Redmond (WA) - Microsoft has been slowly but steadily building a set of accompanying software that mimics Apple's iLife suite of digital lifestyle applications. While the software maker now has basic Windows Live counterparts to all iLife applications, it didn't have an application to compete with GarageBand that lets users easily record a song and write music. A new Microsoft Research project unveiled at the CES 2009 finally completes the missing musical link - Songsmith.


Songsmith, a new music application from Microsoft, lets users create music but it comes with an interesting twist: in addition to playing your own instruments or writing music, the application lets you sing a tune into a microphone to automatically make musical arrangements that go great with it.

The software operates in an interesting manner. The application focuses on singing. The user picks up a musical style, sings into a microphone (on your laptop or desktop), and Songsmith will create backing music for you. And yes, it does a hell of a good job.

Users can then edit chords and arrangements, change musical styles, all with point-and-click ease because Songsmith is music-making application is "for the rest of us." For more advanced users who know a thing or two about music, they can play their own instruments into the application or edit tunes by hand. To top it all off, the application doesn't require monster audio hardware or a ninja PC. In fact, Songsmith works just as fine on your average notebook with a built-in microphone.

If you're not satisfied with results, you can move the "happy" and "jazzy" sliders to apply different chords and get results more like what you want. Alternatively, you can lock the type of chords you like and Songsmith will change the remaining ones. You can choose from among 30 different musical styles ranging from pop to rock to country, all courtesy of PG Music, makers of Band-in-a-Box, who partnered with Microsoft Research on the Songsmith project. Built-in virtual instruments are provided through a partnership with Garritan and Plogue. And, just like Apple's GarageBand, Songsmith enables users to purchase additional musical styles and virtual instruments from within the application.

In a nutshell, the basic steps are behind Songsmith's magic. The application analyzes your voice by utilizing a technique called auto-correlation, in order to roughly determine frequencies and musical notes you were singing. Then, Songsmith passes this data to a mathematical model which has been pre-trained with 300 popular songs - so it already knows what chords go best together and which ones sound good with different melodies. Based on this existing set of statistics and chord sequences, Songsmith generates new chords appropriate to your singing. Finally, Songsmith turns calculated chords into actual composition by telling any of the 30 different built-in musical styles which chords to play. A music synthesizer then turns this final musical arrangement into a sound output using built-in software-based virtual instruments (regardless of the sound card's abilities).

When you're done recording your next Grammy piece, you can export the compositions as audio files and post them to a blog or share via social networks with friends. Although the social component per se is not greatly explored, we think future versions should put greater emphasis on this aspect. Imagine being able to post your recordings online for other Songsmithers for rating, comment and sharing. It is, however, the real-life social component of Songsmith that Microsoft is trying the push, that is: The idea that you will record a song and play it back to dazzle your girlfriend, colleague, parents or someone else dear to you. Microsoft's funny promo videos pitch exactly this idea.

Although Songsmith will not make you the next big thing in music, it does provide a fresh take on music making. Besides that, the application is pure fun and very entertaining. There is certain element of magic involved when you sing and then hear a complete musical arrangement backing you up. It also make you try harder, even if your singing skills are equal to those of a deaf elephant.

Songsmith turns the genre of music-making applications upside down, and offers a refreshing idea coupled with casual, easy-going approach that might attract even those who generally steer away off a software related to music-making.

Songsmith requires Windows Vista or Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or greater, and a .NET Framework 3.0, 1GB of RAM and at least 1GHz processor. A free trial is available for download here. The trial brings the full functionality of the paid version, but comes limited with six hours of real use. Full version is available for $29.95 at the online Microsoft store.