I saw a link on Digg.com in the past week or so where they could take a music clip of a guy playing a chord, and edit the single notes within that.
As in, they had an audio recording of a guy playing a specific chord, and they were able to edit the specific notes within that chord.
Can anyone help me with fining this program?
Celemony’s Direct Note Access.
I saw this via MeFi. Freaking kick-ass, I can’t wait to hear what it does to sampling.
Incredible technology.
Are you sure this is not some late April Fool’s joke?
This could revolutionize recording.
[QUOTE=Rico]
Incredible technology.
Are you sure this is not some late April Fool’s joke?
This could revolutionize recording.
[/QUOTE]
There’s certainly software out there that lets you write out a piece of music in standard notation, and it will play it back for you. If that’s possible I don’t see why it should be so hard to go the other way.
It’s child’s play to go from a MIDI file that was created from a composing program back to a printed score, because both have complete information about every note of every voice.
But this program takes an audio recording in which multiple notes are all mixed together into a complex waveform, and separates them out, allowing manipulation of the pitch, duration, timing, and volume of the individual voices.
It’s not clear the extent to which this program can separate separate instruments or voices. I suspect it won’t let you separate out any instrument from an orchestra, or even one instrument from a small combo. I haven’t read through the entire Web site, but I think it can handle a single (polyphonic) instrument on its own track. I’d be surprised (but extremely impressed) if it can do the same with a stereo mixdown of multiple instruments.
Wow, that is freaking amazing. The flash video was a bit gee-wiz, and I’ll wait for this to appear in products before I believe that it’s a workable, usable technology. But I’m amazed that software can do the analysis to separate instrument chords. Its not a paradigm shift or anything, but its very very cool.
(Why do so many of these digital audio developments come out of Germany ? I thought the beard-guy was speaking German, and the pronunciation of MIDI (“meedee”) reinforces that; am I wrong?)
I saw the demo video, but I suspect there might be some problems with various timbres, and instruments with overtones (harmonics) where those are more prominent than the fundamental. Still I’d like to see it in action or be able to try it out.
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
There’s certainly software out there that lets you write out a piece of music in standard notation, and it will play it back for you. If that’s possible I don’t see why it should be so hard to go the other way.
[/QUOTE]
Why do you think the process works both ways? When an instrument plays a note, it doesn’t just play a single pitch, but a series of harmonics with mathematical relationships to the main pitch. The strength of each harmonic is determined by the instrument and defines what our ears hear as timbre. It’s one reason why a trumpet sounds different from a clarinet.
So how is a computer program to tell which sounds are the ones our ears define as important? I can see how it would be possible with sophisticated software, but it’s not as easy a task as you might imagine.
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
There’s certainly software out there that lets you write out a piece of music in standard notation, and it will play it back for you. If that’s possible I don’t see why it should be so hard to go the other way.
[/QUOTE]
If you can put an egg in a pan and boil it, I don’t see why it should be so hard to do the opposite.
[QUOTE=Musicat]
Why do you think the process works both ways? When an instrument plays a note, it doesn’t just play a single pitch, but a series of harmonics with mathematical relationships to the main pitch. The strength of each harmonic is determined by the instrument and defines what our ears hear as timbre. It’s one reason why a trumpet sounds different from a clarinet.
So how is a computer program to tell which sounds are the ones our ears define as important? I can see how it would be possible with sophisticated software, but it’s not as easy a task as you might imagine.
[/QUOTE]
Even if a played note does consist not only of the “main” pitch that would be written down plus harmonics, doesn’t the main pitch still dominate?
Sure, but we’re not talking about a melody here, but chords. Our brains are much more adept at picking out what a melody is than a computer, but picking out a melody from a complex sound track is beyond what many (casually musical) people can do. And even a musician can struggle to properly notate a chord by just listening to it. Go find all the wrong music notations or incorrect tablatures out there for popular songs, written by some guy trying to unwind a melody and chords, they’re legion. Asking a computer to correctly unscramble a chord is really a very difficult problem to solve, and not even an easy one for many or most people. And right now, this instant, in every way that counts, people are still smarter than any computer, at a lot of things including music, and even they often don’t do this easily.
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
Even if a played note does consist not only of the “main” pitch that would be written down plus harmonics, doesn’t the main pitch still dominate?
[/QUOTE]
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: usually, but not always. If you ever play with the drawbars on a Hammond organ, you can create many sounds with the fundamental’s level lower than the harmonics (absent, even). Some instruments accentuate even harmonics, odd harmonics, few harmonics, many harmonics. A flute is one that has very few, a clarinet, many (and mostly odd numbers).
It feels like this should be in Cafe Society…
My take - looks fascinating. I suspect that if it does a fraction of what they claim it can do, it will be very useful at correcting clams (bad notes/chords in otherwise usable takes), etc. However, if my experience with other digital music is any indicator:
it won’t be easy to do the things that appear to be super-easy, no-brainer stuff on the demo
it will require time to learn the craft of using the tool - just because it allows manipulation does not mean that the user will have the skills and experience to make that manipulation sound artful and pleasing to the ear.
regardless of what they say about being able to isolate specific notes, there has to be bleed-through between notes. Human ears are super-sensitive - with a little training, your average listener would be able to hear the difference between analog/continuous recording vs. digital/sampled recording, even through the sampling is several thousand times per second. The lack of continuity of sampling is discernible even if you don’t exactly know that that is the reason digital sounds different. I have to believe this tool will be the same - yeah, you can shift a note in a chord, but there is a halo of harmonics - some from that tone and some from sympathetic resonances from the other notes of the chord - that affect that note’s tone. Shift the note and some of those harmonics will have to be out of sync.
Bottom line - it is make up. I would rather see a beautiful woman who uses VERY little make-up to accentuate a fundamentally pretty face vs. putting so much lipstick on a pig that you make it presentable, but darn it, there’s still a pig under there…
Wordman, you’re such a tone-snob. 
Some of us like tools like this because they’re neat and potentially fun. I’m blown away that this is even possible, though probably as skeptical as you are about how well it works in real life vs a demo.
[QUOTE=WordMan]
He was mixing down a small band with a girl singer who had overdubbed herself a few times, and of course it was multitrack, and he had multitakes of the same song. Did she enter on voice #2 just a bit too early? No problem, just select that voice, draw a box around the few milliseconds and compress or shift the time just a tiny amount. Then cross-fade so the edit doesn’t stand out. Was her pitch a little questionable on that note? No problem, just grab a better copy from another take. Did the drummer miss a hit? No problem, take a snare hit from somewhere else in the song and put it where needed. Did her finger slip on the guitar string and punch the note too much? We can fix that…
I have pretty good ears, and I couldn’t hear any evidence of manipulation afterwards. It just sounded more perfect than before. The editing possiblities of today’s mixing room far exceed that of yesteryear, and if you think you can detect it, you are flattering yourself.
[QUOTE=Musicat]
I suspect you may not be aware of how manipulated modern commercial music is before it reaches the public. It had been a while since I hung around commercial studios, but just a few short years ago I visited a small studio, probably the only one in my rural county that could be called professional, a one-man operation. And while the owner/engineer didn’t have anything as sophisticated as the software that started this thread, he did have state-of-the art hardware and software for a small studio.
He was mixing down a small band with a girl singer who had overdubbed herself a few times, and of course it was multitrack, and he had multitakes of the same song. Did she enter on voice #2 just a bit too early? No problem, just select that voice, draw a box around the few milliseconds and compress or shift the time just a tiny amount. Then cross-fade so the edit doesn’t stand out. Was her pitch a little questionable on that note? No problem, just grab a better copy from another take. Did the drummer miss a hit? No problem, take a snare hit from somewhere else in the song and put it where needed. Did her finger slip on the guitar string and punch the note too much? We can fix that…
I have pretty good ears, and I couldn’t hear any evidence of manipulation afterwards. It just sounded more perfect than before. The editing possiblities of today’s mixing room far exceed that of yesteryear, and if you think you can detect it, you are flattering yourself.
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**Musicat ** - I have too much respect for your other music posts to doubt what you say. Having said that, I suspect that a lot of it relies on the fundamental talent of the artist and craft of the producer. Everyone can hear the fundamental talent difference between, say, Janet Jackson and Christina Aguilara. You don’t have to like either or even prefer Janet’s music to acknowledge that Xtina is a far more talented singer. Sure, her stuff is as processed as anyone’s, but the fundamental technique shines through. And if the producer is working to polish a stunning performance vs. “package” a negligible one, again, I think that shows…
You know how Scorsese loves the long shot? Then restaurant entrance scene in *Goodfellas *a good example. The beauty of that kind of shot is that it sends the message “this is no bullshit - you either can do this, or you can’t” - the director has the technique to craft the shot, everything goes just so and it fits into the movie narratively. I suppose I know that the room for manipulation of even that type of *tour de force * filmwork is huge - but there is a foundation of great technique to work from.
I still believe in the power of that - and I can think of examples where the immediacy of the performance lends credibility, if you will, to what I am hearing…