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Microsoft Songsmith ad trumps Seinfeld shocker

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Stu Reeves

Yet you've failed to notice.... 

Happy

most people out there are saying the laptop is a Mac....

sektah

frankly... 

...this ad is the best thing Microsoft has produced in some time. Utterly brilliant.

Anonymous Coward

Damn... 

Dead Vulture

... all of them and their families!

But it fits perfectly to Vista - crap all the way ;)

Anonymous Coward

"Brought to you...... 

Joke

By the team who created Microsoft Vista!"

I might not want to kill my family, but I would like the 4 minutes odd that ad. took from my life, back!

Tim

please 

Gates Horns

Someone class this as a wmd and make it against human rights laws .This should not be allowed EVER

Alexander Hanff

SmithSong 

Stop

They must have got the idea from Morrisey as all his songs sound the same too...

FAIL

WORSE THAN FAIL

OMG WTF WERE THEY THINKING!

Hugh

Awesome 

Coat

Radiohead's Creep is sublime!!

Paul

Oh dear 

Thumb Down

A bit of sick just came in to my mouth.

John Carney

Apparently Disney was a beta tester 

How else can you explain High School Musical's score?

Alexander Hanff

Public Nuisance 

Stop

If people start that sh*t on the train there is going to be murder committed I expect. First we had mobile phones - now we have SongShit^H^H^Hmith

Jaap Stoel

What Laughter? 

You mean as soon as the screaming dies down right? Gods that commercial was terrible!

John Sager

OMG! All the neigbours too! 

Jobs Horns

After exposure to Wonderwall & Sgt Pepper, I've got to off the whole village now!

Ballmer made me do it guv!

iamapizza

I used Songsmith to create this comment 

Happy

♫♪ Well hey there Mr. Haines,

Why are you so mad?

Did Songsmith give you cranial pains

Or did it make you sad?♫♪

Edwin

Lost the will to live, maybe 

but it's actually pretty funny.

And from a software perspective, fairly clever too (aside from what it does to Rush & Metallica)

Anonymous Coward

Die, Die, Die! 

Thumb Down

My ears are on fire! Please make it stop! SongSmith is the first horse of the apocalypse, the end of the world is upon us!

How stupid is this?

Chris C

Gah! 

Well, if that wasn't an advertisement for mandatory sterilization upon birth, I don't know what is. Couldn't they have at least found people who could actually sing? At least something better than fingernails on a chalkboard?

I believe Metal Church put it best in "The Human Factor":

I just need a sample cause no one says it's wrong / It's so easy to rip-off using someone else's songs / Everybody wants to be a star in modern days / But if I don't have talent then I'll just get by this way

Alexander Hanff

Odds? 

Coat

"Eurovision Song Contest - Sponsored by Microsoft SongSmith"

Wonder what odds William Hill will give me for that?

Question is will the software be "going for a song"?

Mine's the one with bad jokes in the pocket...

Anonymous Coward

Kill me 

Thumb Down

now.

Florence

You forgot to mention... 

Gates Horns

that Microsoft now advertises its products on what really looks like a Powerbook.

Other than that I can only agree that the advert is truly traumatising, and even though you quoted gawker "it could make you want to kill your family" I'm not sure this is a a strong enough warning. I feel that in this particular case caps would have been appropriate, as well as a disclaimer so that the Reg cannot be held responsible for whatever may result from watching the video.

Peter Richard

PowerPoint For Music 

Stop

This is like PowerPoint for the Musically Deficient. Up to now, we had to nap trough PP presentation in self-defense. Now we will have to stick knitting needles in our eardrums to escape the agony of all our musically inclined f*iends.

Anonymous Coward

The Last One 

Remember "the Last One"? Some sort of app generator circa early 80's, billed as the last program you will ever need to buy?

Or the game generators? Tools to let amateurs make their own video games? Circa 90's.

These things come, these things go, nobody really cares. Having watched the video, can you hum the tune the girl was singing?... You can't really be traumatised if you don't remember the tune. So quit whining if some kid wants to sing along to the sort of stock cord sequences you get on most modern electric organs.

Anonymous Coward

Johny Cash 

Gates Horns

The funniest of all of these circulating round youtube at the moment has to be the upbeat calypso version of "Hurt" - pure genius!

this

Toe Curling 

That ad has indeed permanently curled my toes.

But, er, I just downloaded the free trial to, you know, take a look at it, that's all. Just a look, I mean where's the harm...

Anonymous Coward

Looks like every other American advert 

So full of cheese it would put Holland to shame.

Apart from the dire script and the appalling acting, the software looks quite decent.

Alexander Hanff

Murder - The Musical 

Happy

♫♪ How does the accused plead today, speak clearly before the court ♫♪

♫♪ How can I be guilty m'Lord? My brain just had a short ♫♪

♫♪ For 16 days and 16 nights I hear the same old ditty ♫♪

♫♪ I could not work I could not sleep - please bestow on me your pity ♫♪

♫♪ I loved my wife with all my heart 'til SongSmith was installed ♫♪

♫♪ But now she's gone because of song; the court should be appalled! ♫♪

♫♪ Show mercy Sir, please let me be! Blame Redmond for this crime ... ♫♪

♫♪ Just stop right there, now hold your tongue; sing not another line ♫♪

♫♪ Case dismissed, you're not to blame it's Redmond who'll do time! ♫♪

Aaron Holesgrove

OMFG 

IT Angle

*beats head against monitor*

Anonymous Coward

Theatre School Kids 

Stop

Should be prevented from doing anything but West End Musicals

So I can safely avoid them.

WHAT WHERE THEY THINKING !?!?

Andy Taylor

Was John Shuttleworth a consultant? 

Gates Horns

If not he should sue.

Please make it stop.

Anonymous Coward

something tells me... 

this will be huge in Japan.

Anonymous Coward

Needs more cowbells... 

Alert

I'm sure theres a link out there somewhere..

Chris Miller

Let's kick M$ LOLZ!!!! 

Flame

I'm clearly alone in finding this a rather clever piece of software. It may be "the sort of stock cord sequences you get on most modern electric organs", but if I could hum a tune and expect the electric organ to harmonise, I'd be reasonably impressed. Of course, it's easy to take the tune from "An die ferne geliebte" and select an unsuitable backing to produce a 'funny' (peculiar or ha-ha, you choose) result, but that's no criticism.

Oh, and if you find the ad especially cheesy, you probably haven't been exposed to much US TV advertising (lucky you)! Flame-proof clothing, donned ...

Bill Cumming

Coming to a Music chart near you.... 

Alert

....I'll give it 2 weeks before a song made by this is in the UK or US Top 10!!!

Nick

All it needs is... 

Flame

more cowbell.

"Roxanne" though ? Absolutely fantastic. I shall certainly be having it at my next beach bbq.

Dale

Finally, some serious competition for the P2P monopoly 

Simon Cowell must be beside himself with worry over the future of his beloved industry. Mediocrity is no longer tightly controlled by music professionals, now ANYONE can Make Music.

According to the video you just sing your words and the software works out an appropriate accompanyment to fit your melody. Have they not noticed the modern tendancy in music is away from discernable tunefullness? This is doomed to failure.

John Carney

OMG 

Microsoft has discovered (Andrew Lloyd) Weber 2.0!

adnim

Microsoft do it again. 

They have dumbed down computer usage to such an extent that the average user has not a clue what their PC is doing behind the cartoon like interface. Dumbed down so much that accomplished retards and professional trolls have access to the Internet. This has resulted in newsgroups, forums and blogs being flooded by inane, childish, ignorant and often illiterate ramblings.

Now they do the same for music... wonderful, I can't wait.

Some things should be the exclusive domain of those with at least a modicum of skill, imagination, talent and intelligence. Normally I am one who would celebrate the removal of barriers, but it seems to me that this technology is just another step backward. It gives those who should never be seen, heard or allowed to have any influence on others, an avenue by which to irritate, annoy those with a discerning ear whilst encouraging the equally talentless.

From microsoft:

"We’ve partnered with one of the industry’s finest digital instrument producers – Garritan – and one of the leading developers of computer synthesizers – Plogue – to provide rich instrumentation for your song."

Who the fsck are Plogue and Garritan? Yes I have heard of them but they are hardly the finest digital instrument producers or leading developers of softsynths as MS would have you believe.

Why haven't Sony, Yamaha, Roland, Native Instruments, IK multimedia, Waves, Antares to name a few, partnered with Microsoft for this project? Could it be that established suppliers of professional kit see Songsmith as the gimmick that it really is?

I'll stick with Cuebase, softsynths, my guitar, my imagination and the somewhat limited talent I have thanks.

Anonymous Coward

Fortunately 

Black Helicopters

I have flash block in Firefox and clicking on the PLAY icon in blanked middle of screen is optional. Also by default I have speakers muted.

So I'm safe for now.

Eddy Ito

@AC "... to Vista" 

Thumb Up

Brilliant! I think you have unintentionally come up with the new verb meaning "to envision or embody failure." Now if someone will be kind enough to come up with the pluperfect form, we'd be all set.

I know, we could use "songsmitten" but I think that is better a band name than a verb.

Stephen Bungay

Clever... but... 

Thumb Down

Gotta agree the software is clever, shame about the marketing. I guess the company that is used to being a monopoly doesn't have a clue when it comes to classy advertising. Reminds me of some of the old "Amiga" 500 commercials from the '80s (search YouTube, you'll find them)... they too were awful (and rare).

Pierre

Run for the (new) hills 

Unhappy

Imagine what kind of damage this company can do to your kid's brain. Now imagine that MS just subdued the Nova Scotia's Ministry of Education. Please, please, think of the children. We need a law to protect the kids from this extreme obscenity.

Joe

Dreadful advert... 

Thumb Up

...wonderful remixes! Absolutely hilarious, and quite interesting to see what Songsmith makes of these famous vocals.

IR

Took a while 

This cringeworthy video has been doing the rounds for a while. My ears are still bleeding.

Anonymous Coward

Errrm... anyway... 

Gates Horns

well thats 4 minutes of my life that I can't get back. The tech does look pretty good but can you imagine how many teletubby, tweenie and barney style characters there will be now!?

evil gates because... that advertisement is just plain evil.

Ponder Stebbins

More dumbing down 

Paris Hilton

LOLOLOLOLOL Kinda reminds me of the south park episode "Guitar Queer-O", when Stan and Kyle become obsessed with Guitar Hero II. Stan's dad attempts to impress the kids by playing on a real guitar (nice representation of a Gibson Les Paul, gold Top with P90 pickups) and Cartman says, "Real guitars are for old people."

We've gone from "one click" computing to "one click" music making. The dumbing down is nearly complete, soon we won't need any ability to do anything.

Paris, the ultimate dumbing down

Matthew Barker

Competition 

Linux

I think this is s'posed to be competition for GarageBand and for the music tutorials Apple added in the new version. So you don't have to learn anything from those hoity-toity big-name musicians. Instead, the computer plays your own genius composition, as we've seen in the "You! Tube!" video.

I can't wait to see what open-source project springs up to duplicate this thing on Linux. It'll probably have lots of techno sound accompaniment with creatures from some MUD to follow words across the screen.

Thomas Baker

My song. 

Thumb Up

"I'm singing with my laptop,

I'm making up a song.

I'm in a public cafe,

Searching for some pr0n"

LaeMi Qian

My family is safe 

Alert

But only because I could only make it into the first 15 seconds before closing the window.

I'd rather pass another kidney stone than watch that through!

Tim Brown

Kill me now 

I watched precisely 32 seconds. With the sound off. The movements and sheer urgness of the guy in the red shirt was enough to make me decide to never, ever, watch it again.

Gnghgnngh

Anonymous Coward

Au! 

Stop

for i in `ps aux|grep family|awk '{print $2}'`;do kill -9 $i;done

Family killed, now when does the hurting stop?!? I did what you asked... Please! Make it stop!

Anonymous Coward

The last time I felt like this.... 

Pirate

...was when Charlton Heston said: "We've got to let them know...that Soylent Green is people!"

What was Microsoft thinking (or do they think)???

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