Skip to content
It’s videos like this one that make me wish I were more musically inclined, but sadly, my talents in that realm are limited to humming, drumming my fingers on nearby surfaces, and pressing buttons to move through playlists. If I possessed even a smidge of musical talent, I’d probably be creating loops and tracks right about now instead of writing about them. In fact, this public notebook might not even exist because of this hypothetical new hobby.
The object of my effusive praise is Microsoft Music Producer, a bizarre little program reviewed by YouTuber harke. She describes it as a hidden procedural music composer in a 1997 web development tool tucked away inside Visual InterDev, Microsoft’s late-1990s software for creating web applications (harke, 2025).
Upon hearing the word procedural, some people might be quick to slap the “AI” label onto it. In fact, I suspect some have developed the habit of labeling anything mysterious or unfamiliar as artificial intelligence. That’s probably something we should work on, though the topic is far beyond my expertise (or annoyance threshold).
As harke explains, Microsoft Music Producer isn’t AI-generated music. Instead, it relies on genre presets and algorithmic “mood sliders” (2025). More importantly, it wasn’t designed with musicians in mind, but more for programmers who needed to throw together simple tracks in a hurry.
Users begin by selecting a style, personality, and band. The style menu includes choices such as Mexico, Otherworld, Hip-Hop, Mysterious Cave, GoGo, and a smattering of New Age. It is perhaps the most aggressively 1990s collection of musical genres I’ve ever seen squeezed into a tiny menu.
Things become even stranger with the personality settings, where options include Honest, Lonely, Despairing, Brooding, and Boogie. The band section then determines the instruments used for your composition. Naturally, this menu contains gems such as Devils & Angels, Plucked Madness, and the vanilla but reliable Default. There’s also a mix section featuring graphical representations of your chosen instruments. Here, they can be adjusted, balanced, and other terminology that an actual musician could probably explain far better than I ever could.
Truthfully, there’s far more to the program than I can comfortably describe, and my lack of musical experience becomes increasingly obvious the longer I try. Fortunately, harke spends some time exploring this strange little relic and even creating a song with it. Even then, it somehow doesn’t feel like enough. Given the nearly endless combinations available, she could probably make several videos showcasing all the possible arrangements.
“We have a polka! You can make a polka! They thought of everything! You don’t know how happy this makes me!” (harke, 2025)
But perhaps this lone video is all we’ll ever get, and maybe that’s what makes it so memorable.
If you’d like a more chaotic (albeit Twitch-flavored*) look at the program, streamer Vinny Vinesauce (2025) also explored it. I freely admit that I’m biased in including this recommendation, but it works out in your favor as well. He goes through several presets, recreates familiar tunes, and generally explores the software in greater depth.
*Let’s just say the language and subject matter are considerably more colorful and not especially suited for academic spaces. But since this is my space, I get to decide what grows on the shelf.
References
harke. (2025, July 5). I found a lost music generator from the 90s [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/EdL6b8ZZRLc
Vinesauce: The Full Sauce. (2025, September 15). Vinny – amazing forgotten music software from 1997 [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Ms_k1-Xpk2k
Note: Yes, that’s how you cite YouTube videos, channels, and usernames. The APA 7 manual explicitly advises maintaining the spelling and capitalization of usernames as they appear (Section 10.15, Social Media), which is a fascinating but brief read. Fortunately, there are readily available online sources that also give suggestions for referencing videos and entire channels for those times when you don’t want to hunt through different yet similar sections for the exact information you need.