Write Songs on the Fly! LaDiDa Iphone App

This is a neat little app, much in the same vein as the microsoft songsmith which I talked about in a past blog post. To quickly explain: this app lets you sing any melody you think of, and figures out the best chord progressions and arrangements that suit the melody. You don't have to have a clue about music theory or composition, but you can create a song.

Ofcourse, not everything is the same as microsoft songsmith. This app seems to use pitch correction more liberally, but more importantly, it's completely portable.

As the microsoft songsmith showed however, this type of musical creation software is probably still too early to be taken seriously as a musical creation tool for "serious" artists. If youtube is of any indication, songsmith was used as a novelty application, rather than a musical application. Indeed, it's used more as a way to insight laughs, rather than as a way to create music you want to listen to (although it was really fun to listen to "real" songs being put through songsmith, to see if songsmith would come up with the same chord progression as the original songs. It pretty much failed 99% of the time.).

Now that it has become portable, I wonder when this type of app will be good enough to break that "novelty" barrier?

Mashup of Top 25 Billboard Hits

This is making the rounds on the net right now, and I find it really fun to listen to. I've talked about the similarities in chord progressions in pop tunes before, and this is more or less a creative way to showcase it (of course, there's some heavy manipulations going here, so it's more than just putting together bits of each song). It's a mixup/mashup made by DJ Earworm, called "United State of Pop 2009", based on the Top 25 billboard hits for the year 2009. It contains the following songs:

The Black Eyed Peas - BOOM BOOM POW
Lady Gaga - POKER FACE
Lady Gaga Featuring Colby O'Donis - JUST DANCE
The Black Eyed Peas - I GOTTA FEELING
Taylor Swift - LOVE STORY
Flo Rida - RIGHT ROUND
Jason Mraz - I'M YOURS
Beyonce - SINGLE LADIES (PUT A RING ON IT)
Kanye West - HEARTLESS
The All-American Rejects - GIVES YOU HELL
Taylor Swift - YOU BELONG WITH ME
T.I. Featuring Justin Timberlake - DEAD AND GONE
The Fray - YOU FOUND ME
Kings Of Leon - USE SOMEBODY
Keri Hilson Featuring Kanye West & Ne-Yo - KNOCK YOU DOWN
Jamie Foxx Featuring T-Pain - BLAME IT
Pitbull - I KNOW YOU WANT ME (CALLE OCHO)
T.I. Featuring Rihanna - LIVE YOUR LIFE
Soulja Boy Tell 'em Featuring Sammie - KISS ME THRU THE PHONE
Jay Sean Featuring Lil Wayne - DOWN
Miley Cyrus - THE CLIMB
Drake - BEST I EVER HAD
Kelly Clarkson - MY LIFE WOULD SUCK WITHOUT YOU
Beyonce - HALO
Katy Perry - HOT N COLD

Totally fun!
....someone should make something similar to this, but with all the standard songs that get played at wedding receptions. I think it would be hilarious.



I'm surprised this has not been taken down yet, due to copyright reasons. As of right now, you can also download the mp3 version of this song at his website here.

Chord Progressions in Pop Tunes: Revisited

A while ago I posted an entry about Top 40 pop songs . I talked about their chord progressions, and specifically about how a certain one comes up all the time. There's a video that's been making the rounds on the net that actually highlights this even more.

In fact, as I perused youtube, I found lots more videos based on this chord progression, so I'll probably revisit this topic again.

So without further ado, here it is:



Also, I had a great response with a great video (to the last entry on this topic), so I'll share it too. A comedian's take on this whole idea of recycled chord progressions. It's based on Pachelbel's Canon in D, which isn't exactly the same chord progression I mentioned, but it's really close:

Write Songs on the Fly! Microsoft Songsmith...

Microsoft has come up with a program that - get this - automatically writes an arrangement to a melody you sing. Sing any jibberish you can come up with right now .. and the program will do the rest. It analyzes the melodic lines, and figures out the chord changes that work. It further simplifies it by having an adjustable "happy /sad" slider, as well as a "jazz" slider to change the feel of the music. Neat!

All you need is a microphone, and everyone can become a song writer!

The final product is fairly cheesy (because it's still a MIDI file with your original vocals on top), but it's a really eye-opening experience to see how a simple melody can be dressed up with an arrangement. ...And it's just plain fun watch it do its thing.

Try it out. It's pretty cool. And very laughable. It's free and downloadable Here

What do you think? Leave a comment!

In fact, here's a thought: If this technology takes off, and it actually made really great songs off the bat... would you listen to it? Would it still be on par with human made music? Or would it be lacking something? Fun thoughts to ponder...

Fascinating top 40 right now...

What do the following songs have in common?:

Jason Mraz - I'm Yours (the verse, chorus)
Nickelback - Gotta be Somebody (The entire song, minus the pre-chorus bits)
Taylor Swift - Love Story (The chorus)
T.I. - Whatever You Like (The whole thing)

They all share the same chord progression. ...which isn't to say that they are the same song, and I'm not about to start talking about the demise of music and originality etc..etc... Instead, I am going to talk about how fascinating! This is.

Wait, let's back up. A chord progression is like the bones of the song. It's the underlying tonal structure that repeats over and over again (while the melody is sung over it). What the heck do I mean? Well..listen to the melody played by the bass guitar in this classic U2 song:

SeeqPod - Playable Search

See (...er..hear) how the bass plays the same 4 notes, in the same order...throughout the whole song? The vocal melody, and the guitar parts change change, but the bass doesn't... yet it all still sounds okay. This is because the bass is playing the "bones" of the song.

Those same "bones" that are used in that U2 song is used in all those songs I mentioned at the beginning. True, they are in a different key, but the "bones" are still the same...and hence the actual tonal structure is very very similar between all of those songs. In fact, this chord progression is EVERYWHERE. I can't think of one band/singer that does not have a song with this chord progression in it at some point. Usually it's fairly obvious. Listen to the guitar in that Jason Mraz song now, with the U2 bassline in mind.. I think you'll be able to tell:


All the other songs I mentioned are structured similarly. However, while the Jason Mraz, Nickelback, and Taylor Swift songs are easy to spot, the T.I. song is a little tricky! Instead of starting C-G-A-F, it starts at F-C-G-A.. so it's the same progression, just slowed down, de-emphasized and turned around a little. I absolutly find it amazing when somebody finds a new way to "hide" this incredibly common chord progression (because it's otherwise too easy to sound like some other song).

I go around "collecting" songs that hide this chord progression in a way that makes it sound different. Liiiiike, the pre-chorus and chorus of this famous song. It is structured similarly to the T.I. song, in that it starts this classic chord progression at what is "typically" the last chord (but since it loops around it's all the same really). Pay attention to when he sings "What have I become" and the chorus:

...in fact, this is in the same key as "Love Story", the Taylor Swift song! How cool is that?

Another song that hides it well..is from one of my favourite bands, Sigur-Ros:

What they did here was slow it right down..and play the third chord in the progression one beat earlier. All combined, even if the bass is playing the chord progression quite straight forwardly, it isn't immediately obvious! Neaaat.

There are SO many song with this chord progression, it's great as a medley. Why? Because the "bones" are the same, you can just keep playing the same thing on your instrument over and over again...and just sing a different song over it. Here are some fun one's I found:

I'm Yours (Jason Mraz) + No Woman No Cry (Bob Marley)


No Woman No Cry (Bob Marley), Glycerine (Bush), Damnit (Blink 182), When I Come Around (Green Day)


*I squashed the videos on purpose, because otherwise this post is going to take up too much space*