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 Microsoft is working on new software that I believe will hurt music education around the world: it's called Songsmith and their webpage has a nauseating video that demonstrates how it works.
Songsmith generates musical accompaniment to your voice. To create a song, you just choose a musical style from reggae to big band, sing into your PC's microphone, and Songsmith will create backing music for you, even changing the underlying chords as you sing.
Andrew Dubber at New Music Strategies is hoping that technology like this might bring back a resurgence in parlour music -- amateurs who play music for the fun of it. Maybe now instead of buying your kids their first guitars, or paying for piano lessons, you can just buy them Microsoft Songsmith and be done with it.
But wouldn't people be better off if they just learned how to play an instrument for real? Learned how to write songs themselves? It's not that hard. I would argue that it is far more rewarding, and of course the music would be better, too.
Digging deeper
Using this kind of software teaches people very little about music. For example, rather than simply learning what it is that can make a song sound sad (slow tempos, minor chords), happy (fast tempos, major chords), or jazzy (swing rhythms and extended chords), now you can simply adjust the "happy and jazzy sliders." No kidding! And they call this digging deeper into the music:
...if you want to dig deeper, you can customize your music, even if you don't know anything about chords or music theory. You can adjust the "happy" and "jazzy" sliders, change styles even after you sing, or set up your own custom band.
I sometimes wonder about Rock Band and Guitar Hero, too. I know they are games and designed just for fun. But it makes me wonder: All that time you spent becoming awesome at Rock Band or Guitar Hero you could have spent actually learning to play an instrument. And then you'd get chicks, too.
Here's what Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" would sound like if they'd used Microsoft Songsmith. It's no surprise to hear that it sucks.
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