New software allows you to change individual notes in a chord

[CC Ricers]

I figured some people here might know more about it than me. I have no clue how it works but it looks like it will add a whole new layer of efficiency when working with sound recordings. Melody/key correction has been out for a while, but not in a way where you can pick out certain notes in a polyphonic sound.

http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=dna

[dannthr]

Yep, the guys at Celemony are NUTS.

I like how the guy says: What doesn't work in theory can work in practice.

That's freaking mad scientist stuff right there.

[DJ SymBiotiX]

HOLY FRIGGEN ******** * * *** ... That seriously just blew my mind. How... wtf... ahhh!

Im so getting that when it comes out.

[BluefoxIcy]

Yep, the guys at Celemony are NUTS.

I like how the guy says: What doesn't work in theory can work in practice.

That's freaking mad scientist stuff right there.

In theory, if you look at the individual volumes of each frequency range on a fine scale (a fast fourier transform does this, look at open source libfft for existing code), you can profile the core notes and the distributions of frequencies from each, then alter to taste.

Identifying the core frequencies (this is a C4-F4-C5) is the easy part. Figuring out what's going on around those frequencies is tough; the notes overlap. The curve should look familiar to statistics majors (beta curve i.e. standard normal), so it's no impossible task right?

So now what about frequency shapes? this works all well and good for sines and pianos, but a flute looks like two overlapped sine waves out of phase on the same frequency (okay, not so hard to deal with...). A guitar will output one note if you play one string, right? What's the low-mid-high thing for then? That's right, the way the string resonates (think piano or flute or anything else too... especially violin, where your heavy handed bow affects pitch), there's a mix of frequencies in there. The core wobbles up and down. We just lost our perfect world scenario 5 times here.

It works in theory; it's just very hard to do in practice without making hollow or muddy sounds or otherwise making it really fucking obvious. There was a program ages ago that turned a recording of multi-phonic instruments into a MIDI, sometimes. Not very good at it but it did take a good shot. I was what 14 at the time... so yeah 8 years ago, this is the same kind of tech on the base, just with further processing after you get it right.

[BluefoxIcy]

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. – all after the performance is already taped!

I charge all of you to learn to tune your instruments, and ear train. And don't you dare sing without vocal training against a sine wave or something, or with a teacher that's bitchsmacking you for 2Hz off.

This is great. I could strum in rhythm and do X notes at once, then modify my guitar music and sound like I know how to play. Don't waste your life with this and just give up on actually performing well; with great power comes great responsibility. Correct mistakes, but don't try to make gold from shit.

[DDRKirby(ISQ)]

crazy.....

[po!]

hmmm... this would be a really cool transcription tool

[Sil]

Theoretically, wouldn't you be able to run music through this program, isolate individual notes of certain instruments, and create a chromatically sampled library of those instruments? For example, let's say I want the New York Philharmonic to perform something I wrote...

[Swarmer]

Is that how you pronounce MIDI...
The guy was pronouncing it "meaty". I thought it was "mid-ee" ("mid-" as in "middle").

Also: if this is as robust as they make it look and works that well for most instruments then this is truly revolutionary. Maybe once the technology is advanced enough, you will be able to "decompile" songs, and see their inner workings.

[OverCoat]

I knew a guy who pronounced it "my die" but he was Canadian so he had a good enough excuse... I felt I had to correct him on that though :3

mid ee!

[DDRKirby(ISQ)]

hmmm... this would be a really cool transcription tool

O_O!!!

didnt cross my mind

[Escariot]

zircon's been pimping this for the last couple days.

[OA]

In before Brad.



Obviously it's a promotional video so it is going to look super super awesome, but if even it's half as good as it claims to be, it would be a super useful tool. I'll be very interested in reading reviews when it first comes out.

[Argle]

I saw this on another site. It is nothing short of amazing.

[Yoozer]

I thought it was "mid-ee" ("mid-" as in "middle").
You are correct, he's got an accent.

Also: if this is as robust as they make it look and works that well for most instruments then this is truly revolutionary.
It would be interesting to see how it would treat complete tracks.

Sometimes you don't want perfect results, you want weirding-out tools that demolish the crap out of your original in novel ways.

[Fray]

Theoretically, wouldn't you be able to run music through this program, isolate individual notes of certain instruments, and create a chromatically sampled library of those instruments? For example, let's say I want the New York Philharmonic to perform something I wrote...

I kinda imagine the sound quality on your library wouldn't be very good if you did that :(

[Rozovian]

I wanna record random crowds and traffic and stuff, and move notes around. :D If it can tune, it can find music anywhere.

Anyone expecting a new genre based on this anytime soon? Like, "melodic noises" or "tweaked life music" or something.

[Dhsu]

People already sample all kinds of weird stuff (see: Mazedude, Overcoat, Shnabubula). What you'll most likely get if you used DNA on that kind of thing is a whole spectrum of pitches. Although if you changed them all to the same note, you might get some very interesting results...

[SnappleMan]

There should be a rule against people posting huge blocks of pasted text which they found on some random website and they don't have a clue what it means. Bluefox, I'm talking to you.

Anyway, this is cool stuff. I look forward to trying it out. Not sure if it would be worth it for transcribing as much as changing existing recordings I've made and finally using some interesting loop and phrase libraries.

[Dhsu]

I just realized...could this become the WAV -> MIDI program everyone's been waiting for?

[Yoozer]

Seeing what it can do with this material - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLOHyxnMl1U (sorry for the sound quality, my camera isn't that great) - yes.

[Lunahorum]

i loved the crowd cheering. Pretty good when the crowd cheers at a software press release.

[SnappleMan]

I just realized...could this become the WAV -> MIDI program everyone's been waiting for?

I doubt it. Percussion and distortion would definetly kill the functionality of this software. At every press release I've seen, they stress that it's made for single instruments, or at most limited multi-timbral stuff like that string section.

[SkyMarshall Arts]

8-O

That's pretty amazing ... if it works.
I need to do some research on this, and if it works. Holy shit.
I can think of a thousand things to do with this.
Guess I will have to cough up some dollars again.

[CC Ricers]

I'm certain that some people out there are afraid of what impact this could have to live and recorded instrumental performances and taking for granted the natural talent of musicians. But it's still just a tool that enhances a good performance. I don't expect it to turn shit into gold.