Cheaper alternative to Melodyne DNA?

[Darwinist]

or sing in tune.

You can use Direct Note Access to do far, far weirder things than just pitch correcting vocalists or create Dragonforce guitar solos(which seem to be the most popular uses for Melodyne)....

Imagine the possibilities for flipping samples if you are a hip-hop producer....you have found a dope bassline, and a dope string melody sample, but they are in keys that don't match....now you can just reach right inside the sample and change the key! Make things fit that didn't fit before....

DNA is in my opinion the greatest leap forward for anyone who works with samples or beat collages since the release of the first MPC...it'll totally change what is possible to do, just like before the MPC and sampling hip-hop was dependent on drum machines and scratching alone.

[anti-banausic]

or sing in tune.

You can use Direct Note Access to do far, far weirder things than just pitch correcting vocalists or create Dragonforce guitar solos(which seem to be the most popular uses for Melodyne)....

Imagine the possibilities for flipping samples if you are a hip-hop producer....you have found a dope bassline, and a dope string melody sample, but they are in keys that don't match....now you can just reach right inside the sample and change the key! Make things fit that didn't fit before....

DNA is in my opinion the greatest leap forward for anyone who works with samples or beat collages since the release of the first MPC...it'll totally change what is possible to do, just like before the MPC and sampling hip-hop was dependent on drum machines and scratching alone.

it is going to be fascinating what it does for the legal aspect of sampling.

[Darwinist]

Indeed it will...my hope is it's going to just blow that particular house of cards right over.

As long as you are actually altering the melodic content of the audio, I don't see it as a copyright infringement anymore...you aren't using someone else's composition as your hook, you are just using it as source material for an original composition.

But yeah, it´ll be fascinating to see what remixers come up with using DNA...

[vicz]

or sing in tune.

I think you confuse DNA with autotune...

Yes, I was - comes of frustration of hearing it on just about every new song on MTV. Don't know about DNA though, at the end of the day isn't it just as easy to copy an individual instrument track by playing it yourself rather than 'surgically extracting it' from an existing mix?

[Darwinist]

or sing in tune.

I think you confuse DNA with autotune...

Yes, I was - comes of frustration of hearing it on just about every new song on MTV. Don't know about DNA though, at the end of the day isn't it just as easy to copy an individual instrument track by playing it yourself rather than 'surgically extracting it' from an existing mix?

Yes, if you:

A) Are a musician capable of playing that particular phrase on that particular instrument or have access to session musicians who can

and

B) have access to the kind of studio equipment used to create the original recording...which can be problematic/prohibitively expensive in the case of the kind of samples used a lot in hip-hop production, which tend to be OLD record made using vintage equipment that costs an arm and a leg today.

With DNA, you can theoratically make Jimi Hendrix play a certain guitar melody in a key that he never played it in before. And he's dead.

Quite a feat IMO.

[vicz]

I think you confuse DNA with autotune...

Yes, I was - comes of frustration of hearing it on just about every new song on MTV. Don't know about DNA though, at the end of the day isn't it just as easy to copy an individual instrument track by playing it yourself rather than 'surgically extracting it' from an existing mix?

Yes, if you:

A) Are a musician capable of playing that particular phrase on that particular instrument or have access to session musicians who can

and

B) have access to the kind of studio equipment used to create the original recording...which can be problematic/prohibitively expensive in the case of the kind of samples used a lot in hip-hop production, which tend to be OLD record made using vintage equipment that costs an arm and a leg today.

With DNA, you can theoratically make Jimi Hendrix play a certain guitar melody in a key that he never played it in before. And he's dead.

Quite a feat IMO.

Agreed, no mean feat. Ah but is it art ... or science ?

[Geezus]

Yes, I was - comes of frustration of hearing it on just about every new song on MTV. Don't know about DNA though, at the end of the day isn't it just as easy to copy an individual instrument track by playing it yourself rather than 'surgically extracting it' from an existing mix?

Yes, if you:

A) Are a musician capable of playing that particular phrase on that particular instrument or have access to session musicians who can

and

B) have access to the kind of studio equipment used to create the original recording...which can be problematic/prohibitively expensive in the case of the kind of samples used a lot in hip-hop production, which tend to be OLD record made using vintage equipment that costs an arm and a leg today.

With DNA, you can theoratically make Jimi Hendrix play a certain guitar melody in a key that he never played it in before. And he's dead.

Quite a feat IMO.

Agreed, no mean feat. Ah but is it art ... or science ?

Science IS art, and art IS science. If you think otherwise you are deluding yourself

[Darwinist]

The creation of the code is based on scientific principles - science put to work is technology.

It´ll be up to the users to create art with it. Most will fail, just like most fail to inspire in their musical endevours, whether they play the cowbell, the harmonica, the electric guitar, the MPC or Ableton Live. But some will succeed, and they´ll do great things with this.

Was it science, not art when guitarists could use excessive sustain and feedback to do the kind of solos that until the amplifier revolution were impossible to play on a guitar?

This is as big for the art of sampling.

[oune]

Same feelings here. I practice sampling since 1995 and this is the best news for a lot time ago.

[vicz]

Yes, if you:

A) Are a musician capable of playing that particular phrase on that particular instrument or have access to session musicians who can

and

B) have access to the kind of studio equipment used to create the original recording...which can be problematic/prohibitively expensive in the case of the kind of samples used a lot in hip-hop production, which tend to be OLD record made using vintage equipment that costs an arm and a leg today.

With DNA, you can theoratically make Jimi Hendrix play a certain guitar melody in a key that he never played it in before. And he's dead.

Quite a feat IMO.

Agreed, no mean feat. Ah but is it art ... or science ?

Science IS art, and art IS science. If you think otherwise you are deluding yourself

Any musicians care to comment?

[SMonk]

The expectations some people seem to put on DNA is almost Obama-esquely inflated. It's a tool. From what i grasped (when it was announced) it's primarily meant to be used on single instrumental (polyphonic) tracks, not mixed-down songs.

[Joshua Lee]

So, ummm, back to the Improvisator Visual Vox polyphonic... This could be incredibly handy, has anyone actually tried it out yet? The 'manual' consists of merely a single HTML page, so it certainly does not appear to be all that hard to use. It also seems to function in the normal way that you would expect a plug-in to do (in my single encounter with Melodyne I seem to remember encountering some problems with the whole 'Melodyne Bridge' thing. My recollection was that it was a somewhat cumbersome implementation...).

Any accounts of first-hand experience would be greatly appreciated!

[Nokatus]

Science IS art, and art IS science. If you think otherwise you are deluding yourself

Any musicians care to comment?

Here goes: at the height of their greatness, art and science both transcend their stereotypical boundaries and become intertwined in a focused, creative whole. Great artists draw strength and inspiration from their experience of the empirical phenomena present in their chosen craft, easily engaging in an experimental dialogue with their work, like usually attributed to scientists; and great scientists surely need abundant creativity and lateral thinking usually attributed to artists.

[Geezus]

Science is the art of discovering, understanding, and applying the principles of nature and reality

Art is the science of creative expression, or more accurately the science of simply creating, through a connection to the Source or the soul. There is also a science to the chosen medium as well, as anyone in music will tell you it is all math. Animation is geometry, physics, and anatomy, among others. Anything done well will display a intrinsic knowledge of the form and function of the medium.

At their purest, there is absolutely no difference between the two. Any distinction made is a false chasm created in the minds of those who wish to distinguish themselves and their chosen focus (whether it be music or biology or economics) from everything else, when in fact it is all the same principles at work only with a different medium. Some people create music, some people create clay sculpture, some people create satellite probes and others create law. There is science and art to all of these, because science and art is the same thing when done well.

[The Landwhale]

Bought the software
Just to test it, I screwed around with the intro to Bjork's "Joga" for a couple minutes, with default settings. I uploaded the resulting soundfile to my SoundCloud and Bandcamp, it's called "JogaIntro_Reworked". Took 10 or 15 minutes to do in VisualVox.

The plugin is definitely buggy at this point, but you can already tell it's an amazing tool.
DNA looks awesome too, I'll have to check out the videos again to see if it can do things Visual Vox can't, but so far, this shit is crazy.