Extracting instruments with direct note acces?

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I-TalSound
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Extracting instruments with direct note acces?

Post by I-TalSound » Thu Jul 30, 2009 12:46 pm

What a great board! Thanks a lot for all the input!


Found this software called melodyne editor including "direct note acces".
Watch it: http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=dna&L=0

Just wondering if I could use this tool for converting dubplates into a kind of multitrack records.

What do you think?

Greetings,
Julian

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interruptor
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Post by interruptor » Thu Jul 30, 2009 1:18 pm

Wow. That video is very impressing..

Obviously this tool is intended to be used on individual vocal or instrumental tracks in an existing multitrack recording. All the examples presented in the video are rather "empty" i.e. a single guitar or keyboard part with chords. So each note is only played by one instrument at a time.

Now, if you feed this program with a complete dubplate you will have a mixture from different instruments which in many cases will have overlapping frequencies. For example a singer may sing the same note as the offbeat piano which is part of the riddim. I really doubt that the software will be able to separate these notes. If it was capable of something like that I am sure they would say that loud and clearly in the video.
Also the snare drum can have a very broad frequency range from the mids to the high frequencies and might therefore interfere with the other instruments and the vocals.

Still, I think the tool will be very valuable for what it is advertised. For example to adapt existing guitar parts from sample libraries to any musical key. Or to clean up instrumental parts with mistakes.

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I-TalSound
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Post by I-TalSound » Thu Jul 30, 2009 3:10 pm

U are right.
I just read the FAQ:

Q: Can I also edit entire songs with Direct Note Access?
A: You can load whatever you like and experiment. Doing so can be interesting and even fun. With complex signals or entire mixes, the note detection can however reach its limits and perhaps not all the notes will be identified correctly. Direct Note Access is designed for the editing of individual instrument tracks in the course of a typical multi-track music production. In this context, the sound quality of the results is outstanding.



Still hope to extract some samples with this Software.
It will be released soon, so I will let you know if it works...

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interruptor
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Post by interruptor » Thu Jul 30, 2009 3:56 pm

Sure. Maybe they will offer a demo version so you can try it out. It will be interesting to hear about your experience with this thing..

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I-TalSound
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Post by I-TalSound » Wed Aug 12, 2009 5:37 pm

Here comes another one in this sector:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJUrkXgEStI

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interruptor
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Post by interruptor » Thu Aug 13, 2009 10:32 pm

The software shown here is Sonic Works - This actually is suited for extracting single tracks from a mix (as opposed to the program above).
But is seems to me that there are a lot of artifacts from the other instruments remaining in the extracted voice/instrument.
The video has a very low audio quality so it's really hard to judge.
You also need to consider the high price. For the same money you could also re-record some dubplates in a multitrack fashion. (Pay the artist again to sing his part on a separate track)

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