Microsoft is musically Inept

I really hate Microsoft.

Just when I was beginning to embrace my PC, they go and screw everything up by trying to get into the music game. They are making their fore' into the music "production" arena with "Microsoft Songsmith" . This flaming piece of crap actually writes your backup music for you after hearing the melody sung through a microphone. Consider it a "Speak & Spell" for music. What's worse, the musical accompaniment is terrible…just terrible ( It almost reminds me of the crappy old Casio demo song Wesley Willis used to back up all of his music) .

 

I am really glad Bill Gates is doing what he can to de-evolve our musical enlightenment. When will they learn? Windows Media Player, the Zune and now this… I really wish they would have stopped at Excel and Microsoft Word.

 

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Musicbox- Phenomenal… just awesome

Anyone with any interest in digital media, music, new technology, or ears and a brain need to check this out. This is the thesis of a MIT grad student mapping music using it's metadata. All the info is there… it amazes me that just now we are finally doing something cool with it.

In all fairness, I didn't discover this on my own… I learned about this at Techcrunch. This is really cool and someone with a TON of startup capitol ought to be able to do something with this technology. [read: I met the creator of the "music genome project" several years ago and doubted it's application. Still kicking myself for that..] This is very cool!

 

Demo Video is here

 

New Naxos Licensing site now available in Beta

That's right, folks... Now you can access the greatest collection of Classical Music available for Licensing through the World's Leading Classical Label, Naxos! It is my pleasure to introduce you to www.NaxosLicensing.com . A one-stop licensing resource featuring not only Naxos, but music from more than a dozen other labels that can be licensed easily. The vast majority of the music included at Naxos Licensing is one-stop licensing due to the fact that it is primarily Classical Music and in the Public Domain!!! There is plenty of modern music as well... Pretty much every great "classical" piece ever recorded.

This is still in Beta, so please feel free to try it out and let me know your thoughts/comments. Our goal is to have this be the premier licensing resource for Classical Music.

Go ahead give it a try...

Wii Music

Nintendo has just announced the launch of Wii Music in October of this year. They are hoping that "blue Ocean" lightning strikes thrice after the successful Wii Sports and Wii Fit llaunches. According to the press release this game hopes to bring music to the "not good at guitar hero" set. The game will feature more than 60 instruments and more than 50 (bad) songs. I do not see how this can be successful. I may stand to be corrected, but this simply cannot compete with the likes of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I think that demographic is already maxed out on the music making games... Perhaps this will find a way into the old folks homes and even possibly into music therapy circles. That could be a very interesting proposition... digital Orff instruments. I have definitely heard of weirder things. Perhaps my friends over at Mustech.net will be able to comment on the actual use-ability of this product within the realm of music education... Now that would be an interesting thesis.

Musical Gaming's Hall of Shame: Some other lesser-known games that attempted to bring music to the masses.