Microsoft Songsmith on the Mac with VMware Fusion
OK, so this has been making the rounds a bit, by virtue of an almost sinfully terrible demo video put together to show of the software (did they make it that bad on purpose, knowing that it would make it more viral? Hmmmm…maybe something to keep in mind for Fusion videos!).
Microsoft Research, who also brought you Microsoft Photosynth and Microsoft Worldwide Telescope, just launched Songsmith, software that will, essentially, make a song for you based on lyrics you sing to a given beat.
Like most Microsoft Research projects, it’s Windows-only, so as usual we wondered how does this perform on the Mac, with VMware Fusion?
A user named mrzarquon over at MetaFilter has already answered our question for us.
In a devilish stroke of genius, he took the vocal-only track of David Lee Roth singing “Runnin’ with the Devil” and played it via Safari out the speakers of his Mac. At the same time, he was running Songsmith on Windows on Mac via VMware Fusion. Songsmith grabbed the audio via the onboard mic on the Mac, processed the vocal track, and then output a “Songsmithed” version of the Van Halen classic.
As he notes, he put the “happy” slider to full. Is that the software version of “ours go to eleven”?
You can hear what the output sounds like by bopping over to the thread, here.
And here’s the demo video that’s making everyone cringe…and then download. Enjoy!
mrzarquon here. I didn't realize my comment and work had made it's way all the way over here.
The Happy Slider is actually a feature of songsmith, instead of giving a clear musical representation of what they were doing, it just has "happy" and "jazzy" sliders, which I guess are supposed to mean something.
Posted by: mrzarquon | January 22, 2009 at 09:26 AM