Microsoft Songsmith Signals the End of the Human Musician

Or not.

Microsoft Songsmith is new software from Redmond that actually introduces a pretty cool technological maneuver: it parses a musical vocal passage and attempts to add auto accompaniment in a variety of styles, taking cues from the user as to emotional scale ranging from happy and sad to genre based generalities like “jazzy” and “twist” and gee, I dunno, a train smashing into a muzak jukebox.

Admittedly the results are at best an exercise in hilarity.  But then again it’s all about baby steps.  This sort of thing will likely evolve into something really fun in a game environment or karaoke.  I personally can’t wait to mess with it ~ so long as you can get enough under the hood to get it to freakback on itself ~ imagine what Cornelius could do with this thing and a hacker from Elance.

At any rate, lest you fail to register the irony of the headline, here is what Radiohead might have been had they started with Songsmith

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM1GUk1SBmY

Here is the commercial the nerds at Microsoft came up with for this incredible new innovation.  (Note the “musician” who wonders whether Songsmith might be the solution to the fact that his band thinks his songwriting has been a little stale lately.)




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