Why would it be scary?

Hey Space, this technology always strikes me when I first see it. I thought it was awesome, but then it hit me.

Can't help but think it would sound funny, but then again it may be the coolest thing since sliced bread.

One things for sure, plugins have changed the course of music today.

Re: Is this cool or the end of an era? You be the judge.

jammster wrote: Listed in the M.I.P.A. awards for most innovative product of 2009:

Now, I never, ever thought this would be possible.

A very powerful new tool.

The question that comes to mind: Is this plugin going to get abused? My guess would be an overwhelming yes.

Scary!

Scary?.....ya probably
I think its very kool, technically....musically and talent wise, don't think so..I guess we will see...my guess is new music will be done this way and like most things nowadays it will all be nicely scrubbed, brushed, polished and perfect with not a lot of feeling....maybe it will inspire someone...who knows..but then I wonder if this isn't the direction music is headed...of course I'm probably thinking popular music....No doubt there will always be people who will continue to use real musicians, vintage tape and maybe that's a good thing...this software kinda takes all the fun out of multiple takes doesn't it?...I have to admit I tweak notes and tracks for people in Cubase if warranted and they love it....it beats having to punch in/out sometimes or listen to the same mistake over and over until they hit it...
Something like this would certainly make that easier...
I'm sure the gamer music people will love it!
I'm still using Cubase 4.5 but I think Cubase 5 might have something similar to this in their new pitch correction plugin...

How long have plug ins been around?

Well, I guess this is really no different than sampling. Only this is way more elaborate.

Amazing there able to isolate notes in a chord and map the notes out to be altered.

The only thing that makes me wonder about how well this would work is that say you have artifacts in the background that get recorded, that may start sounding odd.

yeah... that's called otto-toon

Celemony's been around awhile, and yes, it IS getting abused.

Essentially, you only need one or two notes and you can just about sound like a complete orchestra in a couple of hours.

e.g., you definitely don't have to be a musician to make music any more.

yeah but... yeah but, yeah but!

Direct Note Access:

It is a brand new feature in otto tune, its about to be released. I've never heard of such a thing. I guess its been news for quite a while, funny how I never pay attention to this stuff.

Very cool for a note or two out of a phrase, or when used to fix a flub up in that great take you just did or just being creative with it. But what the hell are you going to do when you play that song live?

Can you say Milli Vanilli?

But abuse? Go figure.

Hell, you don't even have to have tempo either. And that can go for the entire band!

Link removed

In Logic Pro 9 you can even take an entire song and quantize the audio with it.

Its like all the sudden, all this is happening.

Yeah MadMax, you nailed it:

MadMax wrote: e.g., you definitely don't have to be a musician to make music any more.

IMHO Thats what is Scary! Really scary!

All you need is money, and not even that much! Forget talent.

I keep thinking of that lyric in that song by Don Henley:
[youtube:04e4178554]http://www.youtube…]

i like that!
imagine you've just recorded the greatest rhythm guitar track of your life but that one chord always sounds weird. just tune that one wacky note in that chord and you'll have a perfect track.
or you record background vocals with all the singers into one mic. everybody sang perfect but the guy in the back didn't hit the high note. now either you let them redo the whole track (and everybody will hate that guy), punch in (which might sound unnatural), or just tune that guy and make everybody happy.

you definitely don't have to be a musician to make music any more.

Maybe, but I think you still need to be a musician to make good music.

apstrong wrote:

you definitely don't have to be a musician to make music any more.

Maybe, but I think you still need to be a musician to make good music.

double that. but things like that just make it easier...

Celemony is the WalMart mentality of audio... fix it in the mix, indeed. Why not figure out/learn your part and PERFORM it the way it should be? If you can't do that, you really have no business coming to me or my studio or employing my mobile rig.

Since when the heck did EVERY note of EVERY song become dictated to be "perfect"?

Where is this all coming from? It's NOT what music is.

If you're gonna use the argument that the major's and commercial content provider's are spending millions of dollars, and they want a perfect advertisement, then you have a valid point... but the commercial content creator is SELLING A PRODUCT. Music performance for entertainment should not be a commodity that is bought, sold and traded like pork belly commodities. But unfortunately it is.

A real musician would just do the take over, and maybe do it better than the last take, or maybe do it worse. Such is what music being played by a human is. That is, if we're talking about a "studio" recording.

In live tracking, you really don't get a chance to do that. You must continue the performance.

If you can't get it right, then maybe you aren't that good, or maybe, just maybe, you're a human being with frailties and imperfections. LIVE WITH IT!

Ottotoon is the No Child Left Behind of the music industry. This isn't the playground. This is the real world where amateur and "professional" players both reside and the best of the best rise to the top to be recognized.

I seriously doubt that one would have ever considered using otto on Caruso, Pavarotti, Eartha Kit, Segovia, Fats Waller, Muddy Waters, Frank Sinatra, Frank Zappa or any of the classic performers. THEY DIDN'T NEED IT. They were dedicated to the idea of getting it right. Even when they didn't nail it absolutely perfect, it was far and above the performance as it happened LIVE. It WAS the moment... it was a PERFORMANCE.

I doubt if Bach, Brahms, Beethoven or even Tchaikovsky would have used the tool much past the composition mode of their work.

Yes, it IS an amazing bit of technology, but it takes the life out of a performance and makes it sterile and false when it's used to make an end product something that it isn't. It's cheating the public into thinking the "performer" is something that they are not. Ethically, it's a form of "bait and switch."

As a creative tool for composition, sure... it has a relevant place in the creative tool arsenal... but as a performance based musician... it's not a replacement or substitute for for a real human being expressing their soul, humor, passions, pains and desires in a way and manner that is shared with others through the recording medium.

IMO, there is a big difference between altering music through the use of compressors, gates and effects and using otto.

Using otto, its primary function is to alter the actual performance through the EDITING of the performance. Inserts and FX are editing the tonality and environment of the performance.

So, editing the performance is what I primarily object to... and yes, I do object to punching a word, a syllable and the like. A phrase, maybe. I don't care to hear punches. A complete verse or chorus... well, at least that's a completed thought within the realm of a performance.

I dunno... call me old fashioned, but if you call yourself a musician... then damnit, BE A MUSICIAN and PERFORM YOUR MUSIC.

The old technologies have always remained available.

I can go out to the woods, and harvest wood, to make a drum, or I can go to a music WalMart, and buy a djembe, or even go online to purchase one.

Just another tool to be used and abused. It's been the way of man for tens of thousands of years.

I am a technologist, though, so I may be biased.

I just finished mastering a project.

It was a solo guitar.

The person playing used a direct box into his computer. After it was recorded he ran a noise reduction program on the resulting file then he went in and took out all the noise in between each note so it sounds like a midi track soloed.

Then he went in and individually edited or replaced note by note what did not sound good or was not well played. Then as part of the mastering had me raise or lower the volume of individual notes.

We added artificial reverb and widening to the material to make it sound more "real".

This is as far away from "music" as I can imagine. There is nothing left of the feeling of the pieces and it is so sterile and perfect that it lacks anything that would excite me as a listener. It is perfect but SO WHAT that is NOT what music is all about but it seems that with the advent of ProTools and other software that is all people care about anymore.

I don't know how this person plays live but I cannot imagine it is anything like the CD I just mastered for him.

FWIW.

in my experience most singers (even the good ones) sing completely different when they're in a studio situation. I've heard singers, which nail a performance note-wise and feeling-wise live, totally screw up in the studio because they think too much about hitting the note than performing with feeling. i tell them to concentrate on the feeling and not on the notes. i can fix wrong notes but there's no auto-feeling plugin yet (THAT would be a big seller).
personally i prefer fixing one or two notes afterwards than having to listen to a part over and over and over again...
btw, melodyne is not auto tune, it affects only the notes you want to edit. if a note is "wavey" (in lack of a better word) it won't flatten the curve. although you could do it manually.

i think there's nothing wrong with fixing things in the studio to save time. if the artist can't do it live it's his problem. nowadays a studio recording usually isn't about capturing a live performance but making a product which sounds as good as it gets.

if this technology had been around back in the days of zappa and the likes i'm sure they would have used it too. perhaps in a more creative way than just fixing a few notes. peter gabriel uses melodye too. now tell me that he is not a creative and skillfull artist...

Then he went in and individually edited or replaced note by note what did not sound good or was not well played. Then as part of the mastering had me raise or lower the volume of individual notes.

now this IS ridiculous.

And about twice as time consuming as just playing the part again...

That Direct Note Access feature has been 'Coming Soon' for over a year now.
In my book, it's no more or less of a cheat than punching in ,using a tuner, comping a track, using headphones, or all the other tools we use in the studio.

BTW, I apologize for wanting to make this into a rant.

I'm a bit of a purist, call me old fashioned.

EDIT: I'm going to change the topic to Direct Note Access for future reference on the site.

Its really great to here everyone's thoughts, it just proves how cool this forum really is.

In my experience, the majority of the singers nail it or they don't. When they do, we keep it... when they don't, we still keep it... if nothing else, as a reference, until we get the keeper track. Same for any other muso's.

Maybe you're just dealing with lesser quality musicians when you MUST use otto to get a decent performance. Personally, I don't deal with that type of artist. You actually have to be a performance based musician to get me to work with you. I simply don't deal with the type of client that can't perform... as in my not so humble opinion... you have to be worthy of me giving up of the limited time I have on this planet to track and mix your music. There are far too many musicians/artists who can, and DO perform their music at a level of skill and passion that does communicate some connection and emotion to a listener, for me to waste my limited time of this life on telentless hacks.

If you are incapable of playing your instrument, singing with feeling, or in some manner, prove yourself to be not capable of actually performing music... you will not like what I will return to you as tracks or as a mix. I, as an engineer and musician, have adopted the philosophy that I do not have to compromise, nor does an artist who comes to me for tracking or mixing of music as entertainment.

Probably the biggest part of your job as a tracking engineer, is to create the type of comfortable environment that IS conducive to a performance. You should be able to get that artist past the point of worrying about hitting every note perfect above delivering the music within their soul. If you aren't creating that type of situation, then that is the fault of the engineer... NOT the artist.

ouzo77 wrote: i think there's nothing wrong with fixing things in the studio to save time. if the artist can't do it live it's his problem. nowadays a studio recording usually isn't about capturing a live performance but making a product which sounds as good as it gets.

I happen to think that there IS something wrong with fixing things in the studio, IF the artist can't deliver the goods live.

I didn't say that I would not under any circumstances use something like Melodyne. I would, and I will. However, I will guarantee you that it will be the tool of last resort for a music as entertainment based audio track.

Again, I see the problem with these pseudo AI packages, is that they are essentially a tool to help less than skilled people become fraudulent artists. I find it a major vulgarity to perpetrate a false performance for financial gain. In the banking industry, this is called fraud. In the general business community this is called fraud. In law enforcement, this is called bait and switch, a confidence scheme and fraud. In Washington, DC... it's called politics as usual in the two party system.... however, in my little corner of the world, I call it unacceptable.

If this technology had been around back in the days of Zappa and the like, I'm sure they would have NOT used it to fake their performances. As a creative tool for composition... probably to most definitely. But I'm also pretty sure that they would have taken it out on the road and used it as part of their performances... and it would most likely be used as an effect and NOT to substitute a player's skill or abilities.

When you move out of the music as entertainment arena, then this cannot apply. The music performance is a secondary aspect of a product that you are being asked to deliver... I'll chop, hack, otto, comp, foley or whatever else has to be done to achieve what the client is paying for.

I know I'm a small voice in my opinion, but you know what? My clients get it... and we're not alone. We're just not the majority anymore. Maybe someday we'll actually see a return to artists who can actually perform music being in the majority. Probably not in my lifetime, so until that time, I will continue to preach the purity message and try to hold the flame vigilant so others can see the way.

I just hope that orchestra's, choral's and groups of that nature can survive until that time returns.

well, i'm not a pro. i do this in my past time. so i do have to be picky who i work with. i choose to record good music, not good musicians. if he or she is a good songwriter and has great songs i don't care if he/she is a perfect singer/player. i will do anything to make the music sound as good as possible.

Probably the biggest part of your job as a tracking engineer, is to create the type of comfortable environment that IS conducive to a performance. You should be able to get that artist past the point of worrying about hitting every note perfect above delivering the music within their soul. If you aren't creating that type of situation, then that is the fault of the engineer... NOT the artist.

that's what i'm saying. don't worry about the notes, just get the feeling right. and this has worked for me well, because the singers and musicians are comfortable with me recording them. i know that because they tell me all the time. and they come back to me even though they could record in a bigger studio with better equipment.

don't get me wrong, i don't use auto tune. i don't like how it sounds and it feels not real. i don't want to hear every note on the exact 440 Hz, because that's not natural. but if i can fix a note that's wrong without having the singer sing the part over and over i will do that. his performance won't get better after the 10th or 20th take.
if the feeling is right then fixing a few notes is legitimate.

"cheating" has been a big part of music recording ever since multitrack recording came up. whether it's doubling guitar tracks or creating big background vocals, you can't do that live. but it always has been done in recording. just think of freddie mercury's doubling, tripling and quadrupling vocals. he couldn't do that live either.

Some Cohen that always comes to mind when I think of this Perfected music topic....
"
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

"
Leonard Cohen - Anthem

Since this has [d]evolved into a discussion, here are my 2 cents.

Back in the day, I came to understand what Brian Wilson was doing when recording the Pet Sounds and Smile albums. With the repeated takes, multi-tracking and editing little pieces of tape into songs, I began to imagine studio recording sessions much like making films. In movies they capture the right performance from the actor, change lighting, edit film, use special effects, re-dub lines, do helicopter shots, add sound effects, etc.

When I want to see someone's presentation of a story, I'll see a movie; if I want to see an acting performance, I'll see a play.

Therefore to me, a studio recording is an artist's presentation of the song; if I want a musical performance, I'll see a musician play live. (There is room here for live recordings, but even those are subject to re-dubbing, editing, etc.)

Just as I wouldn't leave the feedback from a lead singer's headphones or a cable crackle in a song, I might also modify a flat note from an otherwise good take. No, I don't like robot musicians singing and midi-robots playing, but that might be what an artist wants people to hear. After all, Devo had a big following back in the 80s.

Is it cheating? Yes, just like making movies is cheating. You don't need to act to be a movie star.

great analogy!

I think a more accurate analogy would be to go to watch a Humphrey Bogart movie, and it be someone else doing the voice dialog for Bogey... or possibly more illustrative by using Bogart's voice with images of Woody Allen.

It wouldn't make a rat's butt of difference if you didn't know who either of them were... however, if you met either one of them... you'd know something was rotten.... and you would likely feel a bit cheated.

Jammster "Now, I never, ever thought this would be possible."

You can't go see a movie today without almost half the film being some CGI creation. Even the actors are just acting so some computer can model their movements and as a long time film buff it is vastly overdone. Sure you do something like "Lord of the Rings" or "Alien" it has its place but now every car chase, house on fire, gun being fired has to have some over the top effect. You had to know it wouldn't be long before this technology would penetrate music. After it has been in place and younger generations are suckled on it it will be less and less likely to revert back until such a time that the old is new and then it will be a fad. Cheating or not it is here to stay

jg49 wrote: You had to know it wouldn't be long before this technology would penetrate music. After it has been in place and younger generations are suckled on it it will be less and less likely to revert back until such a time that the old is new and then it will be a fad. Cheating or not it is here to stay

Right On jg! Cheating or not, it IS here to stay.

The fads do come and go, but we know a good song when we hear one. :wink:

I recall a fad that put a scare into a drummer friend of mine back in the whenever electronic drums came out day was.

Positively frantic, all that talent being taken over by a "machine", as it were.

Now it is clear that this [being taken over by machines] did not happen.

It is pretty clear that this is the same kind of scare.

What is unclear to me is...who benefits the most and in what way is that offensive?

There was a day when all that was, was one crude ass audio input megaphone and some crude form of needle against a tin sheet that would capture whatever was there to be captured in the audio arena.

What scares me now is the same thing that has always scared me.

That talented people will give in and think that they are beat simply because someone has better pipes or more prolific fingers.

Good point space, but if a guy comes at you carrying a short length of pipe then you probably are gonna get beat!

That is giving up CM.

It is still fear. I am paranoid...but I am not afraid. There is a large difference.

Just because it is on the silver screen or on a silver disk doesn't make it good.

I've seen plenty of bad movies and heard lots of bad music.

in the end it comes down to this:
it is a tool that you can use or you don't. just like you get rid of or emphasize frequencies of a track with equalizers or flatten out level inconsistencies with a compressor or create a (fake!) ambience with reverb processors you can use a tool like melodyne to get rid of wrong notes, or even create harmony vocal lines or make a whole new melody.
it won't revolutionize the whole recording process or industry, but it can help you achieve what you want faster.

now you can be george lucas and use every tool available to make a perfect but lifeless movie (as in episode I-III) or be jim jarmusch and take the minimal approach. or you could go somewhere in between and use the tools subtly to tell a great story. (now THAT's an analogy! ;-) )

Actually, it would be great to discuss the actual product itself; esp the direct note access part. (fixing indvidual notes within a mixed, stereo track).

For starters, does it really exist? Is it vaporware? I've seen the same demo over and over again, but haven't seen/heard the product in action. Last time I checked the website, it was "Coming soon". Of course, that was months ago, and perhaps it's finally out there now?

It was very disppointing to see nex to nothing on it at AES, except for one guy showing it on a laptop, sharing a booth with somene else. (He was out on a break when I stopped by.)

I record mostly Acoustic types of music that requires getting it right in FRONT of the mic, and am in the same camp as MadMax on this product overall. That said, I have the occasional client that wants to fix a note here or there, within a track, if there's no other way around it. This happens a lot with live material; sometimes someone just muffs a note in an otherwise great performance, and it makes the difference between keeping or cutting something out.

Right now, in addition to the usual cut/copy/paste repairs, I fix things with Samp/Sequoia's very excellent "Elastic Audio" plug-in, but this makes the change on the entire track and doesn't give the kind of repair option that DNA claims it can do.

The Direct Note Access (DNA) demos sound GREAT, but again, they're just isolated solo guitar playing chords, or something similar. It's so good, it almost COULD be a MIDI track, tarted up. I still haven't heard real-world demo's of it, fixing more complicated things. I suspect that the more complicated/dense mixes just aren't going to work as advertised with this product.

I'd love to be proven wrong...

actually i just got it yesterday and am playing around with it right now.

i've tried an e-piano track and a full mix so far (just installed it 20 minutes ago)

changing notes and chords in the e-piano track works perfect. just like midi.

the full mix took quite a while to load into melodyne. after that i could see many "blobs" (that's what they call the single notes in melodyne) which i could move around. but it doesn't show you all single notes of the song. if different instruments play the same note it will show as one note, so the functionality in a full mix is limited. though i did get some interesting results.

I'm amazed no one has commented or responded to this post in over a year. There's been a revised version of this software out, in a 30 day demo package, and for the most part, it does just what it claims to do. (Of course, it depends on the quality of the recording, the number of instruments in the track itself, and so on. As always, YMMV.)

Another thing to point out is that as of this writing (1/14/2011) it works primarily as a stand-alone product, and NOT a plug-in for most DAWs. I don't know the list of the DAW that it DOES work under, but I Know that Samplitude/Sequoia is not one of them. Perhaps just as well; the best work around is to isolate/render the area you want to work on, save it as a new/separate file, then close out your DAW editor. Then open Melodyne Editor/DNA and open the file. Tweak and adjust to your heart's content, save the new file, and re-open it in your DAW.

For $349.00 USD, its a product that you may find you can't live without. (You even can use it for Otto-tooning stuff, but I didn't buy it for THAT. ;-)

I've had Melodyne Editor for several months now. (Forgot about this thread.) I use it as a plugin with PT9. I have not found the polyphonic editing to be all that satisfactory, though I admit I have not tried all that much to perfect my technique on it. On an isolated monophonic track I find Melodyne to be useful for tightening up pitch, quick and easy to use, and remarkably transparent. I use it on vocal tracks and horn tracks all the time. On horn tracks it's amazing how much easier it is to mix after a touch of tightening. I also find myself using a much lighter hand in Eq (which is probably a criticism of my ears).

I've tried it in polyphoic mode on vocal tracks with significant drum and guitar bleed. I've experienced so many more obvious artifacts that I have given up trying to use it for this application. My guess is that when there are multiple sources it is not as good at identifying which overtones go with which notes and that adjusting the pitch with a part of the note leaves artifacts. It's a deep program and I'm sure there are lots of tricks I have not tried, but I've put it aside for now.

JoeH, post: 361408 wrote: ...(You even can use it for Otto-tooning stuff, but I didn't buy it for THAT. ;-)

Some of us ave less pride and less talent! And it's MUCH better sounding than Otto.

Who needs instruments..LOL...

Write a little birthday greeting to Celemony (FB, etc.) for the 10th aniversary of Melodyne and win a special aniverary melodyne box.
Steve Casey

OK. I haven't gone that far.

I've been using Melodyne Editor for months... it does exactly what it claims. Mind you, those claims do not include being able to function in dense mixes of various instruments, it is explicitly spelled out in their materials that in polyphonic material it is best relied on for that of a single instrument.
That being said, it is really an amazing program. I recently had three-part harmony sung into a single mic. The fellow singing bass hit a few clunkers, I was easily able to go in and fix them.
It's like any other of the many tools we have... so very handy when needed!
Jeff