Welcome! In this video, I am going to show you how you can use Microsoft Song Smith to create your own background music for your videos. First, make sure you have downloaded and installed Microsoft Song Smith on your computer. (**Sorry Mac users, there is only a PC version of the Program.**) It’s free from the Student Software store.
Here is a link to a series of tutorials on how to use Song Smith, provided by Microsoft: http://research.microsoft.com/enus/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/howto.html
Let’s start the program. This is the first screen you will see:
You need to choose to either create a New Song, work on the Last Song you worked on, or listen to one of the Demo songs.
Click on New Song, and then click the Next button. Now use the left and right arrow keys to cycle through the different styles of music available to choose from. You also have a Style Mood drop down menu to choose from, either Light or Lively. You can also choose to get more styles.
For now, I am going to choose Disco and click on the Next button.
The next screen I see is the following. I need to either accept the Beats per minute, or increase or decrease it, and then click on the Finish Button. I am going to accept 130 BPM and click on the Finish button.
This is the next screen I will see. I am now ready to create my song. I click on the Record button. Let us make a song that will be one minute long.
Each cord is one second long, so we need to have at least 60 cords.
Make sure to click on the Stop button when it gets to 60. When you click on the Stop button, it will stop creating and start playing what you have created.
***Note: Make sure your Mic is off so it does not pick up the surrounding sounds in the room.
Now click on the Save Song button and go to your GMD311\Wk3 folder to save the song. Name it Background_music and click on the Save button at the bottom right.
Now you will need to click on the Black arrow next to the Save Song and select Export.
You will now see this Window. Click on the Black Arrow next to the Format and select Wave (WAV).
You will then click on the Export Button and you will see the following screen go to your GMD311\Wk3 folder. Type the name Background_music and click on the Save Button. Your song in the .wma format will be saved.
The following information is directly from the Microsoft SongSmith website:
“And if you want to dig deeper, you can customize your music, even if you don't know anything about chords or music theory. You can adjust the “happy” and “jazzy” sliders, change styles even after you sing, or set up your own custom band.
And, if you are a musician, there are other features just for you. Edit chords directly, play your instrument into Songsmith instead of singing, or just open up Songsmith and type your own chords to make jam tracks or quick arrangements.”
(Retrieved from http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/screenshots.html)
[End of Transcript]