Lunch Report 2012-12-04

Another day, another lunch

Today was baked fries, more turkey meetballs, and more Brooke Bond tea.

G&L
Do you have any of your G&Ls on youtube? I do it turns out. My SB-2 is on youtube (audio and video)! It's on a video later...

Show us your G&L video!

Songwriting
Oh, it's such a hassle. There's all those notes. And then you have instruments. And if you record, sometimes you have to mic things. Hassle, hassle, hassle. If only Microsoft would create software that writes music for you... ...if only...

I've probably mentioned this here before, but there's a program called Songsmith that does exactly that. This is a real, official video for a real product:

[youtube]3oGFogwcx-E[/youtube]

So, what could possibly go wrong? How about combining combining Songsmith and Karaoke? That doesn't sound advisable. So, I already had a karaoke build for "I Have a Hammer" that I used for local TV. Here's it is in action with the 1984 first-style red G&L SB-2 (jump to 2 min, 55 seconds):

[youtube]BJHOGrdS2z4[/youtube]

Notice that Bob has the "Is that a nail?" signs. Well, they're kinda messy. Not something you want to haul to Karaoke night. But, I have the hammer I bring (so it goes down like in the video) and Bob has nothing. Oh no! What if I gave him a part and he gets to have a screwdriver too? Fun, fun, fun.

So, here's the Karaoke build...
[youtube]SQEQRty787c[/youtube]

Notice the piano interlude in the middle. That's from Songsmith. I played back part of the song into Songsmith, and it chose the wrong notes, but then I was able to transcribe the song and then enter the basic note per measure directly into Songsmith and it created the lounge*. Some rearrangement in Audacity later, and there you are.

This is not the end of Karaoke and Songsmith mentions this week. Oh no, it gets worse later in the week!

Do you ever Karaoke? If so, do you have favorite songs?

Maybe tomorrow the $5 (now almost $10) bike will show up.

Until next time, remember, science is cool:

[youtube]op-UCyvCZWo[/youtube]

* To be clear, all I did was select one note per bar, select the style and tempo I wanted, and Songsmith did everything else including the sound rendering for the lounge section.

Those official Songsmith videos are awful! I hope Microsoft lost a lot of money with this one.

Here's the Songsmith guys from NAMM 2009. Yes, they took Songsmith to NAMM:
[youtube]ytoxCkt3bes[/youtube]

Note in the video they mention spending more time on Songsmith works out commercially. Well, it didn't, and they're working on other projects now. By corporate standards, I don't suspect Microsoft had too much into Songsmith, but yeah I'd be amazed if it was profitable.

I was really pleased with the lounge interlude Songsmith generated for me (after I corrected the notes). It does lounge much better than some other styles, like Reggae for example.

Brock, I had not heard of Songsmith before and after the demos, I suspect that I haven't missed much. I do not write anyway and and am in a cover band, we let others do the writing. It takes time to write 'em and only 3 minutes on the average to play them. Easy way out! Your interlude was quite a contrast. I'm staying tuned! -- Darwin

Oh my goodness! The perfect algorithm to write songs for kids programs (Sesame Street anybody?) I was enjoying a cup of coffee watching the first video and it almost came out my nose when the guy said:

"Microsoft, eh? So, it is really easy to use!"

Right, that's the first thing to comes to mind when I think Microsoft. Oh my. But at least it was developed in house so I guess M$ is innovating at least in some corners of the company. Do I sound jaded? For sure. I was part of the $6.3B (no typo folks, that a 'B') aQuantive acquisition they wrote off for a loss a couple of months ago. One of the worst managed companies I have ever worked for. Happy I left well before their ineptitude ruined it all.

- Jos

Microsoft is a mess. The Danger aquisition still stands out in mind, particularily with the service outage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sidekick_data_loss

Earlier this year the Microsoft Azure cloud services couldn't handle a leap day. Seriously.
http://gigaom.com/cloud/microsoft-tries ... re-outage/

Relatively speaking, maybe the Songsmith isn't so bad after all.

[youtube]jewxFiDQ22w[/youtube]

Microsoft is a mess. The Danger aquisition still stands out in mind, particularily with the service outage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sidekick_data_loss

Earlier this year the Microsoft Azure cloud services couldn't handle a leap day. Seriously.
http://gigaom.com/cloud/microsoft-tries ... re-outage/

Relatively speaking, maybe the Songsmith isn't so bad after all.

[youtube]jewxFiDQ22w[/youtube]

it is not so bad indeed. it is a lot worse.