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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.."
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."
This is supposed to be a news site. Is there any purpose to this article other than blatant Microsoft bashing?
> ...he would probably call it the dumbest fucking idea he's ever heard.
He'd be wrong. It's going to sell like hotcakes.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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.
Nops. It's going to be pirated like... windows.
Your ad could be here!
Its running Vista under Bootcamp.
Just saying...
Techncially, Microsoft is not in the hardware business for laptops so its not such a big faux pas and might even be their silly attempt to play nice with Apple, or to show that they aren't threatened by it.
Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
While odd and strange as it is not what we are used to. Songsmith seems like an interesting idea. Perhaps people rip on it and because of what they are used to.
Put aside your notions of what the original songs are. The music oddly *FITS* the lyrics. The Calypso version of roxanne made me chuckle then realize it FITS. To me it fits.
That it is making coherent MUSIC at all is an interesting feat... Im sorry but even though the quality is 'odd' at this point that it works at all is amazing.
Which makes me think that lyrics + music = song. Many people have been taking lyrics out of songs and putting in other lyrics and coming up with something just as good. Weird Al made a carer out of it for gods sake. Someone though why not do the reverse but automatically.
My critique on the program is that it could use a better set of samples. Hence the 'childs toy like' quality that it is spitting out.
more likely the production company hired to make the commercial had an old Macbook for a prop and thought it looked better than any other notebook they had.
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.
But all Macs come with Mac OS X, which MS certainly is competing with.
Where has this hate for the X-box come from? Isn't the X-box the #2 selling console? (#3 being Sony's Playstation 3??) Isn't Sony also losing billions of dollars on their hardware sales? And take it from someone who had one of those PS2s whose faulty lasers died right after the warranty expired, they aren't the first company to make a product that wasn't 100% bulletproof! Now, I don't have an X-box 360, nor do I want one. That being said, where is all this hate coming from?
It's a Microsoft product, and Slashbots love to bash Microsoft just for the sake of bashing Microsoft, even when they do something half-decent(Zune) or even good(Xbox 360).
Plainly not directly, but by some musical flanking maneuver -- like using the sounds from a Speak and Spell, or other electronics (circuit bending), to make something entirely new and unforeseen.
I suspect it would be difficult or impossible to get this software to go outside of its boundaries.
I haven't tried it myself, but from the demo video it seems like an evolved version of the auto-accompaniment systems that have been in consumer musical keyboards for something like two decades.
Those work more or less by having the rhythm pattern (for all parts) preset, and a note-number-sequence type thing - basically a more complicated arpeggiator that plays the same pattern, but based on the chord you play on the keyboard. Play different chords, and the music changes key, but it's still the same music really.
One of the first keyboards I saw like that back in the early 90s took it one step further, and would work based on playing a single note - although of course in that case it was limited to a major scale, because without more than one note at once you can't specify a scale.
I assume Songsmith is based around a similar principle. The song types probably have a default scale (major for "uplifting", minor for "Arcturus cover song", etc.). If it's a bit smarter, it may keep track of the notes you've sung to try to guess if you're signing a scale other than the default.
I've used similar (though less-advanced) systems before and about the weirdest you could get them to do would be some quasi-Schoenberg/Cage atonality (which I don't really care for, myself).
They're really just toys. They won't "destroy music" any more than karaoke destroyed singing as an art or profession.
I do have to dispute the slams against the demo song lyrics. That was the best part of the video. I imagine it took several takes for the singer to do it with a straight face.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Red Ring of Death.
Yes, it's been fixed in newer consoles. But would you buy a product from a company that knew about the issue and continued to sell the product anyway?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It's a freaking toy for christ's sake. The sky is not falling.
I think its that to Microsoft its just another way to lock people into Windows.
The Xbox could be a refridgerator if Microsoft felt that would help lock-in Windows users.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Yeah, I find it funny how badly the X-Boxes generate heat. I own a PS3 and run it (literally) for 2 weeks at a time, and the case is barely warm. No this is not idling, it actually runs FAH 24/7 when not being used for gaming or movies.
Not only does it run cooler, but it's the same size as the X-Box and the power brick is INSIDE the case! The power plug on the back is literally a standard computer power cable.
There is also the fact that they do not try to lock you out of anything (other than the GPU). 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).
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.
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.
That's not flamebait!
The zune is UGLY. It doesn't have half the usefulness of the iPod, it's like the anti-iPod.
I'm sorry, it's not half-decent. The zune is thoroughly indecent, and exists only as an excellent example of M$ screwing over their customers again. (playsforsure? noitdoesn't!)
Anyone who's been around a while knows what a first-rate hypester and arrogant bastard Steve Jobs has been. For him to make statements like that, in particular, is really meaningless. He's anything but an impartial observer looking out for the interests of the consumer. He's been looking out for Number One his entire career.
Now the orchard boys will commence modding me down for being truthy.
There's a public demo up at Microsoft Research
MS Research does a lot of good research, and this is no exception. Stuff like this allows us (humanity) to explore what makes something musical, why we enjoy musing, and so on. This is all good stuff. The problem really is when research organizations are burdened with a requirement for projects to result in marketable products and revenue pull; that's when you get silly products like this. Clearly this would be best off open sourced and shared, it likely has no future as a proprietary product. I'm sure the researchers themselves would totally agree, they just can't openly express this sentiment for political reasons.
"But would you buy a product from a company that knew about the issue and continued to sell the product anyway?"
Yeah, I'm still looking for a car manufacturer that knows their cars won't break down after years of use too. They all know what how and hy things will break, and they do nothing to fix it. Bastards.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
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?
If you can find a car manufacturer which regularly replaces 4-6 power trains while the car is still under 3-year warranty, I'll buy you a shot.
Put identity in the browser.
I work in the only department that uses PCs (the program we use doesn't run well under bootcamp). Our towers get hidden under the desk and we're outfitted with unnecessarily expensive mac branded monitors. ... It really has little to do with performance or compatibility issues. It has to do with image. When clients see your design studio you don't want them to see cubicles and generic pcs and off-white walls. You want the workspace to reflect the creativity and design in your work, even if is impractical.
Workspace creativity? Ha! You are a corporate stooge, following the herd.
You use macs, not because they are useful, or your applications require macs to get work done, but simply because it is expected.
That's not creativity.
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.
Composer - brain - heart + Computer = Songsmith
www.Migrainesoft.com - Computer giving you a headache? We can fix that!
How can something not run well under boot camp? Then the program would run badly just about anywhere, no matter the machine. Also, I have no problem using my Cinema 23" on a PC. I call bullshit.
It was a move to intercept the consoles' advance on the Windows gaming stronghold and make sure MS remains a player in the gaming platform market.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The MS site saying that Windows has a lower TCO than Linux? Seriously? I say mod parent funny.
RTFM
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 ]
Brown Squirts of Death.
Corrected that for you ;^)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
I'm a huge Xbox360 fan, and really think Microsoft has turned a leaf recently. However, I am also a musician, and can't help but absolutely hate SongSmith, as hilarious as it is.
I completely agree. It's not a perfect console (I've yet to see one) but it's actually very, very good and is a case of MS doing pretty much what we always wanted them to do: they gave consumers more of what they wanted (more hardware, a low-cost option, more generic USB stuff, built-in DVD decoding), actually started catering to developers (there's loads of good third party titles and many studios will tell you what a great job MS does with its SDK and other tools/support to make a game), extended the expected life cycle (ask BioWare about that one), and when they admitted they made a mistake (RRoD) they extended warranties massively and even refunded people who had paid for servicing that issue.
Their first-party titles are great and highly-reviewed/played, and its almost single-handedly brought the Home and Entertainment division into the black (are they into the green yet? Can't remember), dragging a horrible sand bag like the Zune.
That's some serious achievement unlocking right there. Provided they don't screw up their next console the XBox line is becoming one of the first things they're really, really good at.
"Just a fox, a whisper."