Microsoft Research Songsmith

Announcement: Songsmith is now available for free to educators in the US

dmorris — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:15:39 GMT

Following up on great responses from teachers in the UK and other locations where Songsmith was made available for free to educators, Songsmith is now available for free to educators in the US as well. Teachers can to go the Partners in Learning Network site:

http://us.partnersinlearningnetwork.com

...and click “join today”. Once you’ve signed up for an account and logged in, you’ll see a “resources” tab at the top, which takes you to a list of downloads, which includes Songsmith.

Please drop us a line if you find Songsmith to be useful in your classroom, or if you’re interested in working with Microsoft to develop lesson plans around Songsmith!

-Dan from the Songsmith Team

Announcment: Songsmith available to MSDNAA subscribers

dmorris — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:59:35 GMT

Due to great response from the education community, Songsmith is now available to institutions that subscribe to MSDNAA (Microsoft Development Network Academic Alliance). This includes many university departments and high schools... check with your program to see if you're a subscriber!

We hope Songsmith becomes a useful resource for teachers who are introducing their students to music theory, chords, and songwriting. Songsmith can be a great starting point for all of these things, and we hope students have fun, get engaged, and go on to create great music, with and without Songsmith!

-The Songsmith Team

Announcement: Songsmith is now available for free to educators in the UK

dmorris — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:26:08 GMT

We’ve gotten great feedback about the potential for using Songsmith as a classroom tool, so – starting in the UK – we’ve made it available to educators for free. More information about this program is available in this post from the MSDN teachers blog. This is happening thanks to the Innovative Teachers Network.

-Dan from the Songsmith team

Announcement: Songsmith 1.02 Released

dmorris — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:24:51 GMT

Songsmith has been updated to version 1.02, which incorporates the following changes since version 1.01:

Reverb is now applied to all instruments, improving the sound of songs created in Songsmith.
A couple of bugs were fixed, primarily a problem that caused vocal audio – in very rare cases – to sound like static when exporting.
Songsmith now properly provides information to the Windows UI Automation system.

Thanks to everyone on the forum who helped with these issues!

-Dan from the Songsmith team

Announcement: Garritan releases "Songsmith World Pack 1"

dmorris — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:58:29 GMT

Adding to their great lineup of additional instrument packs for Songsmith, our partners over at Garritan have released a "world instruments" pack:

http://www.garritan.biz/shop/

This complements their "analog synthesizer pack" and "orchestral pack".

Expand your Songsmith creativity with these great instruments from Garritan!

-Dan

Announcement: Songsmith files available for Georgia Wonder / Mixable contest

dmorris — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:55:49 GMT

If you're looking to test out your remix skills, Songsmith can help you get involved in the "Mixable '09" contest. Here's a description of the contest, from their Web page:

"MIXABLE is a yearly UK contest that gives school kids a chance to remix, rework and replay a previously released song from a new and exciting band. Whoever comes up with the best version as chosen by the band will get to work further on the track in a full studio, and this new version will then be featured on an upcoming release with full production and performing credits!"

This year's contest will be using the song "Girl You Never Knew", by Georgia Wonder. To help you get started, the band has provided not only their vocal and instrumental tracks, but also a Songsmith file containing their vocal tracks, all set up and ready for your creativity:

http://mixable.co.uk/download

Of course there are lots of other ways to work on this song, and Songsmith might just be one step along the way to a great remix.

Have fun!

-Dan

Welcome to the Songsmith forum!

dmorris — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:34:59 GMT

Opening up discussion on the Songsmith forum... all the active conversations are in our sub-forums:

Announcements
General Discussion
Share Your Songs
Musicians' Corner

We look forward to hearing from you!

-Dan