Archive for ‘January, 2009‘

Microsoft, lords of cheese, have done it again with their latest Microsoft Research baby, Songsmith. With Songsmith, you sing a lyric (existing or original) and the program generates accompanying ‘music’. Cool concept, awful execution. I’ll leave the video to tell the tale, but in short, ‘campy’ and ‘cheap’ are probably the best words to describe Songsmith.

If you’re interested in giving it a whirl, Microsoft’s offering a six-hour demo so you can make your own hot jams. Ugh.

P.S. @1:57 – “Microsoft, huh? So, it’s pretty easy to use?” ROFLCOPTERS. Also, Soulja Boy has never sounded so good.

Move over, Wario Ware; YouTube’s got a new trickster:Patrick Boivin‘s Street Fighter.

Introduced as “a YouTube video game in (which) you can control your character by clicking one of the (four) buttons”, I had my doubts. However, once things started, I found things were as they were said to be, fuelled by a series of stop-motion videos tied together by caption links – an impressive feat. Even more impressive, Boivin factored in character damage, which is carried over from video to video.

Gamer or not, Street Fighter deserves a look, if only for the amount of love that went into it.

P.S. This is also awesome.

Big fan of Fender sounds, but can’t afford a new box? GTR Solo, a plugin from Waves that replicates famous guitar amps, cabinets, stomps, and microphones, has dropped from $140.00 USD to free for a year.

Available in VST and AU formats, PC and Mac users can both get their rock on with 10 amps, 13 stomps, and 10 cabinets recreating classic sounds from Gibson to Vox. For those looking for more, Waves also offers a more robust version of GTR Solo called GTR3.

I haven’t had the chance to poke around it yet (I’m a Guitar Rig kind of guy, which just updated to 3.2), but anyone looking to expand their sound for free can’t pass this up. Even if you’re not a guitarist, if GTR Solo functions like Guitar Rig does, you can create a lot of unique bite and atmosphere by running your sounds through the plugin.