okay. so when I heard about Microsoft Songsmith (which lets face it is actually quite a cool research project anyway), I was understandly less than impressed, especially in the face of such a crap ad.

But then, I tried using it.

And no matter how cheesy it may sound or how stupid it seems, it was actually, really fun. Really simple, really fun. It's definitely not a garage band by any means - it's more akin to an automatic backing track. Imagine if, while singing in the shower, you had a band backing you up. 

Yeah its like that

And seriously all you do is pick a style, sing along, and bam. done.

I do have a couple of gripes though:

- double clicking on a bar should do something. at this point in time, it doesnst do anything. it should ideally start playing from that bar, or let you do something.

- it doesnt handle extra bars well. that is, if you are doing a song with 4 bar phrases and decide to not sing for one extra bar, it'll throw off the rest of the chords. granted i mean the chords won't sound wrong, but it loses the continuity

but for sometehing where you can seriously just sit down    and sing

and itll make some pretty sweet cliche backings

but come on. who doesnt want a band at their whim :D