I love technology (.org)

Since the advent of computers, audio technology has revolutionised how musicians work.

Before, it was pretty straight-forward. You picked up a physical instrument, you learnt how to play by practising scales and so on to improve your finger dexterity, you went into a studio, you played your bit, someone pressed the record button and presto, the single was ready for release.

Then, synths and samplers arrived. Synths could produce sounds an acoustic instrument was incapable of and samplers would allow a new generation of musicians to manipulate audio without being restricted to thinking in terms of notes and chords, physical instruments and finger dexterity.

Later, computers arrived. So synths and samplers became “soft”, people could record at home and mix and edit in a way much easier than the old way, when you had to slice a tape to make an edit.

Well, here comes the new audio revolution.

Almost a decade ago, AutoTune took the world of recording by storm. It was a bit of software that allowed people to change the pitch of audio. Let’s say your singer couldn’t sing in tune - well, run it through AutoTune and you could fix it! At least, it was the theory. Various companies launched similar products, and Celemony came to dominate the market with “Melodyne”, which could not only change the pitch but also the length and the position of a note.

Celemony is about to unleash the next musical revolution. Up until now, their product was only able to work with monophonic audio; that means, audio that only contains one note at a time. So it would work with the human voice, or a flute, or a trumpet, but not with guitar chords or a piano.  

Well, they have just announced Melodyne 2, to be released in October. It will be able to recognise each note within an audio recording, and you will be able to change their pitch, length and position individually!

Samplers and synths created new ways of working and new musical styles, such as dance music, electro, and hip-hop. Will Celemony Melodyne 2 do the same?

 Additional resources:

Watch Celemony video about their new technology http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=dna

Music Thing article on Peter Neubacker, the man behind Celemony http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2008/03/celemony-melodyne-dna-has-this-man-done.html