Microsoft Songsmith free for Education
Last week I wrote an post about an innovate piece of software called AutoCollage. This photo montage tool came out of Microsoft Research Cambridge and is an excellent piece of software which is free to all schools. Well it seems that the educational giveaways just keep on coming from Microsoft with another of their research products, Songsmith which has been made available to education for free from this morning.
Microsoft Songsmith lets you create a complete song without any knowledge of music. You don’t need to know any of the complexities of chords or melodies, you simply sing into your computer and Songsmith will work out the musical background. Sound interesting? Take a look at this demo which shows how Songsmith works.
As the officially least musical person in the world I showed this product to two people who I consider experts. One is my wife who has a music degree and thought the tool would be pretty good in a school environment for quick compositions. The other is @steveturner93 a Generation Y wanna be musical guru who has just started at our Sixth Form. In typical teenager fashion he went straight to the real demo site- YouTube- and watched 6 or 7 videos on Songsmith. He then had a go on the demo site which can be found here. In his own blog he has just done a review in which he says ‘from ages 5 to 14, this could be a great part of music lessons, teaching students how to use: Tempo, bass, beats, layering techniques and quality finishing.’ You can read his full review here
Songsmith now available free to education on the Innovative Teachers Network
If you work in education and want to use Songsmith it is absolutely free. You can get a copy by joining the Innovative Teacher Network. This site is a great resource in itself for teachers and highly recommend joining. You can also get a free copy of AutoCollage from there which is well worth trying.
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