Songsmith as Front-End for BIAB

Greetings all,

Because of the criticism of Songsmith on other Cakewalk forum threads, I thought some might find it interesting to know what it can be used for, in addition to allowing children and embarrassingly immature adults to create songs as depicted in the videos that were created to advertise it. In particular, I demonstrate its use as a front-end to BIAB to create a new hybrid style, and then to create a simple demo instrumental piece that utilizes this new style.

First I played a modified version of Mary Had a Little Lamb on a synth (consistent with "children and embarrassingly immature adults"), recording this into Songsmith which created a chord progression. I played C-B-A-B-C-C-C-B-B-B-C-G-G instead of E-D-C-D-E-E-E... to create an unusual set of chords. Although it sounds atrocious, the purpose of the played notes was simply to generate a slew of MIDI data to work with, not to create a piece from Songsmith:

Mary Off Original

The MIDI export from Songsmith was then imported into BIAB (into the Melody track). I selected a BIAB style to combine the existing data with potentially new parts. The timing of this style was a little off from the Songsmith style, but this was both a challenge and a true opportunity to create something new, a hybrid style. I ended up selecting (from the chosen BIAB style) the guitar part and the strings part to ADD to the existing MIDI data. I then exported the "song" from BIAB, that is I exported the original MIDI data plus the new data with the chord progression imposed upon it, plus a new ending from the style.

This new "song" was actually somewhat of a cacophony of sounds which required editing for reconciliation --- being a combination of "50's Rock" and "British Reggae." I made rather massive MIDI edits, but did not add any new original notes. Instead I exchanged parts (i.e. instruments), moved small and large blocks of data from one part into another, lengthened and shortened notes en masse, added flams, pitch warbling, and strumming to the new guitar part (a combination of the old piano part and the BIAB style part). The result was something that, although resembling the original accompaniment from Songsmith, was actually beginning to sound quite different even though the parts were already there. I then substituted a Jamstix 2 drum pattern for the original one, but drove Jamstix 2 with the original MIDI data to create the new track.

The idea here was to use what few notes I had actually played IN SONGSMITH to drive programs that contained MIDI data to create far more MIDI data to work with, but not just random MIDI data --- MIDI data that relied on music theory and heuristics contained in the programs. The data created by Songsmith was used to drive other programs to create even more data. I did do some quantization fixes by hand for perhaps a couple dozen notes to fix some really bad timings, but tried to minimize this very detailed note-at-a-time type of thing.

This new "song" was imported into BIAB, but not into the Melody track, rather into the Style Wizard which broke up this new somewhat crappy song (which I viewed simply as useful MIDI data) into its constituent parts. The original chord structure from Songsmith was also detected and created for a new, new song that used the original chord progression. This even newer structure was twice the length of the old because I had serialized the two guitar parts. A few extra bars showed up thanks to the old ending, so I simply copied a portion of the Songsmith chord progression into these remaining bars.

I then "Played" BIAB a few times. As BIAB users should know, this rearranges the components of the current style (the new, new one just detected) into different combinations at each playing. After hearing one I liked, I simply exported it, then did some MIDI edits to fix problems, duplicated some of the tracks to pan L and R, etc. These were rather simple edits, but important ones. I then had a "new, new song" and a "new, new style" as well. This final result could be imported into BIAB to create an enhanced style, and it probably should be. However, at that point and to create a demo audio, I went back and rendered the original accompaniment in the same core instruments as the final "new, new song" for comparison:

Comparison --- Original and New

The first shorter part is the original accompaniment, but rendered by the same core instruments as used in the final longer part to allow a comparison of the composition as opposed to the renderers, because as everyone knows or should know, merely changing the renderer can dramatically change the sound. The longer part does contain additional instruments, but for example two guitars at different volume levels playing the same part and two string sections playing the same part, in keeping with the idea of using existing MIDI data, the "new, new (hybrid) style," and the original chord progression. This is a new and original composition rather than something to accompany a child's singing.

Rather than finding Songsmith totally useless, I find it an interesting and very easy way to create various chord progressions to experiment with, but also as a way of inspiring new hybrid styles. The results of this bit of work for me are: 1) a new ditty (the "new, new song" --- rest were simply "data"; 2) new style; 3) new chord progressions (note plural); 4) slew of MIDI data to work with in the future.

Songsmith is not as totally useless for grownups as some have implied or stated elsewhere. This claim does incorporate the assumption that I myself am not an "embarrassingly immature adult," but I hope readers will give me the benefit of that assumption for the purposes of this post!

Regards to all,
Dave Clark

Hi Dave. I appreciate your posting that.

I've been intrigued with Songsmith as well. It also got me interested in BIAB, though I still know absolutely nothing about it even though I've made a couple of very brief visits to the site.

What I find most and potentially valuable about SS is how using the 'Happy' and 'Jazzy' sliders, in different positions to each other, produce a wide variety of chord progressions, many of them extremely improbable yet still related, somehow, to the original input. I find the results have high inspiration potential. In another post, I described it as dyslexic, which isn't quite right, but not entirely wrong either.

The program is aptly named.

At a composition and chord progression level, working with Songsmith is like a collaborating with a robot that has a deep understanding of music theory and usage statistics, but absolutely no taste or aesthetic of its own.

As far as performance goes, it's like working with session musicians who can instantly and perfectly sight read anything you throw at them and play the same mostly-perfunctory parts every time.

On the one hand the results are extremely sterile. But by using the Happy and Jazzy sliders you can force these robots to play the kind of chord changes that real players would only play accidentally, or when aimlessly groping to spice things up. Limitations on how this can be controlled with SS's current interface quickly become apparent. But it's still quite rich.

One significant limitation are the options for chords-per-measure (limited to 1, 2, and an option to hold the previous chord into the next measure. The other is the number of alternative chords you can select as replacements.

SS also seems to be biased towards even phrases of 2 and 4, and fairly conventional melodic shapes. (The UI width is fixed at 4 measures per line.) Chords can change on upbeats, but it's still a pretty blocky affair. That's a clear limitation, but also another source of potentially useful "accidents."

I used SS to start a song I've been developing but hadn't started recording. I left space for non-vocal sections, which were filled in with drums while recording. The thing ran about 84 measures. When I played it back with the full Songsmith instruments, the vocals got progressively out of sync as the song played back. It wasn't wildly terrible, but still unacceptable, maybe late by 50 to 75ms late (at 128 bpm) at its worst. (I played with the latency slider, but not extensively, and I don't think it affected the wav/tempo relationship of the existing recording.)

I experimented with different Happy/Jazzy combinations, saved different versions, and eventually exported one to wav and MIDI files. I brought these into a DAW, in this case Reaper, which split the single MIDI file into separate channel-assigned tracks and set the tempo from the mid file.

Because the original SS drums leaked onto the voice track when I recorded it, I was able to focus on the sync issues when I sent the MIDI tracks into a TTS-1 and soloed the voice and drums. The flamming seemed to get noticeably worse each time I started singing after several measures of silence, so maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe SS wasn't drift-tested for fuller length songs. Whatever it was, a few clip splits and slides brought it into acceptable sync.

At that point it, it became a fairly conventional DAW session with scratch tracks that kind of came out of nowhere but that were still somehow mine. I shifted MIDI, changing some rhythms, voicings, and the usual stuff, and will end up using some of this, though re-recorded, in a final production of the song.

What's cool about Songsmith is its chord generation. I've never worked with anything like this before. It's a creatively stimulating composition tool. The Happy and Jazzy sliders are a little like rolling musical dice.

When that's packaged by Microsoft with dinky accompaniments in a kiddie-looking interface, it seems dismissible and nothing a real musician would ever want to use, much less "need." But if it was an open source app written by Brian Eno, or something based on John Cage theories of zennish stochastics, it would be cool and oh wow, check this out. They could call it EIAC - Eno In A Cage.

I've got about 3 hours left on the Songsmith trial. I'll miss it when it expires. So I'm wondering if
there are other programs that do the same kind of input-based progression creation?

BIAB doesn't seem to do that, though I need to dl the demo to be sure.

Yeah. Currently, what Songsmith produces is based on a tempo map... you sing into it while a fixed-tempo drum beat plays. That then gets divided into measures and so on.

It would be mroe versatile and usful if it wasn't tempo-dependent, so that you could sing without a fixed beat, and it would still be able to create chord progressions with some user-defined rate of chord change (based on an averaging or approximation of the apparent tempo... I don't know... but the fixed tempo thing is the snag.)

I use a small Sony digital dictation machine to work out melodies and phrasings, without any kind of tempo underneath it, so of course my timing can get all over the place. If Songsmith worked like I just described, I'd be able to just upload from the dictator, or even play it into SS's mic, without having to use any drumming or tempo mapping.

It's the melody-to-chord progressions that's really intriguing about SS. The instrumental accompaniments and and so that it provides are fun and not without their uses, but it's in those things where you really see some of the limitations that can make it less than ideal.

It's almost as though what Songsmith does is too much, but the too much that it does is actually too little. It's easy to imagine how they could improve it, but it would quickly no longer be the simple fun thing that they're positioning it as.

Are there other commercial programs that do a similar theory-based melody-to-chords thing, that doesn't limit you to the standard I IV V (not that SS does...it's actually got a very wide chord pallet.)

I would love to see that kind of functionality available as a DAW plugin. It's really cool.

ORIGINAL: Marah Mag

...Are there other commercial programs that do a similar theory-based melody-to-chords thing, that doesn't limit you to the standard I IV V (not that SS does...it's actually got a very wide chord pallet.)

I think Cognitone's Harmony Navigator does:

http://www.cognitone.com/products/nav/intro/page.stml


JD

Hi Marah,

Thanks for your responses.

BIAB does have both MIDI and Audio chord wizards which construct chord progressions based on MIDI and audio files, respectively. Songsmith researchers claim that Songsmith is more appropriate for vocal input as opposed to instrumental input. I have used both BIAB wizards, but I have used the audio wizard only twice, I believe. I could be mistaken, but I believe it's best to input basslines or piano, guitar, and other chord-like instruments into the Audio Wizard.

Based on your posts, I would highly encourage you to download demos for BIAB and that other product to see what you think. For my purposes, Songsmith by itself is not particularly useful; as a front-end to other programs, however, I believe it will prove to be very useful.

By the way, PG Music support told me that if one already has BIAB styles, one need merely copy the all of the available styles into the Songsmith style folder to make them available. There are something like 2,000 styles.

Because you can easily create hybrid styles from combinations of styles, there are actually more styles than you can really ever fully explore. There are also tricks to easily creating new parts. For example, I recently recorded some chords (MIDI record, that is). Because I played them sloppily, I was able to apply an arpeggiator to eventually create something like a melody. In BIAB I applied harmony, then exported --- now it is more like accompaniment. I then imported this into BIAB after applying strumming, and Voila! I had a new Guitar patterns to replace the Guitar patterns of a style.

I use BIAB as a MIDI editor that is capable of editing entire chapters and books at a time, rearranging paragraphs. After export, I then go in and carve out material to get close to what I want, re-import and rearrange, then re-export, etc. The beauty of it is that BIAB understands, so to speak, what music is whereas the typical MIDI editor is just plain stupid about music. It does need a lot of help, though, because it cannot "hear" what you are doing such as when you change instruments. It often strikes me that many people who comment on BIAB really have no earthly idea what they could do with it, if they only knew how.

Regards,
Dave Clark

ORIGINAL: Beagle

and by the way - I've been meaning to ask you - are you a drummer from England???

You'd be in Bits And Pieces if he said yes

I was doing demos in the same booth at NAMM as the Microsoft guys doing Songsmith. At first I thought that this would be a good program for kids. The people most excited about Songsmith were many of the pros working in LA. They immediately saw how this $30 program could be useful to their writing process.

The program works quite well with vocals even in a noisy environment such as NAMM. One of the guys was even getting useful MIDI out of a harmonica that was sometimes hitting multiple notes.

Jim

well I haven't actually played with songsmith myself, but since it's also partnered by PG music, I assumed it was just something that was similar to what BIAB already does. I may go try it out and look at the tech specs on it as you suggested (yes, you remember correctly!).

and sorry about the lame joke....I'll bet you've NEVER heard that one before!!!

Yeah. Somewhere on the Songsmith pages... possibly in the more technical ones, but I thinhk I read this early on in the promo pages... they say that it's designed to deal with pitch imperfections.

I imagine that it's got some kind of pitch correction process that runs ahead of the chord selection and key determination, but which isn't being applied to the voice wave that gets recorded. Hmmm... would be interesting to have an option to hear those corrections.

ORIGINAL: DaveClark

people on the other threads are insulting the videos, etc. but don't seem to have bothered to even take a look under the hood.

Uh huh. Which I was happy to see this thread.

I thought the "glow in the dark towel" video was hilarious. (My only prob with it was that the daughter, who started it all, wasn't present in the "happy family" finale. I hope dad at least gave her her computer back!)