reverberations: sound news from around the world

Microsoft Songsmith scores an own goal in generative music

An amazing new application for generating music? Well sort of. Microsoft Research have teamed up with Garritan, Plogue and PG Music to create a songwriting application that allows you to record your voice into a sequencer that analyses it and then generates musical and rhythmical accompaniment for you to have an editable “song”.

Judging by the efforts of people online, there’s a definite reason why you should actually learn something about music if you are going to make it. Or maybe you shouldn’t? Why be bound by knowledge when you can have chord progressions prescribed for you? Unfortunately, there seem to be a couple of problems with the automated approach.

1 The sound quality of the instruments is poor, on a par with the demo songs on junior electronic keyboards. Even the official Songsmith advert makes experienced musicians break into a cold sweat. If every child in the country started making songs with this instead of learning guitar or piano we would end up with a very strange national musical heritage indeed.

2 YouTube mashups abound, displaying the unintended humourous application of the software. Top examples include Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” and Radiohead’s “Creep”, both absolutely hilarious. Johannes Kreidler has even used stock market information to generate melodies for Songsmith songs. This could be a completely new genre of music – input anything from bagpipes to the sound of the neighbour’s cat yowling and Songsmith will generate a song for you. Does techno progress need good taste?

We have been laughing so much in the office at some of these videos that we have come to respect Songsmith for what it really is: a fun app for generating comedy music. We just hope Microsoft Research will see things the same way! 

BACK