14 DAY TRIAL // Writing a song is one thing. Writing music is an entirely different matter altogether. And combining both song authoring and music creation is not a task to be taken lightly. While most people are all but too familiar with words, and can deal without any issue with the lyrics, putting together the text of a song, the accompanied music can be somewhat of a challenge, especially for those that do not play any instruments. This is where MySong, Automatic Accompaniment for Vocal Melodies, comes in, courtesy of Microsoft Research.
"MySong automatically chooses chords to accompany a vocal melody, allowing a user with no musical training to rapidly create accompanied music. MySong is a creative tool for folks who like to sing but would never get a chance to experiment with creating real original music. Come on, you know who you are... you sing in the car, or in the shower, or you go to karaoke clubs, or you just once in a while find yourself singing along with catchy commercial jingles. MySong is also a great tool for songwriters who want to quickly experiment with melodies and accompaniments," reads a fragment of the description for MySong.
The tool is designed to streamline the process of associating chords to accompany a vocal melody. Microsoft has in fact managed to completely automate the process, and a piano-melody is ready immediately after the user stops singing. MySong is obviously aimed at users with little or no musical experience, but that have enough skill and talent to hold a tune. The vocal melody has to be sung into a microphone, while MySong is running, and the tool will subsequently deal with styles and chord patterns, permitting only minor interactions. "MySong trains a Hidden Markov Model using a music database and uses that model to select chords for new melodies. Model parameters are intuitively exposed to the user," Microsoft added.