CELEMONY MELODYNE 4

Despite being unrivalled, this revolutionary pitch manipulator continues to make waves in version 4

From day one, Celemony’s Melodyne was a game-changer, but over time it’s become not only slicker (the shift from standalone to plugin being the most significant milestone) but also more powerful, most notably with the addition of Direct Note Access (DNA), which enables genuinely effective pitch correction of individual notes within polyphonic sounds (ie, chords and even mixed signals with multiple instruments).

However, maintaining such developmental momentum isn’t easy, and with good pitch correction now incorporated into most DAWs (Melodyne itself via Celemony’s ARA extension in the case of Studio One, Sonar and Tracktion), version 4 has its work cut out when it comes to wowing us again.

First, a recap

Melodyne is a plugin and standalone application designed to adjust the pitch, timing and volume of both monophonic and polyphonic sounds. It comes in four editions (Essential, Assistant, Editor and Studio), with playback and editing (edition dependent) compatibility across all four, facilitating project exchanging. Each edition progressively increases the feature/function list, from single-track monophonic pitch editing (Essential) all the way up to polyphonic editing of pitch, timing, formant and level across multiple tracks (Studio).

Melodyne does its thing by analysing the audio (on first playback for the plugin version) in order to establish its pitch (and underlying key), then presenting the signal as a series of waveforms on a piano roll editor. A range of intuitive tools (depending on which version you’re using) are used to edit the pitch and other properties of the signal, with the snap function keeping pitch and timing aligned to the grid. Those other properties include pitch drift, vibrato, amplitude, and note to note transitions, and all of them are graphically represented, so you can see as well as hear the results of your edits. If the detection process makes any mistakes, both the underlying key signature and individual notes can be corrected with a couple of clicks.

Universal soldier

Melodyne 4 (VST/AU/AAX/RTAS/ARA/Rewire/ standalone) is 32- and 64-bit compatible and updates all four versions of the software. Inevitably, many of the new features apply to the more expensive editions (Studio in particular), but common to all is a new configurable singlewindow interface, better detection of underlying tempo and improved pitch algorithms, including a new ‘Universal’ one. This is designed for linear adjustment of polyphonic material (without DNA), essentially serving as a conventional realtime pitchshifter/timestretcher. It sounds pretty good, and is useful for making moderate adjustments to full mixes or more extreme