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A Mini-Rant Against Songsmith

February 2nd, 2009
Jonathan Hardesty

Apart from the Youtube meme, I’m unsure what the importance of Microsoft’s Songsmith is. I get that it makes music creation insanely simplistic, and you can re-create old songs with a few presets. But whatevever happened to just picking up an instrument and learning to play it? In the youtubes I watched, I noticed a common theme among all of them: they sounded cold, mechanical. There was nothing organic about any of the re-created songs and I found myself wishing I could just hear the originals instead. Even original work I’ve heard from it has felt real artificial. Perhaps I have written this technology off early, but I’m not so sure. Have you played around with the program? What do you think? E-mail or comment.

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  • I might provide some insight here, since I'm the one making most of these videos on YouTube.

    I actually output the MIDI Songsmith creates and bring it into Logic for post-processing (matching tempos up) and using software instruments. These software instruments are regularly used transparently; with proper MIDI phrasing, they SOUND REALISTIC. Songsmith creates such robotic MIDI phrasing that it takes the humanization out of live, sampled instruments.
  • Oh ok, I didn't realize that that was the process for that. I kind of suspected that there was more done for those videos than songsmith could actually do itself. Props on the videos!
  • I tended to have the same reactions, but I really liked what Andrew Dubber had to say on his blog:
    But the idea of a resurgence in parlour music really appeals to me. The idea that kids will find it a normal part of play and not necessarily a career decision to play music seems like a good thing to me - and it’s something that’s been - if not lost, then certainly pushed right to the background.

    Personally, I believe that music should be normalised, and not held up as some magical ‘either you have it or you don’t’ talent that excludes kids right from the moment singing with their friends starts to make them a bit self-conscious.
  • I guess I never thought about it that way before. I kind of like that idea of music being normalized like that.
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