Rock Your Inner Glockenspiel Player

I played electric guitar growing up. It was a real one -- the kind that plugs into an amp, emits high-frequency feedback and even has a whammy bar. For a while, I used a phaser pedal. Blame it on the 1980s. On and off, I joined up with some other people who played real instruments as well. We called that a band. We sucked, but it got us out of the house. OK, OK -- we only got as far as the garage.

Anyway, I write this to hint that maybe you would expect me to have a "oh, kids these days..." kind of reaction to the whole Rock Band and Guitar Hero thing. But I don't. In fact, those games are pretty damn fun, truth be told. I know that some rock purists have been bad-mouthing these quasi-instrumentalist fantasy jags, but there's another school of thought that says these games are the gateway drug to the real thing. 

Well, some new software called Songs2See from the Fraunhofer folks in Germany might be just the ticket for taking your budding young Eric Clapton to the next level. Drawing on the popularity of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, Songs2See allows a musician to import an mp3 (thanks, Fraunhofer) of his or her favorite music. The software then auto-magically converts the song into three different practice-friendly formats.

First, you can check it out as sheet music. Second, the software will tell you the correct fingering and sequence for that track. And lastly -- here's the part you'll love -- there's "intuitive rendition," which is a Rock Band-like aid to the duration of the respective tones.

The musician then chooses which way he or she would like to practice the song. The computer's internal mic can then record the student's version -- and evaluate the performance based on the track that was loaded into the software. Of course, the cool tech here is that Fraunhofer's managed to take a piece of music, strip away the other instruments, and automatically transcribe the correct notes for the practice instrument.

Fraunhofer's Christian Dittmar says: "We had to teach the software to accurately recognize the tones of the varied instruments and not be confused by the accompanying music."

But don't grab your axe just yet. Right now, Songs2See software only works for the recorder, the melodica and that "Mother of All Rock Instruments," the glockenspiel. Fraunhofer says versions for the guitar, trumpet, sax, piano and drums are planned for the future.

I did a quick search and couldn't find anyone out there who might be called "The Slash of the Glockenspiel." If anyone has a suggestion, stick it in the comments below. Rock on. 

(Photo: flamurai)