Soundslice, Chromatik, computer-aided musicianship

I wonder about ways that computers can make musicianship easier. A lot of musicianship is rote work like converting from one key to another, memorizing chord changes, and keeping the tempo straight. There’s no artistic or creative value in these things. If automata can help it’s no loss.

That’s what struck me when I came across these new learning tools –

Soundslice is a guitar tablature animator.

Tabs have never sounded so good. Soundslice lets you sync tabs with video so you can see (and hear!) them in real time. Gone are the days of ASCII art approximations.

And Chromatik enhances notation with social features like sharing recordings.

I wonder how much further this can go. There’s usually a tradeoff between protecting the musician from himself and empowering him to go higher. A step sequencer or a diatonic toy piano prevents him from hitting off key notes, but also keeps him from playing notes with a lot of flavor. It’s hard to play saxophone skillfully, but if you can do it then you can make amazing music.

Is it possible for computer-aided musicianship to make this line more fuzzy?