Still chomping at the bit for this one. If it were released, I could use it for a recording project I'm in the middle of right *now*.

That is so clever it is scary

Yeah.

They're still not giving away how they actually pull it off. If you watch the longer video that's labeled as an "interview" with the developer, he makes it sound like it was just sort of magic, and that their existing underlying engine could already pull it off with very little tweaking.

I know that shit ain't that simple. That's some serious stuff there under the hood.

Isn't it just adding a FFT step?

The software looks nice but its not doing anything super secret from what I can tell.

Not nearly that simple. Each moment of audio sample has so many overtones that detecting individual notes stored within a chord is a herculean task.

A given vibrating string will have several overtones, many of which are shared with completely different notes, especially considering that the overtones tend to fall in the same areas that we consider harmonically pleasing (fifths, thirds, sevenths, etc.), so the odds that you're going to have other notes in the chord that already share overtones is high.

Somebody I know did something similar as their masters thesis. They did a FFT and then went through all the frequencies to see whether it was a first or n-order harmonic. It worked pretty well but there was a lot of tweaking involved to handle how various instruments worked.

My guess is that what they're doing is relying on very subtle differences in timing and pitch to zero in on which overtones belong to which notes. I'll bet that if you had an instrument which was tuned and intonated mathematically perfectly, and if you hit the start of each note in the chord precisely at the same time, then you might actually confuse their engine.

Still, with most instruments, the start of each note is mostly noise, so I don't really know how they're solving that one. Perhaps they're not. Maybe the noise just doesn't get moved along with the rest of the note. Not important for frequency domain alteration, but possibly critical for time domain alteration.

There are pieces of software already that will allow you to convert an audio file into MIDI. They're just not that great. This Melodyne software appears to be a very advanced version of that sort of thing.

Until its properly released and in the hands of users, I'd take this demo with a huge pinch of salt. You can make things seem pretty amazing and special if its a carefully staged demo.

Audio-to-MIDI needs only to solve part of the problem, the note detection part. Edit: And besides, you said so yourself, they're not very good at the job. And how good are they at polyphonic note detection?

This software needs to do that, but also be able to take a single piece of waveform audio and extract individual waveform note segments out of that larger waveform, and have the resulting notes be usable as if they were recorded individually.

One word... DAMN.

Ok, two.. WOW.

I'm glad I'm not into music production, or this would be another must-get and definite time-sink.

Does anyone know if the first vocal is from a commercially (or otherwise) available song? If so, anyone have the credits?

I'm about to go back to see if they have it on a footnote...

The interesting thing is, it's supposed to be the opposite of a time-sink; allowing you to fix mistakes quickly without having to re-record.

But yeah, if you use it as a composition tool, then yeah, it could be a time-sink.

Must... tweak... every... note...

http://www.myspace.com/ninadeli

It's in the video.

I swear, if the collective resources of this BBS can't find something, it does not exist.

Can we use that melodyne stuff to play guitar hero/rockband/frets on fire with a real guitar?

www.guitarrising.com

If it works as advertised, it would pay for itself quickly:

The full version will cost 349 Euro/399 US$. The update from Version 1 will cost 129 €/129 US$

I bet this Melodyne app was at least as complex to write as the Basic program I did one time to select DOOM play maps!

tanstaafl.

No, but it looks like you wouldn't need it. That guitar rising program looks like fun. I'll have to try that out.

The full version will cost 349 Euro/399 US$. The update from Version 1 will cost 129 €/129 US$

It's better than that. If you purchased the monophonic version of the software within the last few months (229.00 at Guitar Center right now), then the upgrade to the new version is free when it comes out.

I'm probably going to pick up a copy in the next few weeks, in anticipation.

Thanks for the find. Now, does anyone know anywhere I can download the songs other than iTunes (I'd rather not buy AAC) and Amazon (only US purchases allowed)?

There are five tracks apparently available on her web site.

A lot of independent artists seem to be going the "just itunes" route these days, not even bothering with other forms of distribution. I wonder how many realize that a certain number of potential fans are locked out because they use MP3 players other than iPods (or because they want to boycott systems that use DRM).

To be fair, she (they?) say the tracks are available in various online music stores, but don't list them specifically.

The iTunes files are PLUS tracks which have no DRM and are encoded at 256kbit AAC. The Amazon files also have no DRM and are 256kbit MP3.

Amazon only sell their tracks to the US and there's no sign of a Canadian MP3 store, though one was promised for a 2008 release back in January.

I'm fairly sure the tracks on the web site are supposed to be for listening only. I'm not sure they would have done the pages the way they did if that weren't the case. That said, the songs are in the Media folder and can be downloaded. They're 192kbit MP3 files. The track "Flow" (from the Melodyne demo) isn't on the web site however.

Anyway, I don't want to keep the thread offtopic, but if anyone finds another store, let me know.

Plus is nice. But converting to MP3 is still an extra step, which is (a) a pain, (b) another lossy generation, and (c) buying the Plus track still adds monetary and marketshare support to a system which continues to be rooted firmly in record-company-mandated DRM. These issues are unimportant to some, a marginal inconvenience to others, and a deal-breaker for a few.



Which I totally applaud Amazon for. Too bad they don't have the international side of things sewn up as nicely as Apple does.

There are very few players out there that can't play the iTunes Plus (AAC) files and would need to be converted. Unfortunately for this community, the empeg, Karma, and TrekStor players are in the list that can't. I was really hoping support was going to be added for the Karma, due not only to the general direction moving towards MPEG4, but also the growing number of machines that had iTunes and people ripping to AAC without knowing it.


I don't agree with this part being a negative. By buying into the plus tracks over the normal ones (that people must opt in for), it gives Apple the numbers to be able to validate the percentage of buyers wanting DRM free and higher quality music. If it's a high enough percentage, this gives Apple leverage to go to the studios and try to convince them to get rid of DRM.

All that said, I still buy CDs and rip them myself.

Reviving an old thread.
Guitar rising looks like it's not going to come out anytime soon.

But i found this free version: http://littlebigstar.net/main/
Installing it now.

There's a demo available now. It functions as a plugin to Pro Tools or Cubase or whatever.

I think that's still the demo of the monophonic version they've had for a long time already. The polyphonic version still isn't out yet as far as I can tell. Still waiting on pins and needles.

You're right. I misread something.