- exactly what does imitone do?
imitone translates sound into MIDI, the "language" of digital music.
As a virtual keyboard, it can control almost any music app or instrument.
Because it is nearly instant, you can sing and feel like you're playing.
imitone also understands humming, whistling and musical instruments.
Optional modes let you control loudness, vibrato and other effects live.


http://imitone.com/

interesting product...

but you can already do this in Real Band. If you hum along with your song and record it in a mono track, you can convert it to MIDI and apply patches to it, all without leaving the RB environment.

You can also export your hummed track to melodyne and make the same conversion there, then import the MIDI back into the project. But, that takes more steps.

If nothing else, this video has made me more interested in spending more time experimenting with RBs audio to MIDI feature.

that's a good idea!

I didn't know that RealBand had an audio to midi feature!

Just tested a single vocal line in RB -- didn't pick up but about 1/10 of the notes. I am sure that if I increased the volume of the vocal line, it might work better.

you need to experiment to find out what RB needs in order to get it right. For example sliding from note to note would probably not yield the same results as staccato notes. Also longer notes would probably stand a better chance of being recognized than shorter notes.

Like any other tool, it comes with a learning curve

does BB it do so in Real Time ? Isn't this the point ?

For recording purposes, "real time" conversion is not a necessary feature. So, for me, it would not be the point of a tool like this. But as a live performer, real time conversion might be a new, cool tool to play around with.

I have come pretty close to pulling the trigger on this -- but I haven't done it yet. I wish I could be confident that I could get it working on my setup!

hmmm... $25 and $60 versions

That's really inexpensive for a midi controller that captures not only the notes, but also the EXPRESSIVE quality of the MIDI! You can piano roll MIDI all day long if you only need pitch and duration... but believable velocity dynamics are really hard to create manually.

a youtube demo

I'm not sure I'd be comfortable on stage looking like this guy as he plays his voice...

But as a studio MIDI input device, it would be useful to me.

Early on with their work, I gave $25 to them thru Kickstarter.
Got a lot of emails with status, but did not follow any further.


Not enough time in my days anymore.

I think it's really, really cool - especially for guys like you Pat, that are looking to add some unique things to their live performance. Get over the appearance thing - it's really cool and novel, not to mention as musical as you are !

from the standpoint of presenting an audience with interesting sights and sounds, this would certainly be one thing that would catch peoples' attention. Most people are interested in seeing or hearing something new.

I may experiment with Melodyne to see if I can do the same thing... not in real time, but just for the sake of recording highly nuanced midi solos with my voice.

looking at the promise dates (It was supposed to be ready for sale in mid 2014) and multiple disclaimers about it being in beta and may still have glitches, I get the impression the programmer has hit a brick wall.

I can see a great benefit for a writer, especially one who gets a melody together inside your head, just hum it, it will record and convert to midi, then with a suitable notation program that can handle midi, all you need is the paper in the printer.
Or at very least read off the screen and play it with your chosen instrument so you know if any changes are required.
Save a lot of time of laborious writing note for note.

I bought the $25 version a few months back...my initial impression (and the developer actually cautions about this) is it is very difficult to control your voice precisely enough to end up with something clean that does not require a great deal of editing. And, if you have to do a lot of editing you might be just as well off playing your tune on a MIDI controller to input it.

I am hopeful that this product will improve and/or I will learn to use it more effectively because it is a really cool concept that would be really great for getting the melodies in my head quickly into MIDI!

a little more info...just ran the software and got this notice

----------
Alpha Test Bulletin
Keep an eye out for the massively improved 0.7.0 update, which debuted at NAMM and will be coming out later this week!
----------

I doubt they would be debuting at NAMM if "the programmer has hit a brick wall"!

regarding note control: I was wondering if it would be helpful to sing through a hardware pitch correction device, and send the corrected audio to the program. That would save the program some overhead of having to pitch correct before it knows where to place the note.

Since that appears to be the major problem... the solution could be fairly simple and avaialble now to anyone who has a voice live or similar hardware for correcting vocal pitch.

Going back to Melodyne...

this wouldn't work for live performances... but for anyone who wants to record midi tracks using their voice as MIDI controller, Melodyne would offer several advantages:

1) it could pitch correct the voice automatically If you are going to send the notes to an instrument patch, most instruments are naturally more perfectly intonated than the human voice. Pitch correcting would increase realism.

2) you could use melodyne like piano roll to experiment and change your track after recording it

3) Melodyne can create all kinds of harmonies from a melody

4) Melodyne also provides other editing tools to fatten up or slim down a note, extend it, shorten it, slide into it, add or subtract vibrato, split it into multiple notes, change key etc etc

well.. that poses the question "what does it mean to hit a brick wall?"

Does it mean "project over? we failed?"
Not in this case. The fact that the kickstarter exceeded its requirements to continue makes it pretty awkward to quit (not that some kickstarter projects that got fully funded haven't bailed on their commitment)

Does it mean "they hit a snag that slowed them down?"
In this case, yes. Reading the early information about the product, they were expecting to be shipping product in the middle of last year. It's still in development.

I think it's great that they are presenting it at NAMM. I also think that the kickstarter response is a pretty good indication of the interest in such a project, and that they are gonna sell the tar out of it. The cost to benefit ratio is better than any other MIDI controller I'm aware of.

It doesn't have to be limited to voice... you could play any instrument into it and turn it into midi. That's huge!

IMITONE AT NAMM

NAMM 2

Also Melodyne has one of the best audio to MIDI converters available today. So if you have Melodyne you really don't need any other software IF you are not doing this live.

So just to be perfectly clear to an admitted borderline midiot - are you guys saying I can sing a part into Melodyne and then replace the resulting midi file with another instrument and it will be as expressive as what he's doing with the cello in the video without me having to do a bunch of midi editing?

Josie

DANG! I knew somebody would ask that!

Truth is, I don't know yet. I haven't had a chance to test it yet (regarding whether the nuance translates to the MIDI in Melodyne)

Everything else I can vouch for, as I have done all those things in the past in Melodyne. HOWEVER...

I know that Melodyne RECOGNIZES volume variance in its blobs, because it provides a way to control it. If it save expressive change as volume CCs, then it wouldn't be as good as Imitone, because all the good synths get their layering cues from VELOCITY.

But if it does recognize and export velocity, then I'd put a lot of faith in Melodyne.

The answer is easy to verify if you have Melodyne and the time to test it.
1) open Melodyne and sing your test melody, making sure there is lots of dynamic change in it.

2) export as MIDI and open it up in RB

3) go to piano roll and set the bottom piano roll window to see the velocity. If the velocity markers are all in a straight line, then it isn't capturing that information. If they are at different heights, then it is.

I'm trying to do my taxes today, but next time I take a break, I'll test this and report back.

OK, I just performed the experiment to determine what Melodyne can do regarding turning a vocal track into believable MIDI.

I recorded a short vocal melody in RB,
Exported it as WAV
opened it in Melodyne
tweaked it a little, (but it might not have been necessary)
saved it as MIDI
reopened it in RB
examined it in the piano roll to see if Melodyne captured the velocity changes. (it DID!) see graphic below:

As you can see the lower pane shows variation on the velocity. I applied a good soft synth that is capable of using the velocity difference to take advantage of different sounds at different velocities. As expected, the synth sounded different based on the velocity.

With a little practice, once you know how to obtain the velocity breakpoints your soft synth requires, you could really blow it out of the water with just your voice as MIDI controller!!

Here's my test. Grabbed a vocal line, saved it as midi in melodyne editor. Brought it into biab, transposed it down 12 semitones (I think) and changed the patch to cello.

The midi file didn't line up at all with the vocal line, though!!! Not sure why, might be user ignorance or maybe I didn't set the tempo correctly -- just a test, though.

I would have to be "more solid" on my vocal line to expect excellent results, I expect.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=551052&songID=13038136

regarding the need for a lot of editing...

In Garritan, the effects section is set up very well for tailoring effects to the instrument. In my example, I added reverb with a long predelay and a long decay, and that was enough to make it sound pretty dang good. However, if I were using it in an actual project, I would definitely tweak the velocity and volumes to make it as realistic as possible.

I'm not sure there is a tweak-free solution out there. The stuff they're doing with Imitone in these videos is surely not the results all the early adopters are getting, or they'd be selling it as a finished product already.

I noticed that my MIDI and audio didn't automatically line up in RB... most likely Melodyne doesn't keep the dead space at the beginning that would have lined it up. But you should be able to use the "NUDGE MIDI" command to line it back up with the audio

all in all, it sounds like it did a pretty good job of making MIDI out of your vocal line! Thanks for sharing the result of your test, Kevin!

That was informative Pat and thanks Kevin for giving it a go! I'll have to try it. I only have Melodyne Essentials not Editor.

Josie

I'm assuming all versions offer the ability to save as MIDI... if all do, I'd bet the MIDI export works the same in both versions. And since I didn't really have to tweak the audio in Melodyne before saving as MIDI, the other differences shouldn't matter.

You can quickly see if your version supports saving as MIDI by using the SAVE AS command, and see what options are available. Hopefully one of them will be MIDI.

Keep us posted Josie! I'm curious to hear what you come up with!

there are different ways to make generic vocal sounds, and I suspect they would all yield slightly different velocity results, because some would be more percussive.

For example, singing BA_BA_BAAAA would introduce an increased velocity at the start of the note... which probably would not be suitable for a cello, but might work fine for a mallet instrument or piano.

Different ways to hum include

MMMMmmmmmm
NNNnnnnnnn
Ahhhhhhh
Ooooooooo

and you could introduce a consonant when you want more velocity

Thoughts to consider for anybody who spends time playing with this

If File --> Save As -- Midi doesn't exist then you can switch to the 30 day free trial of Editor (if you want) by

Hey, all -- Developer here, swooping in to make the conversation awkward.

I just put out a greatly-improved version of my software which is much more accurate and pushes the note onset latency way down. It's the first version which is able to pick up on quick staccatos in the mid-to-low end. The main disadvantage of 0.7.0 is that it sometimes creates brief (< .05 second) notes an octave above or below what you're singing. The fast tracking also means every pitch deviation in your voice is going to come through -- meaning a combination of scale locking and practice is usually necessary to be nailing each note.

Have a listen to this unedited audio recording from an unplanned five-piece jam at NAMM. Chaotic, but a heck of a lot of fun and you can see the software beginning to approach a point where a sense of proficiency can be attained. (Drums are not controlled by imitone.)


Passing audio through a pitch corrector prior to imitone is not especially helpful as imitone performs corrections internally -- though it's true that a high latency pitch corrector such as AutoTune realtime might give you more "stable" results, it would also reduce the responsiveness of my system to the point where you lose the sense of playing the instrument. I plan on implementing this high-latency behavior myself as a "composer mode".

Regarding the comments about velocity I'll speak to my disadvantage here and say that currently imitone transmits no velocity information. So far I've been specializing it for "continuous" instruments with CC11 (expression) and CC1 (modwheel vibrato) articulations, so it feels a lot better when used with EG. strings / brass / woodwinds. I plan on adding a velocity mode this month which should get EG. guitars / pianos / timpani feeling good.


If you guys would like to nominate someone from the forums to try the latest software and report back with their thoughts, I'm happy to provide a free copy. It's not finished, so it won't be perfect, but it's crossing a threshold that I'm very excited about.

I can be contacted at [my first name] @ imitone.com

Wow Evan! How cool is this!

I am really intrigued by the possibilities. It's a wonderful idea and looks and sounds like so much fun too. Thank you for coming on the forum and being so forthcoming. Loved the Namm jam audio.

I'm tempted to nominate myself because I'd really love to try it. I don't want to come off selfish though, so I nominate Kevin.

Josie

Always great to see the developer jumping in!!!!

Ha, ha I am doing FAWM this year (writing/record 14 songs in February) so I am not sure I can adequately do it justice. One question: can you just feed it a vocal wav file? or does it have to be live?

If no one else steps up, I will definitely give it a try at least on a few tunes and report back. I'll like the thought of adding cello or trumpet on some tunes. Maybe I'll even try a string quartet type of thing.

I have a Vista 32-bit PC and a windows 7 64-bit laptop. I use sonar 8.5.3 (32-bit) and BIAB. I have sonar x1 producer, but I never got around to using it too much (I was always trying to just get something done).

Hey how about a thank you for the nomination KEVIN! LOL!

Seriously, try a flute too please.

Josie

Ha, ha -- Oh yes, Thank you, thank you. I have already written two songs for FAWM today (including a one-hour song skirmish) so I am getting burned out and I forgot my manners!! Now I have to go off to two (!) super bowl parties. I don't want to be sociable (away from the fawm forums) during February!

Kevin

bump on this thread-
Has anyone used Imitone with success in RealBand?
I have been trying to use it with Garritan instruments and not getting far.
Imitone is recognised as a midi input device but does not seem to work with Garritan and record much of anything.