DNA lets you access, change, or delete notes within polyphonic material, e.g. in a guitar or piano chord. You can change minor chords to major, delete overtones, lengthen notes, etc. All this is thoroughly impressive (and well-documented), but what I want to share are some lesser-known uses of this technology I’ve discovered in the past few weeks. Read on and also feel free to watch the included video tutorial.

I just finished composing, recording, and mixing a large amount of children’s music, and during the mixing phase of the process I wanted to use Melodyne to rescue some bad performances. This isn’t unusual, but I was in a situation where I recorded 4 kids using 2 mics. Imagine 3 kids are singing a note in-tune, but little Jimmy on mic 2 can’t seem to reach that high E and instead belts a very obtuse Eflat, singing it loud enough that it has to be fixed (names have been changed to protect the innocent). Little Jimmy shared his mic with Toby, who would’ve made his mother proud by correctly hitting his E. With traditional software, because they’re recorded on the same mic, if I raise Jimmy’s pitch to E, I’m going to bump Toby up to an Esharp, and thus I’ll still have a disturbing dissonance.

This is when I had the idea to analyze mic 2′s audio as polyphonic material in Melodyne to see if it could distinguish between the two voices. Since the kids are almost singing the same note (they’re just a half-step off), Melodyne defaults to analyzing the voices as one voice (monophonic); one voice with a hairy harmonic structure. Once I analyzed it as polyphonic material, I was able to find little Jimmy’s note and drag it to the correct pitch without altering Toby’s correct pitch.

The next example surprised me. A recording of background instrumentals was accidentally printed with the click track, and I was asked if I could remove the clicks. This is no easy task, as the click is a loud metronome sound that permeates the track and can’t be EQ’d out. I was skeptical anything could be done to rescue the track, but I analyzed the material with Melodyne to see what it could do. Surprisingly, with a little leg work I was able to find the clicks and remove them. They are still slightly audible on certain beats of the song, but if you aren’t listening for the clicks you won’t hear them.

Here’s a tutorial I made of Melodyne being used in these two situations.

Melodyne Editor with DNA Technology retails for $350, with a $100 discount if upgrading from Melodyne Essential (which comes bundled with Pro Tools). This is an extraordinary deal for the technology and will quickly pay for itself!

I’m a recent owner of a spankin’ new iPhone, and I haven’t been able to pull myself away from it. One of the things I’ve been doing is exploring the many musical possibilities it has to offer. 2 apps in particular have piqued my interest. The first is Bebot, which is basically a synth with multi-touch control. And the second is Star6, which is a loop player with interesting performance capabilities.

Star6 is what I used in my latest experiment with sound: a remix of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” This track was performed and recorded on the iPhone using the Star6 app exclusively, with the loops being prepared in Ableton Live. I hope you will enjoy the show!

Sgt. Pepper’s – iPhone Remix

It was made completely in Ableton Live.

the next time you see sky

I had no intention of doing a tribute to him, but I found myself fiddling in Ableton and next thing I knew I had a nice hook made of cuts from the song. It turns out I’m not the only one. “Human Nature” has been covered or sampled by numerous artists, not the least of which include Miles Davis, SWV, Boyz II Men, and Nas.

Here’s what I came up with:

While researching the other covers/remixes of the song, I found a couple of them on YouTube. I think it’s interesting to note the different interpretations.

And of course, here’s the original:

I was entranced by Christian’s wacko facial expressions and Star Trek duds. I was slapped in the face by his tribal hunter falsetto.

I loaded the video into Ableton Live and cut up clips onto a track, then midi mapped them to my Oxygen 8.

What follows is the result.

Better than the original?

I did some research and found it interesting that he constructed his own language for his music. The album is a story of Earth colonists who settle on another planet. That explains the outfit…

This past Sunday I met with a young girl who has a passion for electronic music.  Her dream is to produce it, to DJ it, and to sing with it.  She heard from friends that the best tool for the job is Ableton Live.  Her parents are quite exceptional in that they are fully encouraging her to follow her passion, and this is what led them to me.

I use Live on a daily basis.  It’s the most intuitive music platform I’ve ever encountered, and I love it.  And like her, I have a passion for electronic music.

When I was younger, I immersed myself in learning the ins and outs of music production from the ground up.  It was an enlightening time in my life, but it was also frustrating.  The world of sound is a big one, with many different facets and specialties.  After going to school for Recording Arts, I was happy with my broadened knowledge of sound, but my school wasn’t uniquely focused on my passions.  Having someone teach me one-on-one, focused on the skills I wanted to learn, would have been extremely beneficial.

Anyway, the point of my post is that I have my reservations about teaching.

Why, Matt?  Teaching is a noble task.  Why do you have reservations about such a selfless act?

Because I worry about teaching and not doing.  For some people, teaching might be their goal.  But my goal is to use what I was taught to pursue my dreams.

Despite my preconceived notions of teaching, when I talked with this girl I was excited.

Her passion and enthusiasm were infectious.  It reminded me why I got into music production.  I realized how helpful I could be to her, how many things I knew she would love to learn.  I wanted to see her play and create and tap into the excitement that happens when you’re really happy with what you’ve produced.

We start next week and I’m curious to see how she feels about things as her brain fills up with the technical knick knacks of music producing.  As long as she holds on to that passion (and I hope she will), she’ll have a rewarding time ahead of her.

Do I see myself becoming a full time teacher?  Not at this point.  But I’ve found there’s a middle ground where I can pursue my dreams while helping others pursue theirs.

Between editing audio books, playing with my band, and nerding out to the history of the Aliens movies, I somehow found the time to make a new song.  It’s definitely a beat dropper, and my salute to “big beat” music.  Featuring a classic sample of Run-DMC, I think you’ll enjoy it.

Some of you might have noticed through Twitter/Facebook that I recently saw Aliens on the big screen at BAM.  My girlfriend and I went to see it and we were so very entertained.  Not to mention the spectacular visual effects (way better than CGI), we also noticed the awesome sound design.  She pointed me in the direction of this alien egg hatching sound (I don’t think this is actually from the movie, though…it sounds like a gunshot at the end?):

Something about the Aliens storyline hooks me in and had me thinking about it for days afterward.  My girlfriend had never seen Alien 3 (I told her she wasn’t missing much), but I did tell her the basic plot of the movie and where the story goes.  I dug up some info from wikipedia that some folks might find interesting:

A number of cast and crew associated with the series, including actor Michael Biehn, previous director James Cameron, and novelist Alan Dean Foster expressed their frustration and disappointment with the film’s story. Cameron, in particular, regarded the decision to kill off the characters of Bishop, Newt, and Hicks “a slap in the face” to him and to fans of the previous film. Biehn, upon learning of Corporal Hicks’ demise, demanded and received almost as much money for the use of his likeness in one scene as he had been paid for his role in Aliens Alan Dean Foster called the death of Newt “an obscenity.”

Anyway, enough geekiness.  Until next time…

I was wrong.  Or rather, I had the wrong idea.  You can use Twitter on the basic “What are you doing?” level, but it really shines when you look past that.  It acts as an aggregator of people, of news, and of interests.  It’s a way for you to receive information that is very specialized and valuable.

Through tools such as WeFollow, Twibe, and TweetMondo, I was able to follow and get updates from people who are fellow Audio Engineers, Musicians, or Photographers, as well as follow people who live in my same neighboorhood.  There are new tools popping up daily to aide in the search for valuable people to follow.  And that’s what enriches the Twitter experience; the people you decide to follow.  That’s what enriches life, too.

Following people is half the fun.  For any creative person, the benefits of broadcasting your latest project to hundreds or thousands of people is extremely valuable.  With URL shorteners like bit.ly it’s easy to insert a link in your tweet.  That link may be something you were involved with, or it might be something you think people would be interested in.  Throw in the Facebook Twitter App and your tweets get mirrored to all the people you know personally via Facebook.  While you’re at it, use TweetDeck to manage Twitter instead of using their website.

Within the last week I’ve been amazed at the number of interesting people I’ve discovered and the new opportunities I see.  As a result of all this Tweeting, I’ve also become more active in my following of blogs, having resurrected my latent use of Google Reader.

A lot of this re-examination of Twitter was thanks to a coversation I had with Molly Gross.  Thanks, Molly!

I found this interesting page via Create Digital Music.  It’s a bunch of Youtube videos that are all in the same key and all have an ambient quality.  You can play them in any order you like, you can adjust the volumes of each clip, and you can alter the playheads as you wish.  The result is a beautiful soundscape with you the listener feeling like you were part of the process.  Brilliant.

Here it is: http://www.inbflat.net/

Here is more info from Create Digital Music.