handofkeats replied on 09-13-2009 5:23 PM
This is why I went on this forum. I'd like to put my pre recorded acapella into it to remix my songs or help me in remix competitions.
One way is to just put the audio into your microphone jack. The problem is is that it's not in time with the beat, so the chord changes don't really occur in time with my vocals.
The other option is to replace the wma in the songsmith file. But that seems tough. I really wish I could just plug in my acapella vocals. :(
~Keats
The only thing I found out is this by dmorris
http://community.research.microsoft.com/forums/p/2512/3868.aspx#3868
Regarding importing externally-created audio files... great idea. In fact, we're planning to release a couple of small standalone utilities as soon as things cool down after our product release to do things just like this that pro users might want
access to.
The reason this isn't supported in the app itself is that when you record something in Songsmith, you sing along with a drum beat, so Songsmith knows your tempo and knows where measure boundaries are, which our algorithms need. Most users
don't have any other way of recording audio at a steady tempo that starts right at the beginning of the first measure.
But, if you're a musician (and it sounds like you are, and you know about midi, etc.), you might have some other way of recording fixed-tempo audio, or you might be doing some freeform soloing where tempo isn't important. And while there's
no "official" way to stick your own audio into Songsmith, here are a couple "advanced hacks" that will let you do this right now.
1) Many sound cards have a "loopback" or "what you hear" input. If you enable that input instead of your microphone, open up Songsmith, turn the master volume down, press record, and play your audio file, it will record right
into Songsmith.
2) Here's a secret (which of course isn't a secret now that I'm posting it on the forum :) )... .songsmith files are just .zip files. If you create a nice long .songsmith file, rename it to .zip, and unzip it, you'll see a single .xml
file and a single .wma file. If you replace that wma file with another wma file (make sure the name doesn't change), then zip the files back up and rename back to .songsmith... voila, new audio. :)
Now there's a catch here... Songsmith chooses a key when you first sing your song, and sticking a new wma file in won't change the key of your song (something else we'd like to support via separate tools and/or in future versions). If you're
at all interested in this process (suggestion (1) might be a much faster solution), reply to this thread (or - even better - create a new thread over in the "musicians' corner" forum) and we'll give you even more details that will let you
specify the key when you do this.
