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"Because we can" does not mean "should"
Thanks to TechCrunch for this delightful article on the horrors of Microsoft Songsmith.
Suffice it to say, Songsmith is one of those cool research projects at Microsoft -- you sing a song into the microphone and tell it a musical style, then Songsmith analyses the tune, rhythm and so forth to create backing tracks. Which sounds innocent enough, but it has apparently spawned a little industry of taking real pop videos, stripping them down to just the vocals, feeding them through Songsmith and then reattaching the tune to the original video.
The results are -- well, just read the article and check out the attached videos. Surely, the world didn't *need* a chirpy bluegrass version of Billy Idol singing "White Wedding", but it's scary-funny...
Suffice it to say, Songsmith is one of those cool research projects at Microsoft -- you sing a song into the microphone and tell it a musical style, then Songsmith analyses the tune, rhythm and so forth to create backing tracks. Which sounds innocent enough, but it has apparently spawned a little industry of taking real pop videos, stripping them down to just the vocals, feeding them through Songsmith and then reattaching the tune to the original video.
The results are -- well, just read the article and check out the attached videos. Surely, the world didn't *need* a chirpy bluegrass version of Billy Idol singing "White Wedding", but it's scary-funny...