Polyphonic audio editing by Melodyne

One of the best tools in my small arsenal of plug-ins is Celemony Melodyne.  I was writing tunes for Ed Goldfarb of Madcap Labs for a few radio spots at the time and he envisioned the need to do some pitch shifting with it at the time so he asked that I get a copy.  I got it as a student discount so it didn't put me out much.  Ultimately, I never got the chance to use it in the ways that Ed envisioned.


But i find myself turning to Melodyne for at least a part of nearly every track I write now.  Basically, Melodyne is an amazingly sick pitch/time shifting tool.  It can scan, for example, a monophonic sample (or a whole bass part for that matter) and convert it into a piano roll with each note existing on the piano roll seperate from each other.  What does this enable?  Real-time editing of a static wave file as if it were a series of midi-notes.  This is so completely useful, it's disgusting.

A few years back they updated Melodyne to work with polyphonic sound.  Essentially you could time stretch polyphonic material out as far as your little heart desired, and you would hear no side effects of the stretching.  Just pure, pristine stretched sound which, before I heard it for myself, I didn't believe.  This type of stretching is SO useful in creating your own sounds out of nearly nothing.

Try this:  Find a 20 second sample on a CD... atmospheres are AWESOME for this.  Bring this atmosphere into Melodyne, then stretch the audio file out so that it becomes a 10 minute sample.  With Melodyne's immaculate time stretching abilities, it creates an amazingly entrancing, evolving pad out of the sound.  A sound designer's dream, really.

So the big news comes by way of an email I received from Celemony this afternoon.  At the International Musikmesse in Frankfurt, Germany, Celemony displayed a new feature to come out in the Fall called Direct Note Access.  This feature allows you to scan a polyphonic audio file (for example, a 6 string guitar playing a soliloquy) and break EACH NOTE out on the piano roll.  You can then do things like make a minor guitar chord a major guitar chord?!  You could mute certain strings and allow others to come through.

Ladies and gents, this is something I have dreamed of but never figured I'd see.  How the hell do these people do this stuff?!  it blows me away.

Take a look at the video to see what I mean.  This is truly revolutionary in the world of professional audio, and I really hope Melodyne gets some much deserved time in the spotlight for figuring this out.  I wouldn't be surprised if these guys get bought out by some of the other big guns just for the insight into the technology.  Mindblowing.  Pieces everywhere.

Two Night Drive tracks near finished

I am cranking away on two separate remixes for Night Drive Music.

JP and Jones "Cut One" is the first one. Ended up taking a bit of a funk approach with the bass line. Lot's of subtitle high end layering, and a few lush pads to soften it up. Happy with this one AND it only took me three weeks start to finish.

Mark Cotterell's "Tiz Parts" is the second remix, and this one started off super minimal. I have read a little about modern minimal house production and decided to try out a few things with it. This track has only taken me 4 total production sessions to bring it to near completion! i tell you, sometimes the tracks write themselves. Of course, the flip side to that is sometimes it's like murder trying to finish one up.

I'm really proud of a snap/clap sound that really gives the remix some serious dimension and space. Verbed out the clap, edited together two quick snaps together, stereo separation to split them up and make it sound like a few people snapping, then bumped it forward in time about 45ms before each clap hit. The result really sounds like 3-4 people in a room keeping tempo with the track by themselves.

Not sure when these will see an official release, but it seems they will be on two separate EPs sometime over the next 6-8 months, I'd imagine. As always, keepin' ya posted.