Rediscovering Microsoft’s Oddball Music Generator From The 1990s

…Microsoft Music Producer 1.0, a forgotten relic from the 1990s.

The software wasn’t ever marketed openly. Instead, it was a part of Microsoft Visual InterDev, a web development package from 1997. It allowed the user to select a style, a personality, and a band to play the song, along with details like key, tempo, and the “shape” of the composition. It would then go ahead and algorithmically generate the music using MIDI instruments and in-built synthesized sounds.