| Melodyne by Celemony Software Pitch and Time Manipulating Marvel. List: TBA
by Rudy Trubitt
January 30, 2001
I’m sure you’ve seen software that lets you time-stretch or change the pitch a sound, perhaps even automatically fix out-of-tune notes. But I guarantee you haven’t seen anything quite like Melodyne, a new software program from German developer Celemony Software GmbH.
Melodyne turns individual monophonic audio tracks (sorry, no chords) into a piano-roll representation, where individual notes are displayed from left to right (showing time), and up and down (representing pitch). Bulges in the waveform represent amplitude, and finally, a line representing pitch-bend, vibrato or glissandos are superimposed over the melody’s "notes."
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| Melodyne extracts pitch and phrasing information from digital audio sound files and lets you graphically change note pitch, duration or tonal character while the audio plays. |
Melodyne operation begins with an analysis of a sound file containing a single instrument or voice. This analysis, which happens at real-time or better speeds, is used to create the program’s unique display. Once a recording is analyzed, you can grab individual notes and change their duration or pitch. When pitch changes are made, the pitch-bend line stretches up or down to match the newly created interval. In addition, the tonal character of the transposed notes is automatically adjusted to improve the realism of the effect. This "formant correction" maintains the fixed resonant characteristics of the original sound, so these are not transposed along with the note pitch. Alternately, formant information can be changed for one or more notes, letting you adjust tonal character with or without affecting pitch or duration.
All this manipulation is non-destructive and operates in real-time. The program includes a multitrack editor that can play and process 20 or more tracks at once, depending on CPU speed. You could work solely within Melodyne, or import audio tracks from your editor of choice, manipulate them, and then bounce the resulting audio back to a new sound file for your main audio editing application. You can also derive a MIDI sequence from Melodyne’s analysis for use in a sequencer or notation program.
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Melodyne Audio Demo (496k) |
| A musical phrase, where Melodyne was used to raise the pitch of a note in the phrase, and to change the vibrato of the note in the last two passes. |
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Both saxophone and vocal sounds were used in the company’s demonstration, with remarkable results. In the case of a classically-trained soprano, the high note in a phrase was raised by a fourth or fifth, and the results were musically satisfying and very believable. Hear this for yourself in the MP3 file from the company’s web site. The only example I found less than compelling used a viola recording to create a full string quartet. There was a somewhat "phasey" quality to the demo, but when I heard the unprocessed source, I concluded that the original recording contained the artifacts I objected to. All in all, remarkable results from a program with an exceedingly well-executed user interface.
Melodyne is expected to ship in Spring of 2001 for Mac OS 8.6, 9 or OS X. A Windows version is promised for the fall. Final pricing has yet to be determined, but is expected to be less than US$1,000.
For more information, visit www.celemony.com. |
