Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of Celemony

August 9th, 2008 – Pitch correction software has always been a hot topic in audio engineering. Sure, it fixes errors that might have otherwise ruined a great performance, but it also makes pitch and time-challenged artists sound good. Think of the “recording artists” out there that you know can’t sing well but have albums out: Hillary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Jennifer Lopez. I’ve specifically picked on singers because most people think that pitch software is only for vocalists.

This is not always the case. Pitch correction software could always be used on mono-phonic instruments such as flute or even guitar (if the first note did not decay into the second). Celemony’s Melodyne software has been at the forefront of pitch software technology. They have now released Direct Note Access (DNA). The software is able to detect the lengths, pitches and volumes of individual notes within a chord. Think about what that means for a minute. Conceivably, you might only have to record a chord once and you would have thousands of possibilites of turning that chord into anything else. You could build the rest of the guitar parts for the whole song based upon that one recorded chord. Even solos could be built by ripping out single notes from a chord.

The artistic possibilities provided by this technology are mind-blowing. You no longer have to worry about the semantics of recording, you can spend more time on creativity. Watch this video interview of the inventor of Melodyne to get a better idea of its power. The flipside of this technology is that it potentially takes musicianship out of the equation. Sometimes, though, the song is all about the vocalist and I just want to record a guitar part without spending a lot of time on it. DNA will give me my sanity back.

Celemony via MusicRadar