I’ll never buy a PC, but if there’s one thing that bugs me about Macs is how supremely pompous the company is about their alleged ability to replicate human creativity. I used to think that the “Genius” feature on iTunes was the most egregious example of this, but now Microsoft has taken back the prize. Behold: Songsmith. Its commercial wins in some other category, too, though I’m not sure which. Horrible? Comically absurd? Scariest thing to watch while on LSD?
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The key problem with this dumb-in-the-first-place idea is that one still needs to come up with an engaging melody, which, as Jimmy Van Heusen or Johnny Mercer could tell you, is the entire game. And even then, it’d be interesting to sing “Caravan” into Songsmith and see what sort of bullshitty crap comes out—probably, if the above commercial is any indicator, it’d be no different than pushing the “Demo” button on a Casio in 1986.
All of this reminds me of those just-add-water foam dinosaurs, where you add something pure and natural to something synthetic and get something overblown and gaudy.
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Update, thanks to Eric: This is the fucking most awesome cohesion of blog memes in the universe. David Lee Roth’s acapella track run through the Songsmith. Listen and weep.
Oh Shit: This One’s Even Better.
Case in point: http://i.gizmodo.com/5129613/david-lee-roth-%252B-microsoft-songsmith–pure-horror
Pretty incredible, and creepy, and awful.
I’m guessing in the right hands though, it could be used to create some incredibly evil-sounding music.
Gotta love those kazoo zingers! That was the greatest thing I’ve seen since the amateur computer-animated “Tribute to America” video for Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin.'”
http://www.sillyape.org/trash/journey/
I tried to watch that commercial up there. It could not be done. Someone in the world thinks such chum works on humans, and that hurts my feelings.