How will ms songsmith affect music?

[dwoakee]

Recently I read about something a lot of you prolly already know about: a new piece of software by Microsoft called "Songsmith". To those of you that don't: it's a tool that takes a melody line that you sing into a microphone and composes a piece of music fitting to that melody. From a software developer's point of view this is a pretty advanced piece of software. From a musician's point of view it's a joke. From a practical point of view it is at least pretty entertaining: Many people have already tried and extracted the vocals from well known pop/rock/rap songs and produced a song for it using Songsmith. The results vary. Some are pretty funny, some aren't that bad, some actually are that bad.

Now, how do you think will songsmith affect the future of music and music making? Will songsmith vanish in a few months only leaving a humorous note in the history of Microsoft? Or will it just be some piece of software some people use but most of them don't?

I'll venture a more "optimistic" guess:

Songsmith will be widely popular among kids and it will change their way of dealing with music. Among young adults it will continue to be a tool of making fun of existing tunes.

Then next year, when popularity of songsmith still increases slowly, Apple will release a new version of GarageBand where you can either sing a tune or play a riff on a guitar, a bass line, or a drum pattern and GarageBand will write a rock/punk/metal song fitting to it. It will include a guitar solo and real-time animated teaching videos that show you how to play the song on your guitar/bass/drum.

A little later Nokia will issue RingForge, which will create ring tones from tunes that you hum into your cell phone. The ring tone industry will take that as a declaration of war and Nokia will have lots of trouble although it'll turn out that nobody uses RingForge because people want ringtones of famous songs rather then their own shit.

Meanwhile, a very simple but extremely catchy tune generated by a young girl using songsmith will grow extremely popular on youtube. Eventually, a digital single of the song will be issued through all kinds of mp3 distribution platforms except iTunes. It will top the charts anyway.

At that point, it will turn out that a hidden paragraph of the end user license agreement states that all songs produced via Songsmith will be owned 50% by Microsoft. Immediately, a community will form to develop an open source version of Songsmith called FoxyMusic. The beta version will only support MIDI and produce only Rap.

When a rumour comes up that Steve Jobs will hold the keynote at MacWorld again in 2011, the music industry is in utter turmoil. The keynote will in fact be held and Steve Jobs will present iTurn, a device like a Reactable which generates music through GarageBand, ie. iTurn composes music in real time depending on a set of cubes that you can put on and move around the surface of iTurn. Of course, while doing this you can also sing into a microphone or play a guitar and it will all be incorporated in the composition.

How about that?

 

[Shapeless)))]

 

[Crepuscularia]

Dwoakee, are you from the future?

Kids these days. Back in my day, we composed music the old fashioned way. In our heads. With the possible addition of a rudimentary understanding of music theory.

Funny that you should mention this though. Just the other day a coworker called me into his office and said, "wanna see the death of music?" and then showed me this program.....

 

[metal_wrath]

You still have to have a melody in your head to create any music...

I have been using a computer program to compose music, I have gotten very good at taking melodies in my head and transferring them onto the instruments in the music software. However, it can be very hard thinking of good melodies. I don't see how this program changes that.

 

[dwoakee]

Dwoakee, are you from the future?

I am not allowed to tell you that . Thanks for the compliment!

Funny that you should mention this though. Just the other day a coworker called me into his office and said, "wanna see the death of music?" and then showed me this program.....

Will it be the death of music? I don't think so. It might change our ways of dealing with music. Listen to the SongSmith version of Thunderstruck or We Will Rock You on youtube for example. There are certains moments where there is an old-fashioned cadence in the music that isn't there in the original and that gives you a completely different view on the song, a view that is less Rock and more harmonic. Maybe this will have an influence on the musical perception of people. Maybe not.

You still have to have a melody in your head to create any music...

That's certainly right. And there's lots of possibilities in songsmith that you have to choose from. So, people will try out different stuff, listen to it, change the settings, listen again, until they find out a configuration that they like best. What will they notice? Will they delve deeper into the matter and ask themselves "Why do I like this version better than that?" What answers will they find?

You know what songsmith clips on youtube I like best? The Blue-Grass Rap versions. Really, I'm not kidding! Imo they work really good! Maybe we witness the birth of a new Rap genre? Rap could definitely do with some fresh air.

 

[{-sapob-}]

^
lol
There is "Hick-Hop" a brand of country rap, done by Cowboy Troy.
M. Shadows from A7X does a song with him. its called "Buffalo Stampede".
its quite funny.

 

[PeeWee1473]

I think I'm retarded because I still don't really understand what this program does. So someone passed the lines from Running With the Devil into this program and it spat this out? It sounded awful. How would this change anything?

 

[Resonator]

You know what? Some 11 year old kid is going to make a really kickass song (In his mind) and he'll tell his mom and dad and they'll put money into it to try and sell it and then the reviews are going to crush his soul like candy under my boot, and some gets stuck to the sole of this boot simultaneously and travels with the crusher, annoying the hell out of him until the rain comes to wash it all away. Which could be weeks in some places.

Thanks Songsmith. You piss people off and crush spirits.

 

[dwoakee]

^
lol
There is "Hick-Hop" a brand of country rap, done by Cowboy Troy.
M. Shadows from A7X does a song with him. its called "Buffalo Stampede".
its quite funny.

Country Rap? I'll have to check it out, just out of curiosity. But Blue-Grass sounds pretty different than Country, doesn't it? And I was actually being serious.

I think I'm retarded because I still don't really understand what this program does. So someone passed the lines from Running With the Devil into this program and it spat this out?

You can do much more than that. There are lots of things you can configure and change about the song. You just don't have to write any notes.

... Thanks Songsmith. You piss people off and crush spirits.

That's a rather pessimistic view, but no less probable than my "prediction". This is actually what I started this thread for, to discuss the impact songsmith might have, so thanks for replying!

 

[truhlo]

Great introductory post, i so enjoyed the reading!

As for cool new tool, well, i really dont think it will change anything, especially when it comes to great music, or our understanding of it. I think it is just a gadget - those corporal vultures never get enough do they - composing truly complex and deep music will forever stay out of any machine's reach imo. The only realm where i can imagine something could happen (though not really change, since its been that way from the very beginning) is the pop music realm. I wonder if pop producers will find a way to somehow abuse such software, and make ripping off and sampling other people's music even easier and "better". Yet, as with autotune or other cool and uncool Pro tools tricks, i think it wont really allow anyone to make something out of nothing, and a fair amount of talent or skill (if not real artistry) will still be needed in order to make good music.

So, i think Songsmith will have its impact on pop culture in general, but it will neither open the new door creativity wise, nor will it mark the beginning of the "death of music". True music emerges out of human needs, and those needs will never fade, technological terror can only make them stronger and ever so subtle.

 

[SerenityNow!]

I think I'm retarded because I still don't really understand what this program does. So someone passed the lines from Running With the Devil into this program and it spat this out? It sounded awful. How would this change anything?

It also made DLR sound like a talentless fool!!
I don't think it will change the way music is looked at, except for maybe the lip-sinq'ers who have their music programmed for them. In that case, i wouldn't care because it's obviously not real music. The only scary part is that it may have a potential to create more lip-sinq'ing/pop non-talent out there, who will be making all the money. It seems to me that as time goes by, more of the radio-friendly pop orientated "music" out there is getting more and more dumbed down for the masses, as nothing more than ambient background noise or just plain shit that the teenie-boppers all lap up.

I don't think real music will be affected, as it seems to be going in the opposite direction as said "radio-friendly pop orientated" music (i.e. more creative, more progressive, more original/unique, etc.).

...just my Fiddy Cent...

 

[dwoakee]

Great introductory post, i so enjoyed the reading!

Thanks!

As for cool new tool, well, i really dont think it will change anything, ... composing truly complex and deep music will forever stay out of any machine's reach imo. The only realm where i can imagine something could happen ... is the pop music realm.

This is perhaps the most likely way for things to develop. Then again, I can imagine something else. Artists, experimental and avantgarde, might also try to push songsmith to its limits. Eg. they might try to produce several songs and piece them together with other tools. Or do live performances. Or try to find out what it does with cacophonic input, or animal noises. Also, if songsmith has a minimum of an audience Microsoft will probably develop enhancements that will give you even more possibilities so that the songs will sound less stereotypical.