I heard about UJam from a blog post from my friend, Gail D. (aka Blogwalker) and decided to give it a try. I’m always interested in music applications and this one is designed to create songs with your voice. The program analyzes your vocals, and then adds backing music (on a genre that you choose). Or you can make your voice the instrumental track. It’s not perfect, but of course, I didn’t spend hours on it, either.

I quickly wrote this song and recorded it.

Hey Education Man

Hey, Education Man, you really have no clue
My kids have sharpened pencils and they do the best they can do
But all you want is data points – a graph to share online
If you come into my classroom, you’ll see creative minds

I could not get the rhythm of the singing in complete sync with the music, but there is a step where you can do some of that. (I ran out of time). You can also tweak the chords, tinker with the effects, and do a host of things to your music before publishing. When you publish, you can share it at UJam or download it to your desktop.

For students, UJam might be a nice experimental place to try to create cool soundtracks for projects.
Peace (in the songwriting),
Kevin