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Direct Note Access takes Celemony Melodyne plugin to the next level

14 March, 2008 - 19:18 — matt

Celemony have announced that their upcoming release of their Melodyne v2 Plugin will include Direct Note Access, which allows for MIDI-like complex alteration of audio data, even when those notes are buried in chords, and even other instruments. It's pretty amazing stuff.

You can take a single audio recording or sample, and break it into its component notes - and then adjust those notes accordingly, whether it be pitch shifting, moving the notes position, or the length of a particular note within a chord being played. The list goes on.

Here is one of the examples from the video, showing a single audio recording full of chords, expanded out into all its individual notes. Each of these single notes can then be altered independantly of the rest of the notes.

The best way to see what this new Direct Note Access is capable of, is to check out their announcement video below, which contains several examples of it in action.

Watch the Direct Note Access video on the Celemony website.

They cover many aspects of audio note adjustment, within recordings varying in complexity and depth. They talk about the usual suspects - such as correcting a misplayed piano note amongst a chord-laden performance, or tuning a guitar string after the guitar recording is complete!

I really think this is quite a break through, and well worth checking out. I imagine that in a few years other companies will be offering similar products, though as the first to bring this technology to the recording studio, I'd guess that Celemony will remain ahead of the game for some time.

Comments

14 March, 2008 - 21:56 — Amittai
Amittai's picture

Melodyne goes so very in depth. I'm still trying to utilize everything that the v1 Plug-In offers.

These chord analizations and editing functions in v2 are nothing short of impressive. It's the type of program you get and try to keep a secret... it's that good.

14 March, 2008 - 23:33 — matt
matt's picture

Hehe oops, sorry :P

Yeah totally though, I haven't used even the v1 plugin myself yet, but it looks freakin sweet. I've seen a few of you guys mention the current version as being really useful, so this immediately got my attention when I saw it mentioned. And yeah... I've never seen audio data broken down into its components like this by any software before...

15 March, 2008 - 01:15 — Lenroc
Lenroc's picture

This seems incredible?! The possibilities (if it really can do all this) is magnificent and I am dying to check this out! Could help me a lot with drum recording where a beat is off, or there's unwanted ring from a cymbal etc. Much more power with Independant IQ tweaking on a drum recording...
Can you imagine the opportunities for sampling and remixing from existing tracks? You could chop up any track and pull elements out or around as you please!

15 March, 2008 - 10:58 — matt
matt's picture

Yeah exactly Lenroc - the possibilities seem pretty open ended! Congrats to them for getting this technology figured out, if indeed it works as well in the realworld, as it appears to

17 March, 2008 - 00:01 — illusivemind
illusivemind's picture

Holy #$%!, that's cool. I'll believe it when I hear it.
________________
-just a thought-

17 March, 2008 - 09:42 — Gopal
Gopal's picture

That's amazing!

Will it generate midi from the audio? That would allow you to recreate your favourite riffs and beats using your own samples.

www.myspace.com/bangermanstudio

17 March, 2008 - 11:56 — matt
matt's picture

Illusive - my thoughts exactly, on both counts! From the examples in the video it seems to work well, but naturally they wouldn't show off examples of recordings which didn't separate properly... so we'll wait and see. Looking at what Celemony have managed to get done in house though I'd say its looking quite promising. Not to mention I heard that they actually acquired a little known company whose research was based almost entirely around doing just this.

Gopal - Its neat eh! You know, I'm not actually sure whether it can generate midi from the audio... but it does seem quite likely if they can get it to that stage of breakdown. However I have a sneaking suspicion that they may want to keep you locked into using their program to do all the tweaking? Rather than use it once to explode a sample, then take the resulting audio / midi chunks back into another midi sequencer and forget about Melodyne for the time being... I could be wrong of course, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if thats what they've done. It may after all be required to work with it all in their software, in order to get the required smooth realistic adjustments done.

Also, as many people are likely to use it as a plugin, its right there in your track to be used in any case. So instead of flicking to your sequencers midi pattern editor, you could just flick to the melodyne freaky editor in much the same fashion...

17 March, 2008 - 12:51 — illusivemind
illusivemind's picture

Well the optimist in me says that if they are touting this feature, they very well may have cracked the polyphonic instrument to midi proccess.

The current version of Melodyne can export the midi data so I'd say it is a safe bet, the new one will as well. That would make it a great tool for analysing tracks/samples to find chords etc.
________________
-just a thought-

17 March, 2008 - 12:54 — matt
matt's picture

Ah right, well there you go! I'd say its a safe bet then...

19 March, 2008 - 08:16 — Amittai
Amittai's picture

Celemony doesn't play... I'd take their word for it as someone who has the original plug in. They do the impossible with frequencies.

19 March, 2008 - 08:17 — Amittai
Amittai's picture

Check out the tutorial/example videos on their site, it shows the plug in in action.

21 March, 2008 - 01:35 — Frank Marquis
Frank Marquis's picture

this looks pretty cool....really state of the art in music technology....i have to say it looks like a plug in option for me....i hate learning new programs but learning features in programs to boost others programs is a lot easier some times....this looks like a great beat slicer as well...i bet you could make some really really fresh beats with it as well as just all around new sounds....im gonna have check this out

27 July, 2008 - 08:01 — Pitbull
Pitbull's picture

Wow! If this really works it is THE CRAZIEST program that has ever been released! This could be the end of the VsT era! I mean just think of playing a real piano by just downloading one piano sample, same with bass, guitar, sax...CRAZY!
And it's german of course ;)

1 August, 2008 - 19:34 — Amittai
Amittai's picture

LOL Pit. It works, but you can't exactly compose a whole new composition from a totally different existing one with it (at least you shouldn't). You will loose some quality if you stretch, shift, or change too much about the samples. What it really works well for is a tool for the nearly perfect recording take. You can tweak a guitar chord in which the intonation was barely off on one of the strings, etc... Another thing it works very well for is if you record a whole song and afterwards the producer decides the whole thing should be in a minor key instead of a major. You can shift the appropriate notes within each track the half-step that is required to convert to a minor instead of paying your hired musicians to come back and re-perform everything in a different key.

These software programs are marketed as one-stop-fixes-all... But if you want to be a professional you need to record good audio played right. Then you'll see that these software tools are just that: a professional tool to save time and money, but not to replace good audio recording/samples.

"Flush the terd, don't polish it!"

1 August, 2008 - 20:59 — Pitbull
Pitbull's picture

yeah youre right about that. But with a big sample library it is now easier to find fitting sounds. especially in (sample-based) hip-hop this will be a great feature (at least if you dont have the money to pay musicians LOL)

2 August, 2008 - 22:45 — Amittai
Amittai's picture

It does open lots of options for sample editing, damn right.