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…

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.

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.