Music Made Easy

Ever dreamed of becoming a pop star? One of the best things about the PC revolution is that it enables amateurs to do creative work that looks professional. Thousands of people have used programs like Paintshop Pro, Adobe Premiere and Microsoft Publisher to retouch photos, edit video footage and lay out slick newsletters. But what about music? If you can't play an instrument or carry a tune, no computer in the world can make you sound like Christina Aguilera.

That's about to change, thanks to a small New York City start-up called MusicHall 2000. Instead of launching yet another Web site where people can download MP3s, this company plans to do something much cooler: give away software that turns ordinary music lovers into composers by letting them create their own songs using prerecorded musical snippets or pieces of existing pop songs--called "samples." "You can envelop people in your sound without going through the torture of training," says MusicHall president David Danon, 24. "Plus you can record your own music without spending hundreds of dollars on a studio." Adds Adam Strauss, 25, the company's chief operating officer: "We saw a way to turn consumers into producers."

Making songs with MusicHall is a lot like layering a cake: you can put down a bass line, add drums and some guitar licks, then top it off with a horn riff--it's all up to you. Within an hour of experimentation we created a song that sounded a lot like the thumping dance music of a club. It's intuitive enough for the average computer user to fool around with, yet powerful enough to make a professional-sounding CD, and MusicHall believes that it will appeal to both complete novices and trained musicians. That's why it's integrating the software with the Internet so people can easily exchange their work with other wanna-be composers or distribute it to potential fans. There are two parts to MusicHall 2000: the software and the Web site (www.mh20.com). The CD-ROM contains the Virtual Studio program (it consists of a pair of music editors from Sonic Foundry, Acid DJ 2.0 and Sound Forge 4.5) and a library of samples. As you arrange your samples, you can add effects like reverb, raise or lower the tempo or even run the sample backward. With additional equipment, you can record your own vocals or instrumentals and throw them into the mix.

That's all a lot of fun, but it's when you connect to the Web site that MusicHall shows its potential. Once you've exhausted the samples included on the CD, you'll be able to download new ones from the Web site. Using the onscreen world map, you can grab an Indian sitar or Congolese drumbeats. Some samples will be free; others will cost a nominal sum; the company is recruiting brand-name producers to contribute some of their hottest beats in exchange for a cut of the revenue. The site is divided into several sections: the Audio Graffiti hall contains members' home pages, where people can post their own samples and songs for others to download; the Star Tracks hall hosts a weekly battle of MusicHall's virtuosos. An instant messenger will let people exchange samples and songs in real time.

It's MP3.com meets eBay by way of RealNetworks--a cleverly cobbled-together project, to be sure. But it works--and the ease of stringing together tunes of your own is highly addictive. There are signs that audiences might be receptive to this: fueled by the rise of hip-hop and electronica, DJ/producers like Dr. Dre, RZA, Roni Size and Fatboy Slim have stepped from behind the mixing boards and into the spotlight. Wielding their turntables and samplers as brashly as Louis Armstrong did his trumpet, they chop up popular and obscure songs alike into snippets, then reassemble them into platinum hits. And MusicHall's founders believe they can succeed by bringing the music of the moment together with the emerging power of the Net. The software will become available at www.mh20.com in early November, and the company's three founders, Douglas Price, 22, Strauss and Danon have some ambitious plans for taking their idea to the people, including free distribution to colleges and K-through-12 schools. They've only shown MusicHall to a handful of people in the industry, including artists like RZA and GZA of the group Wu-Tang Clan. But the response has been encouraging. Alex Aquino, the creator of the two-year-old Web site hip-hop.com, says, "This is exactly what hip-hop needs. Instead of kids' thinking they have to have a $50,000 studio, all they need is a computer with a good sound card. That's less than a thousand dollars." But Josh Gabriel, whose two-year-old Mixman Studio software faces new competition from the more robust MusicHall, questions whether selling samples to nonprofessionals is a viable business. "It's hard, and no one's been successful at it yet."