The wait is over – and rumors that Melodyne’s bleeding-edge technologies to allow direct access to notes in polyphonic audio had failed to come to fruition turn out to be false. (I was skeptical about those rumors in April.) Melodyne DNA did take longer than expected to ship, but then, that isn’t exactly news in the software business. And now you can try this “note access” concept for yourself and see what you think (well, provided you’re an existing customer). Coupled with time-based manipulation of audio in the form of updated tools in Ableton Live 8, Cakewalk SONAR 8.5, Propellerhead Record, Logic Studio 9, and others, with Melodyne handling the pitch, audio today could be more fluid than ever.

Celemony Melodyne
(Note, since you are a bleeding-edge type — the software is also considered compatible with Snow Leopard, though host-by-host certification is still forthcoming.)

What Melodyne’s editor enables:

• Harmonies are accessible, note by note.
• Pitch, position, duration, and loudness and softness can be modified.
• Formant spectra, vibrato, and pitch drift are accessible.
• Pitch, amplitude, and formant transitions between notes can be edited.

Now, all of this is in a plug-in, but that plug-in is more capable than previous versions, with better multi-threading, an adjustable window size (sigh of relief), and the ability to audition and scrub as you edit. That’s not quite as good as having this functionality in your host, but it’s more than good enough to make this usable.

I’m especially interested in what unusual sound design possibilities can be harnessed using this technology – abusing it rather than using it as intended.

Here’s how to get it:
Registered Melodyne customers are able to participate in the beta.
Launch is planned for early November at US$349 / EUR349.

I’m testing a copy now, so if you’re not a Melodyne user, I will get to report back.

More videos:

I was one of the first people outside Native Instruments to lay eyes on Maschine, and immediately I saw something with real potential. Here was a software drum machine that was different: it was a real attempt to fuse some of the advantages of a software interface with some of the working methods of hardware. Software and hardware had really grown up together, instead of the latter simply being fitted to the former. And, of course, it had NI-style effects and UI look-and-feel, for fans of the software house’s style.

But 1.0 releases are a funny thing. As someone who spends a bit of my life developing tools, you always wind up with a choice of delaying the release, implementing something partway, or choosing not to implement it so it can be done properly later. And Maschine 1.0 lacked for me the one thing that was really essential to workflow – proper MIDI input and output support. Without that, I felt it was difficult to even give it a fair test. You’d wind up getting hung up on what was missing.

Well, good news: Maschine 1.1 gets all the little features I feel are essential to making it a viable and valuable part of the production workflow. It’s in public beta now, and I’m giving it a proper test. But here are the current changes in the present build, which includes all of the major items on my must-have list:

KORG has other new product announcements, and I think both are going to be big hits for them.

The SV-1 stage piano falls well into the category of “why didn’t anyone else do this first?” First, it looks beautiful – finally, a keyboard designed for the stage that actually looks good onstage. (I don’t know, maybe manufacturers assume us keyboardists are ugly?) Second, it combines all the sounds many gigging keyboardists need, instead of an odd assortment that covers some bases but not all, or overkill workstation keyboards that do too much and get too complex. Third, it’s finally a hardware keyboard that learns some recent lessons from software – you need to model the characteristics of the real thing, and people expect good amp models, and the like. Fourth, it’s… okay, it’s just really, really pretty, which I expect will change how everyone feels about the whole package.

Updated: Yes, in fairness, Nord has potent competition waiting for the KORG, and available first. I think either the Nord Stage or Nord Combo win handily if organ sounds are important, and both are designed to double as external controllers if you do like software. The Nord also has more bells and whistles for editing and sound control. On the other hand, the KORG will clearly appeal to people who are in it mainly for the electric piano side of the coin. And pretty as the Nord is – as much as they’re both shades of red – I think the KORG is still pretty darned sexy-looking.

In addition to all the specs and such, KORG has the manual online, so you can get into the details.

SV1 Support

Oh, yeah, just one gripe – I always think it’s silly when you put a window in front of the tube. But I won’t knock it; I expect it helps on the sales floor. At least the side that faces the audience looks like a racecar.

It aims to do what for sampling what the insanely-popular microKORG keyboard has done for synths: that is, invade bedrooms and bands everywhere, and inspire a kind of love that other hardware finds elusive. But it also combines the micro-keyboard form factor and mic with everything that has made the KAOSS Pad series popular. It’s kind of a bundle of things about KORG that the masses love. So, perhaps that’s why the microSAMPLER leaked well before its introduction. I’m about the last to cover it, I think, so let’s see if I can get right to the point of what the microSAMPLER looks to be, and what it isn’t.

It’s a sampler for keyboard lovers. As the video notes, the world doesn’t need another sampler with pads. The keyboard is put to good use. It’s velocity-sensitive, though with mini keys to keep it compact. You can map different samples to different keys, slicing up your sample so that different lengths (from a 64th note to two measures). You can give keys different one-shot samples, for drum-style sounds. You can play looped samples. And you can map a single sample across the keyboard.

It’s built for capturing live. The mic has been torture-tested in lousy acoustic environments and onstage in the microKORG. It’s the design of the interface that makes this fun – and potentially worth considering over the software solutions that aim to do the same stuff. “Auto-Next” mode lets you tap in BPM from a source and automatically slice on the fly.

That isn’t an iPhone slot. The microSAMPLER has slots in which you can stick stuff, as noted by engadget. Yes, the photos and videos show iPhones and iPods, but they aren’t a dock, and you can put something more interesting in there – like a Game Boy or a PSP running LGPT. Rich Formidoni, the specialist you see in the video, tells me he’s tempted to use them for pretzels or mints. Heck yes. You can even sample the crunching sound. And I have just two words: aftermarket cupholder. (Coming soon to the CDM Store?)

BIRDY NAM NAM – THE PARACHUTE ENDING from Steve Scott on Vimeo.

This is the music video you’ve always dreamed of getting when your track gets a music video. It’s been round the Web a few months ago, but I only discovered it today via the lovely 8-bit punk Anamanaguchi (see our interview), on their Twitter feed. It’s like what you worked out when bored in grade school Chemistry class with your best friend who planned to become a comic book artist for a career, scrawled in the margins of your notebook. There’s an evil Egyptian alien sarcophagus shooting what appears to be evil sugar cubes from orbit. There’s a crazy space alien superhero who’s all Shriner and Freemason and gets special powers when he replaces his hand with a vegetable squid … thing. And good triumphs over evil, which is what we all root for. It’s the sort of trippy album art we don’t get any more, but animated.

The animation, creative direction, and concept are by Will Sweeney, who under the name Alakazam Label makes fantastic, far-out illustrations, toys, and animations with edible acid-neon colors, and hamburgers for heads, and organic tendrils like pasta or vines or tentacles wrapped through the dreamscapes. You can see more of Sweeney’s work:

http://alakazamlabel.com/

Steve Scott directed the video, did concept design, and did his own compositing, which shows you he knows his stuff. Scott, based in Australia, has his own brilliantly wonderful stuff.

Birdy Nam Nam are a French DJ crew, cool enough to name drop Peter Sellers references in their actual name. They’re proper turntablists in a world in which that has become a rarity, with the prizes to match. Remix did a good write-up of their work in 2006; the best way to keep up with them now is to follow MySpace and, unfortunately for the world’s other continents, to live in Europe.

Justice did the production, in case that wasn’t evident; the marriage works.

And, seriously, special squid vegetable hands?