artificial intelligence

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!

Following the successful launch of the Cakewalk Myspace page, Cakewalk has created a Youtube channel to provide an educational resource for musicians interested in PC based music production.

Cakewalk has been posting SONAR 6 video tutorials, giving people a sneak peak at a few of the program’s new features before it hit store shelves. Cakewalk customers were able to get an in-depth look at the highly anticipated Active Controller Technology, AudioSnap suite of audio timing manipulation tools, and the Session Drummer™ 2 virtual instrument.

Here’s Cakewalk’s overview of the latest Home Studio:

In addition to a steady stream of SONAR 6 videos, Cakewalk has also added video tutorials for its popular virtual instruments, Dimension Pro and Rapture, along with demo footage and artist appearances from trade shows. Excerpts from two notable artist talks include Rory Kaplan (Queen, Sting, Sheryl Crow) and 2005 Grammy-winner Terry Howard (Ray Charles).

The company is also committed to posting videos from its archives featuring older versions of products as a means to provide continuing support for customers who have not yet upgraded to the latest version, and also to acquaint current customers with older features that may not be the focus of current marketing activities. Older videos posted to date cover topics such as perfecting vocal tracks, comping guitar solos, emulating acoustic spaces, and more.

The company is also adding videos by users of Cakewalk software to its Favorites List on YouTube to provide additional promotion to their customers.

LvB’s X has introduced LvB’s X 2.0 – Virtual Music Composer, “music motive/phrase maker” software, an application that promises to compose music so you don’t have to.

The software works as a composer instead of a tool for composing. Users can create the basic part of a song by developing the motive which allows a key shift in the phrase. In other words, the program will bring the inspiration to the user. The software is available in three versions: Basic (free), Standard and Professional, for Windows OS.

LvB’s X simplifies creation by providing a simple graphical interface to be used by those with no prior knowledge or understanding of how to make music with a computer. Essentially, LvB’s X is designed to obtain a well-balanced relationship between musical regularities and irregularities. Every note of every instrument, except the drums, has its own sample – there is no musical predetermination as loop-based samples.

Pricing & Availability

The Basic version of LvB’s X is free and available immediately as a download at www.lvbsx.com. The Standard version ($99.95, shipping included) is available for download with software and printed user manual sent to customers via mail. The Professional version ($249.95) offers a special program for educational professionals ($49.95).

System Requirements

LvB’s X requires a Windows (XP, 2000, 2003) based OS, sound capability, at least 99MB/690MB of free disk space for Basic/Professional version installation and minimal graphics resolution of 1024 x 860 pixels.

More information and a demo are available at the LVBSX site.