Songwriting Declared Dead

[john]

feck. I hadn't even thought of that

[Steve]

Microsoft Songsmith --- karaoke for those who don't know the words or the melody

or the location of Planet Earth.

[AnneC]

The perfect marriage of music and hell. Buy your copy today! Operators are standing by!

[Retrosaurus Rex]

hey, you could be the drum sounds from the demo video!

A guy's gotta make a living...

[Retrosaurus Rex]

Hey,

Apologies for pointing to another forum, but over on the Cakewalk site there's an interesting discussion about the possibility of people who have actual musical hearing and ability being able to make use of SongSmith in a creatively productive and valid way...

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1608553

[Mazrocon]

I think i'm missing something, I couldn't watch the video cause my computer was moving at a glacial pace. So what's all this about? Apparently microsoft did something horrible...

~TIMOTHY~

[Mazrocon]

I've been reading the comments and apparently it's about getting instant gratification. Whether or not it works well with the synth, midi effects and pitch adjusting voice I wouldn't want to do it. Doesn't anyone like to work your way up to great skill and talent? To actually have talent... instead of microsoft's robot? I admit guitar hero and rock band is entertaining, but playing could easily lose peoples interest in wanting to learn guitar. Once you get so good at it you can play it on expert with the hardest song perfectly, doesn't mean you have talent. It just means you play alot!

I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out there was alot of people that were gonna learn a real instrument but didn't cause rock band and guitar hero is so much easier. Pick up a real instrument, or get a real voice... trust me it's alot more rewarding

~TIMOTHY~

[MikeRobinson]

I'd say that Guitar Hero is the best thing that ever happened to real musicianship. And this program is therefore the best thing that ever happened to songwriting.

In both cases, the best way to demonstrate how difficult the real stuff is, is to positively fill every available inch of sound-space with mediocrity. You'll have "that warm, fuzzy feeling" long enough to buy the product, but it won't be too long before your fake-guitar is hanging up at a used book store, looking pretty cheap and stupid for $20. ("On Sale Today!") Maybe their aspirations will have been spent, and they'll have moved on to something truly wonderful ... like hip-hop ... or maybe they'll become truly interested in learning how the real world works.

Hey ... we know it ... we're in the minority. We bust our for what we love to do. And we know, when we come up with something, it's real.

Those who seek, as we do, will find. Perhaps a program like this will show them, as nothing else could, that the real thing is "worth seeking."

Edited February 16, 2010 by MikeRobinson

[john]

well it might weed out those who pick up a guitar to look cool or attract the opposite sex, if they think they can do that on guitar player they'll maybe take that option lol

[MikeRobinson]

well it might weed out those who pick up a guitar to look cool or attract the opposite sex, if they think they can do that on guitar player they'll maybe take that option lol

Alas...

" ... the girls just turn a - way

To another guitar picker

In another late night place ..."

-- Alabama

But every song that any "Guitar Hero" ever fantasized of playing "expertly," somebody else did play "expertly." And, another person (or group of people) wrote it. Visual artists sweated hours away on displays that the erstwhile "hero" will barely notice. Programmers ran yet another regression-test on mountains of source code. Someone did the mixing and the mastering. All unseen.

No one on this planet has ever been transported ... not "Over the Rainbow" or "Up, Up And Away" ... without a song taking them there. There are many other places to go, and songs that will take them there. Those songs are just waiting to be written.

Maybe, though, things like Guitar Hero aren't too much different from what I remember doing as a child with my ... umm ... transistor radio. "Air guitar."

Maybe now, as the computer does what a computer inevitably does, it will expose more people to music and even allow them to progress beyond their own piano-lessons. I know that this has happened to me. Recently. Yesterday. This might make utterly no sense to anyone (except the sort of folks who hang out here), but here I was, writing the start of a little tune ... oboe, harp, and still-imagined strings. No one really there but me and the computer, a couple of hours in, and... suddenly it took that magic little turn and it was something that I had never heard before. I swear it was an accident. But... my own music... my own... sent me ... somewhere. It was like it wasn't quite "my music" anymore. (Yeah, you know. I know.)

I mashed the backup button. Twice. Copied to the spare hard drive. Printed it. Stared.

And the computer did make it possible. Maybe it was that very nice oboe patch, that auto-dynamics, the magic that comes from tweaking MIDI pressure and velocity settings on a modern patch. But, another song is coming to life and perhaps someday you shall hear it. My organ-lessons could not have done that on their own. They took me far, but a computer can go farther. The song could not have been realized and be coming out of my speakers without that technology.

Or, it can just be high-tech air guitar (and another novel new market for songwriters).

There will always be late-night places. There will always be crowds in the back, and magicians in the front.

Edited February 21, 2010 by MikeRobinson

[Kirby]

Eh. I can shamelessly say I play guitar hero. (Or played, havn't played in a few months). But, I also play 3 instruments, (one of those being guitar, though I'm still learning) and write songs. And understand that guitar hero doesn't make you make a good guitarist. But electronicly made music and music written by someone with talent have a huge difference, and I think the difference will show.

[MikeRobinson]

Eh. I can shamelessly say I play guitar hero. (Or played, havn't played in a few months). But, I also play 3 instruments, (one of those being guitar, though I'm still learning) and write songs. And understand that guitar hero doesn't make you make a good guitarist. But electronicly made music and music written by someone with talent have a huge difference, and I think the difference will show.

And I heartily agree that if you do know something about a real instrument, and you're "playing" those difficult riffs even if only in fantasy, you are learning something very important about that performance.

"Ditto," also, about "electronically made music." I know that my performance skills are lackluster. ... truth is, I don't practice much ... but I know that I can work on music of some complexity that someone else can play. They always use the score as a guide; which is really all that it can be. They always improvise. I try to compare what they did to what I wrote.

I guess that you can take any piece of music, say, Fur Elise, and when fifteen different good pianists each play it, you've got fifteen fantastic songs. No argument on that point. The digital computer is just as limited a tool, as it is remarkable.