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April 24, 2008, 03:40 PM ET
Turning Shower Singers Into Songwriters
New software created by researchers at the University of Washington and Microsoft automatically chooses chords to fit a vocal melody, allowing amateur singers to become song-writers.
Here’s how the new program, MySong, works: A user (who needs no musical training) sings into a microphone, and the software generates chords to fit her melody. She can then adjust the “jazz factor” and “happy factor” of the accompaniment, and step back and listen to her fully-produced musical creation. She can also pass the automated chords through Band-in-a-Box, a commercial software program, to add a more sophisticated-sounding musical arrangement.
Check out some of the audio clips on the MySong site, which feature musically-untrained singers singing snippets of pop songs and original melodies as well as accompanied versions of those songs.—Catherine Rampell
Categories: Research
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