Songsmith Will Haunt My Dreams Tonight

In the highly, highly unlikely event that you've ever sat in front of your computer, wistful and yearning, wishing you could make songs that sounded like demo tracks on a Yamaha keyboard without the hassle of actually writing or producing anything, well yearn no more, for your bizarre, twisted prayers have been answered.

In Microsoft's most shocking waste of R&D money since Vista (oooooh I went there!!!), the company has developed Songsmith, a program that... well I'm not actually altogether sure what it does to be honest. It seems you sing into your computer, accompanied by the kind of backing drums you might hear in a QVC electric drill demonstration. Songsmith then makes chords based on what you sing, with various traits determined by a host of sliding scales that you adjust according to your desire. Quite what these sliding scales do is beyond me - yes I'd like my song to be 65% happy and 83% jazzy please, thanks.

I'd really love to know who their tarket market for this is, as the examples given in the above ad are utterly implausible. Office Dad looking for a way to spice up his demonstration? Impossibly-happy daughter messing around on her laptop (Macbook Pro by the way? No amount of stickers can fool mine eyes...)? Perhaps most ridiculous of all, uber-cool musician trying to impress his way back into the rock band? Surely if you were remotely interested in making music you would be messing around on Garageband or similar.

This post has me unusually angry, and I think it's because I'm secretly terrified by Songsmith. As someone who loves writing songs and just messing around with synths and loops and drums, the concept of there being a cross-section of people who want to write music but, you know, couldn't be arsed actually writing it is alarming in itself. Now they can make tracks (albeit shitty ones) without even knowing the first thing about what chords or instruments or ANYTHING are actually IN the songs that are being written for them by this horrible little piece of software. Boo-urns!

UPDATE: I just realised who will buy this - the people that make those cheap mock-ups of famous songs for use in karaoke machines. The resemblance is uncanny.