I'm not sure if there are many people who know about this product.  Basically it allows you to seperate an audio file of a chord into seperate tracks for each notes allowing you to change each note and rhythmic placement to create a complete chord progression from just one just one recording. It looks and feels like midi, but its audio

It's best to watch the video, it explains it better than me, but it's definitley awesome. It's a great tool if you want to remix some songs or a quick fix


It's not out yet, but coming out in the autumn with melodyne plugin 2.0

p.s. the shit they are doing is apparently theroretically impossible

That doesn't seem all that innovative, really... I mean, you can do a lot of the same stuff just by dicking around in Nero Wave Editor, it just wasn't as well laid out.
Also, I looked it up and found this:

For instance music producers can fix a note in a normal audio recording of a piano segment, in case the player hit the wrong one.
Other examples would be to tune a guitar after recording, correct harmony vocals that are out of tune, or fix their timing, turn major chords to minor (and vice versa), switch tone scales, mute single notes, remix volume levels, etc., and this all after the performance is already taped.

So, if nothing else it'll be pretty fun to read all the retarded opinion columns in music magazines complaining about how it's going to DESTROY ALL GOOD MUSIC!!! because, yeah, Busted or whoever were always so gritty and authentic before this came along.

Vocal tuning, changing the overal key and fitting to time has been around for years. This is something different. You can actually seperate the notes within the chord and changes the indivdual rhythms, notes etc. Not just a monophonic line.

If you had a guitarist who played a duff note in a chord, previously the only way to correct it would be to record it again. There was no way of splitting up the chord into single notes of audio to be tweaked. They could sort out monophonic lines though, but if anything was laying at the same time, that note would be changed in relation to the duff note.

Its kind of like if you play in some midi notes and you hit a duff note, you can easily delete it. Now you can do it with already recorded audio.

Also this could be a good tool for studying music because a lot of modern artists don't have sheet music available (if you are lucky some random fan might have made a somewhat accurate TAB) and getting everything down by ear is a pain in the ass.

I am curious to see how good this sounds though because in my experience pitch correction and stuff only works for small intervals.  Sometimes even if you go as far as a half step (eg. changing a chord from major to minor) the audio comes out sounding butchered and weird and I've only found it useful for making minor adjustments to get something to really *lock in* (because you know usually singers and especially string players are always a couple cents sharp or flat).

EDIT: The video might have this information but I have no sound where I am right now so.

Vocal tuning, changing the overal key and fitting to time has been around for years. This is something different. You can actually seperate the notes within the chord and changes the indivdual rhythms, notes etc. Not just a monophonic line.

If you had a guitarist who played a duff note in a chord, previously the only way to correct it would be to record it again. There was no way of splitting up the chord into single notes of audio to be tweaked. They could sort out monophonic lines though, but if anything was laying at the same time, that note would be changed in relation to the duff note.

Its kind of like if you play in some midi notes and you hit a duff note, you can easily delete it. Now you can do it with already recorded audio.

Ah, I guess I was thinking of something different... I just have a lot of fond memories of messing around with pop songs in various sound editors and randomly changing speeds and pitches until they sounded like robot jazz or something.
That does sound kinda cool, though... Kind of like a musical lego box, being able to take songs, break them down into seperate parts, and rearrange them as you like. It's apparantly being sold for $399, though, so it'll probably be a good few years before I can tinker with it.

meady.

i saw this a little while ago and part of me thinks this is really horrible, but another part really likes it. yeah i would never use this for sound correction, but i will use it to sample really specific sounds. i'm assuming you can put in an entire song and be able to mess around with it, and not just chords!

imagine how techno people will mess around with amen break now

meady.

i saw this a little while ago and part of me thinks this is really horrible, but another part really likes it. yeah i would never use this for sound correction, but i will use it to sample really specific sounds. i'm assuming you can put in an entire song and be able to mess around with it, and not just chords!

agreed.  I think this has excellent potential for sampling and creative shit BUT also huge terrible potential as a shortcut to make EVEN LESS TALENTED people famous you know?

Used it, it's friggin' awesome :-) Although it's called "Pitch Correction" software, and there are more out there than just this one.

Melodyne just has many extra features that the other ones don't have. If used wrongly, it can make a voice sound robotic (as is with pitch correction).

Pitch correction is used in all mainstream music these days in recording studios. This doesn't seem like a bad thing at all to me, as it's not about the novelty of the person singing, it's more about the sound and experience of the music.

Pitch Correction can also be used on stage in real-time, I'm pretty sure (as there has always also been speculation of Lip-syncing), although many very skilled mainsteam bands and artists still sing straight live.

It's all about the show, the experience of the music and of the person listening. That's show biz and that's how it oughta be. ;p

Used it, it's friggin' awesome :-) Although it's called "Pitch Correction" software, and there are more out there than just this one.

Melodyne just has many extra features that the other ones don't have. If used wrongly, it can make a voice sound robotic (as is with pitch correction).

Pitch correction is used in all mainstream music these days in recording studios. This doesn't seem like a bad thing at all to me, as it's not about the novelty of the person singing, it's more about the sound and experience of the music.

Pitch Correction can also be used on stage in real-time, I'm pretty sure (as there has always also been speculation of Lip-syncing), although many very skilled mainsteam bands and artists still sing straight live.

It's all about the show, the experience of the music and of the person listening. That's show biz and that's how it oughta be. ;p

I don't know most people think that it's pretty sweet when someone can actually sing in tune.

Also yes you can do pitch correction live.  You just run the voice through a modulator that matches the frequencies to the desired pitch just like any other effect such as a vocoder or distortion pedal.