Maybe Connor's girlfriend wouldn't have dumped him if MySong had a hetrosexual slide bar.

Gatsbyguy

Nooooooooooooooooo......... MicroCrap strikes again. Let people with real talent do the talented things. Am I the only one that thought the music sounded the same for all of them.

sonburn

O.o They have heard of American Idol right? I don't even like American Idol but without a doubt its the easiest way to a record deal weather you can sing or not. As for this, sorta neat, but I doubt anyone is going to use it to meet their pop-star dreams. I mean ad-jingles or Christmas carols, and just generally non-professional music is about the best your going to get.

Still, did she actually sing? Bob's deli, we put stuff on your bread, a food contains no lead? Or is that just me? If so, I'm certainly not going to Bob's deli. O.o

bbfreak

This manages to be very cool and very scary at the same time: Sort of like YouTube, we'll likely see a ratio of 1 amazing and excellent to 10,000 pure shite. And we'll finally find out what the vocal equivalent to a squirrel catapult is... not that anyone's asking.

Mandatory_Field

i'll put stuff on britneys bread

hanbush

The credits were funny

DemolitionMan

This is a great idea. You're going to have a bunch of crap littering the market, but fortunately, the music industry will sort that for us and then extort all parties involved.

This should result in a general increase of quality music , and fortunately, the crappy unpopular music won't be seen unless the writer forces it on you with a "look at my new song!"

Ekental

Now you can have piano accompaniments like Sara Bareilles!

jimbob6

But does that sad slider go all the way to D minor?

Ess

@Kibets I totally disagree with your Tegan & Sara comment. They're competent songwriters and Chris Walla - who worked on that album - is an amazing producer.

However, I totally agree that it's far too easy for talentless people to make music. First Pro Tools gave us hacks like Ashlee Simpson, now this gives Joe Blow who can't sing a horrible Piano accompaniment.

michaelportent

Humor is now officially dead.

But this is a pretty cool app nonetheless!

packetsniffer

I hate to say it.. but once they get different types and styles of accompaniment(guitar, drums, bass, strings etc) and even auto backup vocals (ooohs, ahhs) and some sort of easy point and sequence system... this thing will be a big hit...

Discofunk

MAY WANT

The Great Aussie Evil

Not worthwhile until they have a slider bar for "suck factor."

mikejonas

After seeing the Tegan and Sara DVD which came with "The Con" I came to realize no talent is required whatsoever to become successful. Even the worst sounding efforts can be presented in a saleable fashion. Microsoft is just bringing these techniques to the masses and I applaud them.

kibets

LOL@Bob's Deli....we put stuff on your bread.

MeNotYou

I totally want this. Like now.

MeNotYou

Great! Now all the people who sing like ass can sing with accompaniment that sounds like ass.

Buehler

ALL HAIL NEW-INDIE MUSAK.

GBirdii

connor cracks me up. i feel bad for the pop star. and that jingle sucks (though informative... contains no lead).

thanks for the giggle!

floridastylee

This is more useless than photobooth...

hudsong

This blew my mind.

Literally. Nowadays it feels like everybody can produce shitty music. Not just paris Hilton.

Fuck You microsoft

Bani-Banan

No good will come of this... evar!

KenK

I wish I had something funny and witty to say but nothing can top that video....

homerjay

No real time? A crime. My dinner-time musical-theater may never happen ;-(

MagnoliaBoy

OK. Whoever produced this video also produces the training videos for every company I've ever worked for.

spededdler

It's official... Jason Chen is tone deaf! ;-)

KenK

It can't get any worse.. :F

nym-ph

Did everyone one here think it actually works? With "Just the way you look tonight" it botched every attempt. It sounded horrible! Not even close to being in rhythm or tune.

Mark 2000

I wonder how it would handle my "ability" to only sing notes that don't exist on a piano...

MrBalloonKnot

Not a horrible idea in concept. There really needs to be a fleshing out of piano rhythms. And with a basic chord structure, it shouldn't be too difficult to throw in some bass and other instruments.

drummerjoe

wow. "as you can see in the video, it actually sounds pretty good"

er, What?

there must be a problem with the video, because the one im watching makes me cringe in pain from the abysmal sound.

deucailion

Please make sure this never sees the light of day.

gadgetfanatic

Bob's Deli roxxxx!! (swoon)

lianna_g

eh... I just noticed some of you getting pretty serious about this. It is a joke in case you couldn't tell.

PopsGG

That's a pretty good spoof video. However I can actually see the idea becoming a reality. Imagine the karaoke possibilities!

ps That Indian guy is a bad actor. lol

PopsGG

Guys, try band-in-a-box, it has all of this and much more. Is this another case of a large company taking credit for what oither have done much better for years. Shame on you Microsoft. Worst than plagiarism....

altus

Well, it's almost cool. Has some real potential. Once the midi sounding samples are upgraded, once other styles / rhythms of accompaniment are added, once other instruments are added, once the accompaniment does something more than detect the pitch the person is singing at,,,

Seems like all it really does is detect the pitch they're singing at, find a chord that would hug that pitch nicely (thats where the happy factor comes in, minor for unhappy major for happy, augs for jazzy?? wtf...)

If you're going to have a jazz slider, CHANGE THE DAMN RHYTHMS MAN. That's what I thought was going to happen, but no it just adds aug chords?? wtf.

soldstatic

Is that Windows ME?!? How old is this video? Isn't Vista tha latest OS from Microsoft?

huk

There's more info, on the actual project page (shown in the video, but not linked in the article for some reason)

[research.microsoft.com]

There's a short list of songs with three audio clips. First is just the vocals, second is the vocals and MySong piano, and the third is the vocals plus backing (generated by running the MySong chords through Band-in-a-Box)

Most interesting is a chart at the bottom, where they had MySong, a musician, and Band-in-a-Box all score the same vocals then had an audience independently rate them.

smith186

I'm sure Randy Newman is trembling in fear at his keyboard...writing a song about it...

varion

Riding on the bus, Riding on the bus.

slowreader

While I'm sure AI song creation will only improve, this is why I think this one is bad.

The program is trying to anticipate what the most obvious chord choice would be at the beginning of each measure. However, the choices are not always correct, and even if they were, good songs are not about choosing the most obvious chord, holding that chord for the whole measure, and choosing a new chord for the next measure. If this program were perfected (and its musical algorithms weren't so painfully simplistic), at best it would seem to create the world's corniest songs.

The other thing is that the program's "musical intelligence" is so minimal, that you could essentially teach it to anyone in the five minutes it would take them to use the program, and they would be able to make better choices than the software.

For example, while the Jazz setting seems to add random chords in a musically meaningless way, the fundamental program only uses 6 or so basic chords limited to the beginning of each measure. If you gave each person 6 buttons (with a few descriptions under each one like "Begin and end here for happy song"), each of which triggered one of the chords, and asked them to fiddle with the buttons to come up with an accompaniment after they recorded a melody, they would do a better job than the algorithm and wouldn't require them to learn anything beyond hitting a button like a monkey. They would immediately be able to tell if the chord fit or not (e.g. the chord contained the note or implied harmony of the melody at the beginning of the measure), and would make better choices than the software because they have a lifetime of learning music by virtue of listening to it.

Hmmm... 6 buttons triggering chords to accompany a recorded melody... iPhone SDK anyone? :)

frigg

i dont even know what to say... maybe it needs a little more time in the oven?

brodie123

"And we played the first thing that came to our heads,
Just so happened to be,
The Best Song in the World, it was The Best Song in the World."

BigDanInTX

If there's anything that all of you should learn from this it's that Band in a Box is a great program. In order to invent songs as the people in this video are doing, you have to have some knowledge about how songs work, and if you know that, you can figure out Band in a Box.

Why did that girl sing about food that contains no lead? Simple answer: they must have given her an instruction sheet asking the singer to record a "lead vocal line" and she didn't know what they meant.

For people smarter than that, Band in a Box is the way to go, and it's cheap, too.

Jonathan-L

So Connor, your girlfriend broke up with you? Blame Microsoft - everyone else does.

johnqamerica

microsoft bob is running a deli?

konabiker

It was better than I expected; but It's still a little scary to think of this being in the hands of the general public. The first example was particularly egregious (though at least partly due to the singer's complete lack knowledge of about the concept of bars, and her bad timing.)
It didn't do to badly with the more simple songs, (mostly Connor's & Emily's), that were actually sung in time with the metronome (though emily should probably up the Happy slider). Britney's song was screwed up, most likely, because she started in the middle of a bar.
An evolved version in this would be awesome in Garageband (With all the instruments, depth, and styles of Magic Garageband of course) Of course, since this is a microsoft project, it's unlikely that'll happen any time soon
MS need to add automatic pitch and timing correction (like in garageband, again) before this is any good though - your average person can't sing even as well as the example people.

PWalker

I knew this would happen sooner then later. It is a shame that apple didnt get it out first... This is what I thought "MAGIC Garage Band" would be all about.
I want this NOW.

Shnoozy