Edit audio like MIDI using Melodyne

Celemony Software, Munich, Germany, announces `Melodyne` audio software that introduce a new approach to audio editing. Melodyne detects the melody of any monophonic audio recording and extracts its notes. These notes can be edited by the user in a way that was only known from MIDI editing until now. Pitch shifting and time stretching as special operations are not necessary, because with an audio track processed by Melodyne, time and pitch automatically become independent parameters. The tempo of an arrangement with tracks detected by Melodyne can be changed arbitrarily while playing. In a tempo range of ±50% changes will be hardly audible. Detected notes can be moved arbitrarily with the mouse in pitch or time, or can snap to any musical scale. With the pitch of notes changing, the internal phrasing of a note, e.g. vibrato, and the transition between notes will always be kept in a musically acceptable way. Even with extreme pitch changes between the notes of a melody it will hardly be perceived that the melody was not played that way originally. Melodies can be rearranged by copying and pasting notes, or multiple voicings can be realized by copying a melody to new tracks. The formants of changed notes will automatically be kept, but due to a new method of formant processing the sound of an instrument can also be changed in a way that will result in a completely different instrument. Melodyne can process arrangements with about 20 to 30 tracks simultaneously, while notes can be moved around or tempo can be changed in realtime. The single tracks can be recorded within Melodyne, or can be imported from other recording programs. For mixing, VST1 PlugIns can be loaded, or the single tracks can be routed to an external mixer via ASIO. The single tracks can also be saved as single audio files for processing in other recording programs. Detected melodies can be exported as a MIDI-File to be viewed in a notation program or to be used in a sequencer software. System requirements are 300 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM, 10 MB diskspace ore better. Melodyne is expected to be released for MacOS 9 in first quarter 2001 and later that year for Windows.