Microsoft Songsmith Makes Everybody A Composer

Microsoft’s Songsmith is an app that is designed to let you makes songs by singing into your Windows computer:

Songsmith generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice. Just choose a musical style, sing into your PC’s microphone, and Songsmith will create backing music for you. Then share your songs with your friends and family, post your songs online, or create your own music videos.

For people that do know how to write music, Microsoft says:

Songsmith is for you too. Songwriters can use Songsmith as an “intelligent scratchpad” to work with new melodies, quickly turning your scratch recordings of new ideas into richer, deeper explorations. Musicians can also play instruments right into Songsmith, instead of singing.

This might be an interesting product, but their promotional video tries your patience, and the app’s graphic design is pretty horrible. That may be enough to keep people away. 

Let me know what you think!

14 thoughts on “Microsoft Songsmith Makes Everybody A Composer

  1. That is totally ridiculous! okay well it is a nice idea… but the ad totally put me off. The girl/dad is even using a macbook pro! how does that work?!

  2. I kept thinking this was either a joke or some hair brained concept, but this is actually a shipping product….

    @simon: yeah, no amount of stickers can hide that. I especially liked how clunky the other guys pc laptop is in comparison.

  3. Am I the only one who wanted to go jump off a bridge while the singing was going on. This is an absolute joke of a product and an even bigger joke of a company in Microsoft – they just don’t get it, do they?

  4. They just don’t get it. Easy to use but severely limiting to users may work with operating systems, but not with music. I mean, an “intelligent scratchpad”? Have they never heard of Live?

  5. I’m tired of you forum trolls bashing every new product. Yall just need to go to 2:15 and turn down the hate and turn up the happy

  6. HAHAHAHAHA magic!
    Its a cool concept and IT WILL SELL to the kind of demographic they aim for, but musicians are pissing pants now and sending this post to everyone as a joke.. Again very funny video 😀

  7. http://music.metafilter.com/2943/Runnin-With-The-Songsmith

    We knew the world would not be the same…
    A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.
    I remembered the lines from the hindu scripture, the bhagavad gita
    Vishnu was trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty
    And to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says,
    “now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

  8. I saw this a little while ago. The ad was obviously designed to have a high cheese factor, but the bottom line is that the output of the program is absolute CRAP. It sounds like background MIDI music from a late ’80s/early ’90s PC game. I don’t doubt that at least a few people will buy it, but I will feel truly sorry for them. “Limiting” just does not describe the scope of this application; “useless” is more like it.

    Decent idea, absolutely terrible execution.

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