Anybody use Celemony Melodyne?

karate · Post by **karate** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 6:34 am

How well does the audio to midi work? Is it worth it?

Benshik · Post by **Benshik** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 7:21 am

you can download the demo on their site.

before proper pitch shifting capabilities are implemented into Live, thats gud to have. Im waiting for Melodyne Uno to be released, which would be a bit like a simplified version of melodyne... A cheaper one too, I hope

conny · Post by **conny** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 2:24 pm

The audio to midi works quite well but as usual it may be a little unpredictable. I have used it for fun from the demo, recording the midi in Live and then synching the sample used in Melodyne with the same sample in Live.
// C

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 4:34 pm

I've also messed around with the demo a bit, as a 1,000USD price tag is a bit out of the budget right now..

I like the concept of the software, but honestly, the user interface is a bit "glitchier" than the demo makes it appear. I wish that the software was a bit more flexible in terms of letting you drag and drop individual notes around without screwing up the note lengths and positioning. It'd also be nice if it supported polyphonic melodies, but hey, I guess that's a bit of wishful thinking.

spiderprod · Post by **spiderprod** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 4:36 pm

melodyne crash when i use it in live .now i have a computer just for melodyne .

bermudagold · Post by **bermudagold** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 4:51 pm

sorry 4 the long post......but was just having this conversation elsewhere....thought it may be useful......the audio to midi converter for melodyne 1.5 wasn't the best i've tried for monophonic voice,...involved a lot of tweaking and resulted in doing a lot of midi drawing....which is not musical and fun to me.....cant comment on 2.6 as I believe that functionality is disabled in the demo when i tried it.....cant comment on the stability in live as 1.5 didn't have the "melodyne bridge".....

none of the apps translations seem faithful to voice...I've tried
midifier (vst) www.knzaudio.com
widi (standalone) www.widisoft.com
digital ear (standalone) www.digital-ear.com
rephrase (standalone)
akoff (standalone) www.akoff.com
solo explorer (standalone) www.recognisoft.com
melodyne1.5 (standalone)
"sound 2 midi" (standalone)...couldnt get demo to work....

none seem to work very well....and some of them are quite expensive...wrong notes,notes missing, wrong pitch,note length wrong, all vibrato,tremolo and expression lost......the best was solo explorer, follwed by akoff.....but beware the conversions in the app can sound a lot better than the midi file they export...learned that the hard way...so demos that dont allow you to at least export 1 or 2 midi files are worthless.....i think this was the case with "audio to midi" tallstick.com and intelliscore 5.1 www.intelliscore.net .....so dontreally know if they are any good.....anybody try them?....is midi the limitation?....does midi just not have enough parameters and increments to achieve this?....if so bring on open sound control please....tried some more tried "the extractor"....it has the most options for tweaking the source and target to possibly find a translation that is faith ful, you cant tell if it is tracking well because every 10 sec it drops out for 5 sec....demo limitation...makes it hard to evaluate....during the 10 sec i did hear wasn't good for voice ......tried musciendoz...could get latency down low between my interface and live or tracktion,...but not really suitable for real time....in playback mode translation wasn't great for vocals...dont know about guitar...but was highly dependent on synth you routed to...in tweaking the min and max note sliders you can get something potentially useful on some synths for very simple melodies that dont have short notes or varying attacks.....in the end didn't work for my use

maybe somebody here will get good results from one of these....let me know if you find any others

conny · Post by **conny** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 5:25 pm

An the other hand, audio to midi is a very tricky business. For a good translation you would need a software with a lot of parameters and templates to get it right.
I tried some basic audio to midi in Plogue Bidule and it's quite hard if you want something that is both general, flexible and accurate.

// C

rachmanoff · Post by **rachmanoff** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 5:47 pm

....or, you could try the tried and true method of transcription. it's one of the BEST exercises one can do to train the ear and sharpen your musical skills.

give it a whirl!

bermudagold · Post by **bermudagold** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 7:49 pm

lol.....so very true rachmanoff......and i do that now,....but since i'm not a keyboard player, I knew it would be faster to get ideas from my head to track and more expressive to use voice rather than my fingers, aftertouch and a pitch wheel on my controller.........jamming out.....responding to what the vocals and other instruments are doing,...breakdowns, key changes, freestyle variations on the melody.....all without having to sit at the piano transposing note by note whats in my head killin the vibe and the inspiration.....alas it was just a dream...lol

ps conny ...ur right.....it is a very tricky operation using midi.....a pretty sophisticated algorithmn would be needed to get it right unless you code for one specific use only.....maybe under OSC would be easier?....but would that require new hardware controllers, software synths, and hosts?

karate · Post by **karate** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 9:15 am

rachmanoff wrote:....or, you could try the tried and true method of transcription. it's one of the BEST exercises one can do to train the ear and sharpen your musical skills.

give it a whirl!

Rachmanoff, Rachmanoff??? could you let us be honored and hear how such a tune sounds?

rachmanoff · Post by **rachmanoff** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 4:32 pm

are you asking how a transcribed tune sounds? if so.. it should look and sound just like whatever it is you transcribed.

karate · Post by **karate** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 6:50 pm

No of course not, I am asking what a person that can transribe music sounds like on loop based software. YOU...

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 7:17 pm

none of the apps translations seem faithful to voice...I've tried
midifier (vst) www.knzaudio.com
widi (standalone) www.widisoft.com
digital ear (standalone) www.digital-ear.com
rephrase (standalone)
akoff (standalone) www.akoff.com
solo explorer (standalone) www.recognisoft.com
melodyne1.5 (standalone)
"sound 2 midi" (standalone)...couldnt get demo to work....

I've tried a few audio-to-midi VSTs, using them directly in Live. I haven't used the "route out to another VST host then back" method, or the "wrap in energyXT method".

A side note, messing with VSTs in general you get to see that what is needed in many cases is Live permitting VSTs to talk MIDI to one another.

The midifier VST, which writes to a MIDI output file only, tried it in demo mode, which mutes every ten seconds. I tried it with a single violin note pumped into it, and yes it got a single note but seemed more like it was picking up on a harmonic.

I've also tried SuperEel 2.0, which when it worked wasn't too bad, but which didn't work within Live without being routed out through hardware and back in: it was like the hardware induced latency was avoiding a feedback condition, it does not work. Someone using Plogue Bidule might have a better time of this one. Anyway, routed this way it would convert notes in "real time", but with latency, just behind the leading tune, also missing some notes here and there: the overall effect was like a seasick high school marching band

. So this is a candidate for the "route out from another host then back into Live" method. It has a MIDI routing selector on the VST, which makes it easy to choose where it's going. http://sadglad.com

I tried The Extractor, from http://tazman-audio.uk.co. It looks OK, it seems to be relatively well thought out, and has a demo version. The GUI did indicate processing was occurring, but there is not a way to see it in the MIDI input routing selections in Live-- so no actual output could be routed. So it's a candidate for a "route out from another host then back into Live" experiment also.

I'm thinking I'll be trying this some more at some point, routing out to a VST host and then back in, using tobybear's Minihost-- if anyone knows offhand that this will not work, please let me know.

conny · Post by **conny** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:49 pm

Excellent, mikemc.
Hope to hear about your further experiments.
The point of mid routing in/from Live VST's gets clear here. That must be better.
// C

conny · Post by **conny** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:57 pm

And I agree with Rash. about transciption, thats always a good thing to try.
I do at times run a audio clip in live a try to get the notes in to a parallell midi clip by testing and repeating, moving notes in the midi clip. Hard for me! But feels good when you manage it. I did actually transcribe a simple bass line that way and could then have a better sound playing it instead of stick with the sample and tweeking with filters etc.
For me, mostly, the direct audio to midi is for producing raw material from speach or whatever that may go along with the sample but not in itself has to be a musical, harmonic part of a score.

// C

Anybody use Celemony Melodyne?

Anybody use Celemony Melodyne?

some experiments