Musikmesse 08: Edit polyphonic audio files in Melodyne

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Well, we predicted that it was coming and now it´s been confirmed: Celemony Software has announced that future versions of Melodyne will feature Direct Note Access. What this means is that you´ll soon be able to edit the individual notes of polyphonic audio files.

We don´t want to come over too hyperbolic here, but the possibilities of this new technology - which is awe-inspiring to see in action - are huge. With Direct Note Access, you can ‘explode´ your polyphonic audio recording and see all the notes displayed within it. With this done, you can adjust their pitch, timing and much more.

Obviously, Direct Note Access will be useful as a corrective tool - you´ll be able to sort out bum notes in a piano recording, for example, or go back and tune-up a guitar chord - but it also has the potential to be extremely creative.

Put simply, it enables you to take a simple recording and use it as the basis for something completely different - all those samples that didn´t quite fit into your songs can now be tweaked to meet your exact requirements.

You can even play an audio recording in real-time from your MIDI keyboard, with the material responding to changes in pitch.

Of course, we´ll have to reserve judgment on just how good the Direct Note Access technology is until we´ve tried it for ourselves - the material that Celemony has used to demonstrate it is clearly tailor-made for tweaking - but if it lives up to its promise, it could go down as yet another landmark in music software development.

The first product to feature Direct Note Access will be Melodyne plugin 2, which will be released in the fourth quarter of 2008. Further details can be found on the Celemony website, and you can also watch a video that shows the technology in action.