III is a college drop-out.
This means that William B. Gates never demonstrated that he:
could understand instructions from other humans,
could communicate to other humans intelligable thoughts,
could not converse with other people,
could not demonstrate any understanding in any discpline -- Mathematics, Politics, Philosophy, Science, Atheletics, Medicine, Engineering to name a few.
What a waste! And only because Daddy has money!
Well, Daddy did not have enough money to buy William B. Gates III a degree. And so Junior wandered around pot houses in Albequerque NM to find his meaning/station, in life.
What a waste!
He should have never have beem born.
it comes from our favorite enemy
Microsoft research is really not part of the Borg - they seem to make very in-the-sky type of software and does some OS research.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
I think this is really really cool. seriously - i study Music tech - so we play with these kinds of things often.
Imagine:
--> not general midi - but programmable sample/synth libraries.
--> a higher level/graphic programming (a la Max/MSP) environment where a more knowledgeable user could customize elements.
I.e. - instead of minor chords you specify only minor9, 2nd inversion.
this would revolutionize live "laptop" bands.
DJs could spin acapella takes and run their custom patches based on songsmith-like tech
and every show would actually be different. (that would be a nice change)
I'm quite sure that Biggy Smalls song was the original.
It's version 1.0 for goodness sakes and it's a merely a tool making music more accessible to more people. I like it, it's a good idea and it's well done. I know it's popular to be cynical and to fill your words with scorn and 'I'm so cool and you all are idiots' thought but you know, it's tiresome. What was I thinking, that's all a lot of you do, sorry, carry on giving meaning to your lives by belittling everything and everyone.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Apparently this is Metallica done with Songsmith: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZWTfrW3gEo&feature=related . I just have one word: ouch.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The Slashdot summary is absolute nonsense. It's like listening to complaints about MS Paint; that people are going to ruin their camera shots with its horrible tools.
This product is obviously not intended for the average Slashdot user, but rather to children, parties and whatnot. Furthermore, this tool has the potential of helping people understand how music is built up.
Personally, I think this is a really interesting idea and I wonder what the reception would look like if this was an iSongsmith product.
Full Tilt
Had this been an identical product with identical features and identical marketing, but developed and released by Apple, Slashdot would be hailing it as a masterpiece and a "must have" application.
And Timothy...apparently you didn't get the memo...Bill Gates has not actively worked at Microsoft in some time now. So maybe you could shitcan the sensationalistic and anti-Gates titles, ya think?
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
everyone THINKS their shit doesnt stink these days. Everyone fully believes they're an actor, musician, athlete, what have you...........
YOU ARENT! Get over it.
You don't get it. This is how Microsoft will destroy the RIAA.
This isn't even version 1.0. It's maybe 0.5 (sounds open source, doesn't it.) Of course it sucks. Most new Microsoft products suck at version 1.0. By version 3.0, they rule the world.
Remember how US music law works. Anybody can parody anybody else for free (hence the legions of Elvis impersonators) and anybody can make a new recording of an old song by paying a fixed royalty limited by law. That royalty goes to composers and songwriters, not the RIAA. The maker and user of this program owe nothing to the RIAA.
That's the key to this. As this technology gets better, there will be programs that listen to the repertory of a musician or a singer and build vocal tract and style models. There will be programs that take in a song recording and extract the music, lyrics, and expression, reducing it to something like MIDI with more annotations. Then the synthesis program will put them together, perhaps producing a "cover recording" indistinguishable from the original, at least when heard in a car. Plus you can have fun running combining different songs and musicians.
At that point, musicianship has been automated. Microsoft can dictate terms to the RIAA.
Don't laugh. I'll bet that in a few years, most videogame soundtracks will come from something like this. Then commercial soundtracks. Actual musical recordings will take longer, because there's a heavy "branding" factor. But it will come.
you obviously dont know good music from bad, this stuff totally sucks.
maybe people with no hear cant tell, but that just freightens me more.
any musicial can do this really easy. having software do it automatically is kinda cool, but it is no way music, its basically a differnt kind of karaoke
having software do karaoke automatically is kinda stupid.
despite your narrow definition of the word, both this and karaoke are still "music" (just not anything many people would listen to).
I seriously didn't think that youtube could get get any worse...
How wrong I was.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
I loved the first reply on that last link...
from wrapitup on gawker.com
Wrapitup
11:12 AM
You know I didn't realize it when I woke up this morning, but it turns out that this is the day the music died.
I will admit that listening to this helps me forget about the Songsmith adverts, but now I am hooked by this crazy computer generated singing. I would never have thought I would be hearing this version of Mozart's Magic Flute: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=mVd2c25noEE . You have truly ruined my evening, since I am now compelled to see what other crazy compositions there are with Vocaloid. ;) That Leek thing is just crazy.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Devices (voice transformers) that pitch shift your voice to music in real time have been around for years. Using one is an uncanny experience... the result of voice processing is you sound like a pop star.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
http://www.yoursoundsource.com/roland-boss-vt-1.html - this kind of stuff is already used by pop stars I'm sure.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I kept thinking - at some MS product meeting, some guy in a grey suit says " Hey, I hear those turtle-necks over at Apple are planning to revamp Garageband and help lusers learn how to actually play some instruments before recording them and posting the results to Youtube. What we need is something to cut out the middle man, make everything sound the same, and make sure we put in some fine print to the EULA that if anyone actually accidentally makes it big with one of these new MS Songs, that we can get some of the booty too". .wma format too. Infact it would be cool if you have to use your MS live account to upload teh song anywhere, or make sure it uses Silverlight so those other OS users can't participate".
"Yeah," says another suit, "just make sure it records only in
...About time Apple started copying Microsoft "features".
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I for one applaud Microsoft, now everyone can finally catch up to the synth music eternalized in the 80's! All you require is a dual core computer wit 2GB of RAM with Windows Vista Genuine Ultimate Edition and every last shred of your human dignity. And if you have no dignity left, no need to worry, they can loan that out since they know you'll be paying it back with interest when Windows 7 comes out!
They're really just toys. They won't "destroy music" any more than karaoke destroyed singing as an art or profession.
The way other Slashdot readers scream "Oh No No No No Oh God No!", I came up with some theories:
I think the technology/products are enablers - for children to start experiment with writing their own songs. It's not about the quality of songs, it's the jump-start of children's creativity.
Once children realize how easy it is to create music, they'll have a huge bonfire lit within them.
What do you think?
With X-Box, you need to hack the HD in order to run any other software. With the PS3, you simply go into the system menu and select (install other OS).
Sony's just as evil as the next company. From what I understand, they declared the PS3 to be a "computer system" as a means of avoiding tariffs in Europe, and to do this they needed to offer access to the OS. Plain and simple. They tried this with the PS2, but it didn't offer access to the OS, and thus failed the test (as I am led to believe).
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
The "primary" guy in the commercial is actually the lead developer of the project.
Is that the Notorious BIG remix sounds an awful lot like a legit rap song. Like, you wouldn't be surprised if you heard that on BET or MTV. Which I'm afraid says something about rap music producers, who for some create a beat in 10 minutes. Now they can just use Songsmith as a basis for their work.
You just got troll'd!
The actually found a way to make music DUMBER...that takes talent...just wait, you'll hear those tracks on the radio in six months.
In the immortal words of Sorates, "I drank what?"
I think my old Casio keyboard I got for Christmas in the mid 80's had a more realistic sound to it when ya hit the demo button. This is just bad. . . Sounds like the folks at Microsoft Research have been listening to too much Wesley Willis while trying to come up with ideas. Makes me a bit sad though, Microsoft Research developed the best multi-player game I've ever played; Allegiance (can be found at freeallegiance.org). I hope it was just a slow day at the office for these developers, and they are just scrambling to show M$ something to avoid being laid off. . .
Insert witty sig here.
How else can I script my pro-Unix arguments against Microsoft without the diplomatic immunities vested from the embasy of Cygwin? Given the push of Microsoft onto Unix with their WINE package, it's only fair (as L. Ron "Weasley" Hubbard puts it).
The same company that came up with this embarrassing moment a few years back.
If we get access to install any new operating system that we desire, and to use the PS3 for whatever reason we want, then how can that be bad?
If Sony is circumventing the tariffs by being "forced" into making the PS3 more open (and I use that term guardedly), then we still benefit a LOT more than by owning an Xbox360.
B. That activity is not a sport. It's Entertainment.
Read Mick Foley's books. The *outcomes* are scripted, but the moves have to be executed, and it takes *more* skill to perform some of them without actually killing your show partner. When they goof is when it all goes wrong and we see what those moves would look like in a street fight.
So, grinding back on topic, we need to borrow the back end and re-hook it with our own storehouse of front end music. I have no idea why MS thought they were restricted to a MIDI sounding sound library. All they need do is get some 5 of the thousands of starving B- musicians who could use a month's work, and make a sound library of real instruments.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Time to drink out of a Klein Bottle.
That's what continues to be so mind bendingly confusing about Microsoft. I'm sure the devs did like you said and borrowed some 20 year old random samples floating around MS archives. You need something to code on, I get it.
So then it comes time to make the commercial. They couldn't be bothered to get some real sounds, or real actors to present it. But at least 3 people on the fifth floor have an IQ of 150, so you have to wonder what peverse reverse logic is operating. "If we deliberately use guys from or dev team who, *just like you* are not musicians, and show that songsmith can drag them kicking and screaming into a song, it will be more "real" as a demo". Or something.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It's obvious her name is Lisa, because after all the leasing of the $20,000 Unix workstation that Microsoft so-fondly criticized over the "investment" towards a Balmer-inspired "Windows 3.1" with "reversi" and a "clock", the Dark Side strikes BACK with the Vista-ready $20,000 Microsoft workstation with "Lisa" the average XP user that need not fear in leasing computer hardware.
This articles wreaks of NSA psy-op, to prepare the underlings of the unobtainable quantum-computing hardware that they-only are to monopolize upon.
I've never cringed that hard.
Ohmydog. This is awful.
I skipped randomly into the video, I might have watched 25 seconds total.
Brrrrwwwwrrr.
Something's happened to me. I feel unclean. The nightmares, will they EVER STOP?
But this is cool for an automated "musician". Clearly it's nowhere near what a human can do. However, it does actually resemble music, and that's neat. This is Slashdot, after all.
Take this. Aside from being absolutely hilarious, the songsmith track (very roughly) follows the flow of the song; very noticeable, for instance, around 1:08. Not particularly useful at this point, but still interesting.
I just checked.
No videos of Don McLean through Song$hit yet.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This is the most horrifying idea I've ever heard. Maybe I'm just tired and paranoid, but hear me out.
Musical creation is just that. It is an action of creation defined by the emotions and thoughts of the person creating it. It is an act of individuality. There is certainly a historical and comparative process involved but that is filtered by individual creativity.
To 'create' music with a 'technology' that is designed to 'assist' the musician is a step backward for music...
or maybe just for the current musicians. For them it certainly represents a knock in the creative process. But I suppose they would just have to get with the times.
On a positive note, mass adoption of this technology would enhance the diversity of music.
In any case, Microsoft is still evil. Don't let them take your soul.
and many university graduates can not demonstrate that either...
Or Fisher Price. I'm scratching you off my Christmas last WAY too early this year.
Chlorphenamine aka Comtrex antihistamine and the room-mate's Bob Marley after writing a term paper all night followed by 3 exams.
Does anyone appreciate the irony that his daughter is using a Macbook?
Please don't ever reach production Songsmith, for all our sakes.
This is actually kinda cool. I don't think it's aimed at serious musicians, more just people messing around. I doubt it will be the end of the world as we know it. . .
What REALLY needs developing is software that takes the vocals out of recordings. No, I don't mean the crappy 'vocal eliminators' that merely eliminate everything in center channel either. All that does nowadays is crappify the original music due to all the sound processing that's going on. That stuff stopped working on music around 1991.
Whoever develops this would make a mint.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I usually RTFA, but that was heinous. 44 of the worst seconds of my life, and I blame you.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
You guys give it a hard time but once kanye releases an album made ENTIRELY with songsmith it will become cool.
And people will be afraid to diss it because then he will whine like a little girl so expect to be hearing a lot of it.
He probably is a disgruntled ex-employee from Microsoft trying to push a competitor's product rather than the one he contributed to while under Microsoft.
Microsoft clearly is the tool of all Christianity to Clean The Filth Before It Enters Young Ears.
I didn't notice a difference in quality on the Notorious B.I.G. track.
You insensitive clod!
@neonux
RIAA can use songsmith to give idols "decent" songs. hey, you can already find lots of songsmith examples where idols are subbed.
... but wait until T-Pain and Kanye West get their hands on this kind of technology. Wait ... oh God, no!
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
To Microsoft (if you're actually reading this) or perhaps otherwise those who wish to re-implement the idea: even as a closed-source solution, if you create a system that would allow (advanced) users to create their own base music, you will start a music revolution.
Yeah, it's called Garage Band.... wait, that was Apple
...and duct tape.
This is great progress!
Okay, I listened to parts of all three videos that were in the article. What we can get right off the bat is:
1. The MIDI instruments were horrible. I had better MIDI in the mid-90's Microsoft. Stop using the FM Synth!
2. The mood of the original music did not match the mood of the generated track.
and, what will probably get me the most "This is a Troll" marks...
3. The music was actually very good. Chord progressions went smoothly, and followed and harmonized with the vocal track extremely well. I'm not big on rap, and I've never heard the song by (The Notorious) B.I.G. It was very good, even with the funky 80's techno harmony. The exception was the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper". But I bet that if they could have somehow removed the reverberation from the vocal track that the computer had to deal with... I bet it would have done just as well as it did on the other two songs. As for the Police's "Roxanne", I never knew that Sting's singing sounded so Jamaican!
But, looking into the future: They prefect this technology... and nay singer can create a melody, and a full harmony and rhythm is created for them... I don't know if I should be impressed by the technology or scared of the crap that will come through the radio.
--Pathway
1) Just because you don't see the value in the first blush doesn't mean it's valueless.
2) Microsoft does all sorts of crazy projects and I personally am ever-thankful that they do support fringe ideas like this, it shows that they've still got an ounce of creativity left in their blackened veins. Say what you will about your perception of the quality of Songsmith, but apparently they've been paying two guys to work on it. Not a bad job in this economy. Consider that they're probably engineers like anyone else, passionate about what they do, have to pay their rent, maybe even have family or pets. You know, normal people. Not faceless stormtroopers. Hopefully not laid off in the recent cuts, but with this type of press I wouldn't be surprised if they end up that way.
3) Innovation doesn't necessarily come from the goal of the project you're working on. Sometimes you come up with stuff on the way to your goal that ends up being more important than what you set out for -- go watch some of the 'Connections' series by James Burke if you disagree.
4) Any neck-beard can point out flaws in someone else's project -- what have any of you done that's so great?
Microsoft paid them to make this, and yeah, the music is cheesy, but I'm personally amazed that it managed to match up the timing to _analog_ recorded vocals from older songs and do reasonable key changes.. This isn't trivial code.
Ever try syncing up an analog recording from the 60s with a looped drum beat? It's not so easy! This and this alone is amazing to me.
If you look at this project and think 'Oh man this sucks!' you're ignorant of the logic necessary to make ANY of it fly.
If these exact videos were coming from an open-source python program and there was a link to sourceforge in the article, you'd be calling it cool. If it were a new feature in GarageBand and they'd announced it at MacWorld, it would have been *the* highlight of the conference. What this program does is explore the harmonies that are compatible with a melody, and you can see from the "Roxanne" video that it does a really, really good job of it. Maybe plugging it directly into a Casio-style accompaniment generator is not exactly the best thing to do with it, but this is definitely a *very* cool little program in its own right.
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
I think it is kinda cute. Too bad you people can't come up with something fun and amusing.
How about "You just got Songsmith Infomercialled!"
By the way, did you see that Obama is switching all White House PC's to Linux?
Everybody uses broad generalizations.
No dominoes that'll fall like a house of cards?
http://img301.imageshack.us/my.php?image=songsmithes9.jpg
Wat
Bot Assisted Blogging
Just listen to those demos, they're freaking amazing
No they're not. It's just a home keyboard auto-rhythm type of thing that changes key to the note the singer is on at the start of every bar. If you listen to "Roxanne", the backing chords aren't in the right scale, for instance, because it can't tell that the vocals are in a minor key from just the first note.
This software really sets my happy slider to maximum.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I think there is nothing wrong with that.
Music is about creativity and expression that links and touches individual, however that may be.
Some feel a very strong opinion how music should be. Those are opinion and personal taste. Remember MANY decades ago many people also found modern music lacking compared to classical, but the newer generation eventually accepted it and move on.
Microsoft is experimenting, just observe it with open mind.
YES HE CAN!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
if you create a system that would allow (advanced) users to create their own base music, you will start a music revolution.
I wouldn't be so sure, I agree with what The Floyd had to say about this...
I don't think the equipment could take over, I mean we couldn't do what we do without it. We could still do an entertaining musical show I suppose without it, but all these things are down to how you control them and whether you're controlling them, not the other way around. It's just a matter of using the tools that are available when they're available.
And more and more now there are all sorts of electronic goodies which are available for people like us to use... if we could be bothered. And we can be bothered. It's all an extension of what's coming out of our heads. And you've got to remember that you have to have it inside your head to be able to get it out at all anyway and the equipment isn't actually thinking of what to do any of the time. It couldn't control itself.
-David Gilmour
It's like saying give a man a Les Paul guitar and he becomes Eric Clapton, y'know, and it's not true. Give a man and amplifier and a synthesizer and he doesn't become whatever, 'in', doesn't become us.
-Roger Waters
But then there is also this...
It'd be interesting to see what four people could do just given the equipment and didn't know anything about it really and told them just to get on with it and do something. I think we'd [Pink Floyd] would come off better.
-David Gilmour
This interview has always stuck in my head, would've paraphrased it but decided to whip out the DVD and give it a listen. From the interviews on Live at Pompeii.
I've experimented with composing music on computers since the C64; I've got a couple CDs of finished work. I think it's great that Microsoft is pursuing this avenue. It's not a new concept, and it's a cutting-edge computing challenge.
In my informed opinion, there's no chance that computers are going to get so creative that they'll displace musicians. I embrace the likelihood that computers will bring a new dimension to generative music. That will push on the art and evoke new directions for composition as well as improvisation.
The very first computers were very unimpressive by today's standards. Good thing people back in the 50s didn't say 'well this isn't going very far.' Music was one of the first things people had fun doing on computers. No doubt there were admistrative fuddie-duddies that frowned on that. Visionless f*** are everywhere.
I'm betting that 50 years from now, computer-generated music will be embraced for the elements of surprise and interest -- very important elements of creative musicality -- it brings to the table. Whether their capacity will reach to 'serious art music' might not be decided for centuries. I'm not threatened as a human being; I'll take great music anywhere I can find it.
Computing was so much more *fun* back in the 80s. It wasn't yet overwhelmed by all these "serious" applications. Thanks, Microsoft, for NOT being corporate fuddy-duddys: thanks for pushing the technical envelope.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
The MS site saying that Windows has a lower TCO than Linux? Seriously? I say mod parent funny.
RTFM
"It's by Microsoft? So its easy to use, right?"
If this was from Some Random University would you have made the article "University of XXXX plan to destroy music"? But because it's Microsoft, you have to lace the summary with "oh noes, it's terrible what Microsoft's doing"...
Sheesh. Not even Microsoft can be completely evil.
Don't mess with white devil foo. Call Liberty Mutual for your free testing supplies.
I think the editors must have published the same story twice http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/25/0041202 This is obviously Python at its subversive best. I didn't realise they had reformed.
Really, I thought Bill was back with some of his DRM schemes this time. I'm really happy it's not DRM, and only some innofensive piece of product that won't, never, see any part of my money.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. This kind of music has existed in plenty for quite some time. Now maybe, when it's even more available, maybe people can start appreciating good music?
dear software companies,
writing music is hard , trying to make it easy for people just makes shitty music , please stop .
kthanxbye
[site]
There are technical matters that any musician can spot immediately as the markers of good music.
The problem is that the major labels, by means of marketing mostly, have convinced most people that what passes for popular is good and in order to revive part of their backlog catalogue they contend that bad music from the past is in reality full of invaluable classics.
Good popular music for has normally its roots firmly established in knowledge about previous musical styles, knowledge about modern techniques and perhaps, more importantly, a certain degree of social awareness (this is not to say that music should be political, but socially sensitive: Elvis was socially sensitive, as perhaps was Frank Sinatra up to a point, but Brittney Spears music isn't).
Lets put it this way: in the middle ages a troubadour that did not sing about the matters of the day would have starved to death, he would have also needed to know what fellow troubadours were doing and he would have got brownie points if he would have used popular lyrics from tunes heard in a religious service, all this would have been combined with technical competence to demonstrate dominion of the craft...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You demand from each entity something commensurable with their means and claimed capacity.
MS is constantly making outlandish claims about how great they are about computing and technology, when they demonstrably aren't (otherwise they would not feel compeled to brake the law in order to compete).
So to make a rubbish toy, to be wasting money on that, when there are demonstrably more important issues they should be dealing with is strange to say the very least.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Doesn't the Xbox by giving us a cheap alternative to upgrading to Vista and buying a new graphics card free us from the need to keep windows on the desktop?
Or, you could see the X-Box as a way to trojan a machine running DirectX, some derivative of Windows and the oh-so-addicting games into home of married-to-penguins-monogamous-nerds.
Ka-Ching ! Manage to milk Microsoft-money out of people who would never install any Microsoft software on their machines !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It appears my jaw has become unhinged and smacked the tilled floor in my flat.
Are you growing vegetables in there, or what? How did you get the discing machine in your front door?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If the Zune was popular enough, I'm sure alternate software (and firmware modifications) would be available for it. The first day they were sold, each required the rather irritating default software to interface.
Which I understand from Apple's perspective... remember, they barely made money on iPods, they mostly sold them to make iTunes more popular. Still doesn't mean I like it, or that I'd buy one.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
There's a word for that. It's called jazz.
Of course, a song doesn't have to be bad to work in jazz, but whether a not a song is good is not really a major factor. In Billie Holiday's early recordings they didn't let her use any good songs. She had to make do with Tin Pan Alley's rubbish. Ella Fitzgerald transformed "A Tisket a Tasket" into an American classic. In cold blood, "Every Day I Have the Blues" isn't much better than the Songsmith infomercial, but Joe Williams made it swing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
At least the money spent on this toy wasn't spent on tightening their grip on the desktop or creating new barriers to entry for open source. Or shutting down internal competition like they did when they killed the high end Windows CE devices in favor of the ill-conceived "Tablet PC". Or buying up companies and crippling them by forcing them to toe the line, like they did with Hotmail.
All I demand of them is to either split the company up, or quit trying to turn everything they do into life support for the "Wintendo" business.
While downloaded content is console-specific, MS does offer two ways to transfer the license to a new Xbox. If your console dies & is replaced in-warranty, they do it while it's in their hands. Otherwise, you can get all the licenses transferred by hooking up the new console to Xbox Live & going here.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
This is for the BOFH who knows he CAN'T sing.
made with Gonzo Software, produced by Gonzo Software Company
Yeah. The conversations and studio clips (including a great solo for Brain Damage) have always been my favorite part of that video.
As others have repeatedly mentioned, this crap is barely different from the features that have been on cheap toy Casio keyboards for years and years. There's something to be said for programatically-generated music, to be sure, but this is just shit.
anybody that understands music theory and programming, and has a little of business sense will get it.
Coming up with the harmony can be extremely hard from a programming standpoint, not to mention the pitch correction because the guy singing probably sucks, and all that. The engine has to find the right key, then come up with a harmony that doesn't suck ass (granted, the harmonies are pretty basic), and figure out the tempo, how much time it has to solve back on a first grade chord. etc.
They also aimed it at the ppl at home that are musically challenged. Why doesn't everybody bash guitar hero? --> because it's fun. Why is everybody bashing this? because it's microsoft.
I think it's a great idea that worked rather well, and those who want to apply it to a complex melody and expect a perfect texture, or insane counterpoint harmonies and so on, are simply retarded.
I don't know about a music revolution, but I agree that when you consider what it's doing, instead of just laughing at your favorite song set to bad music, it's pretty impressive. It's bad but it's listenable. The singing fits with the music. To automate that is astounding.
Or not. We're already overpopulated with no-talent asses. Music is hard. When will people let that sink in? And just because you don't know any better doesn't make that a good thing.
We're HUMAN BEINGS we're supposed to strive to better ourselves, not sit back in mediocrity and revel in our genius. That's why music "snobs" hate, or at least dislike, things like this, guitar hero, american idol, etc.
Sure it's fun to indulge once in a while in an easy jam session (or beat the drums in Rockband) but to *strive* to that is just insulting to the intelligence we have evolved.
Music is hard. And if you think you're a musician because you can wail into a mic and have some software come up with chords you're sadly mistaken.
Every Rap and R+B 'artist' will win at least 10 Grammys with this!
They had a choice: package it up as it is for the PC or sell it to Nintendo to be branded as Mario's Magic Microphone for Wii.
Surely they should have seen that the Wii's the market for this?
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Maybe I'm easily impressed, but the fact that it can find the start of each bar is pretty amazing.
I doubt Games for Windows was an afterthought. I think they've got a long-term goal join the PC and the xbox. They've had cross-development kits for a while. AAA games are being ported to PC not the other way around. Microsoft has been trying to get into set-top boxes for years.
Xbox 1080 with Office 2012, controlled by your MS Inivisitouch coffeetable, only $15/mo! All built or licensed by Microsoft.
--- Do you believe in the day?
On the other hand, the songs from the this "infomercial" would be perfect for squirting from your brown Zune!
And you expect the average mouthbreathing slashbot to know the difference between MS and MSR...?
This article is totally biased and should not have been posted on Salshdot. What microsoft has done is impressive and will make everybody start getting creative again, instead of leaving music only to artists.
Please remove this article.
Wesley Willis would have loved this :(
The White Wedding one is great, and so is this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV2g3MSDKtA.
Are you adequate?
...Codesmith, what else ?!?
it is amusing- it is like, bad casio calypso roxanne
I seem to recall a Slashdot article around 6 months back that featured a German software company that had perfected separating tracks from a finished master.
The demo had them taking out the vocals and guitars, fixing them, and putting them back in - all this was done on a completed track.
I have no doubt this will happen, but I'm surprised no one's really gotten into doing this yet.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Those really do suck, but at the same time the music didn't seem to be even the same style as the songs. Of course if you pick "reggae" for a Police song it will most likely suck.
Those songs were all written by great writers (well- maybe not the last one- I'm not familiar with his music, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt) so naturally no computer program will recreate their music. The really good stuff can't be matched by even those who have talent. Expecting a computer program to recreate it is stupid.
This software is very far from professional quality. Ok- maybe I can see it replacing the music writers for the latest pop music, but then that is crap too. This is something for people to play around with. Not to make real music with. All these examples do is prove that.
Songsmith will make us laugh endlessly.
Van Halen - The Microsoft Songsmith Sessions vol. 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kxqMpGAL3I&feature=related
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Maybe I'm easily impressed, but the fact that it can find the start of each bar is pretty amazing.
Can you count to four? Songsmith can.
You do realize that this is an article about Microsoft.
I am not devoid of humor.
Borg will say, "YOU WILL BE assIMMOLATED"... for introducing that malware into the collective.
Captain Braxton from the Federation Timeship Aeon will exalt: "BILL & STEVE, YOU are being arrested for crimes you WILL COMMIT -- such as opening dangerous, timeline-disrupting anomolies into the computers... namely, win-doze..., price fixing, collusion, extortion, lying under oath, purging of office temporaries, enslaving or bribing governments of soverign nations, distribution of digital crack in the form of malware... " Yep, that sounds like the paranoid Braxton...
The risks of ms songsmith CANNOT be overstated....
(For 29th century uniforms... see:
http://www.star-trek-voyager.net/uniforms/unif_relativity.htm
Braxton, out....)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"