Polyphony
That’s all very nice, you say, but the ultimate application of the DNA wonder is de-mixing, right?
Celemony claims it never intended this to be the main aim of the application, though it is interesting to try it on full mixes.
Considering that it is possible to delete audio or edit one note without changing the others, the question would be if it is possible to modify the guitar solo in “Stairway to Heaven” or to extract the mythical bass line of “Billie Jean”.
Melodyne can be stunning but also disappointing in this respect, perhaps because this is what we hope to see in the future.
The software is more or less effective depending on the audio material you use, and there is no way to know what the DNA will achieve before actually trying it out.
On Chet Baker’s “Autumn Leaves” it is possible to edit trumpet and bass lines independently even if some artifacts appear in the drum part’s upper frequency range.
Listen to Autumn Leaves
Now, here is the revisited version
It’s the same with Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side”: the intro part, with its light rhythm guitar and famous double-bass playing octaves, is a delight for Melodyne.
You can enjoy yourself changing the melody
Or deleting the higher octave note, keeping only the lower notes of the double-bass
It’s true that, in both examples, small artifacts appear in the guitar’s upper frequency range, but mixed with a fat hip-hop beat, nobody will be able to hear how you did it.
On the other hand, with “Julia” (The Beatles), you won’t be able to separate guitar and vocal parts, so you will be limited to doing some sound design. Actually, as we had already noticed with octaves, the software strains to distinguish notes having almost the same harmonic content.
What’s more, even though Melodyne is now polyphonic, it cannot manage multitimbral audio material: if a sax and a cello play the same note, Melodyne cannot separate the two instruments and will only deliver a single audio segment for both of them.