I downloaded the Melodyne Editor (30 day free trial), watched many of the videos, read much of the manual, and decided it isn't worth the money.

I've recorded some nice bass and piano, but by the time pitch bends of guitar and sax or extreme vibrato like a rock organ go in, the program makes too many wrong guesses. There are controls for this, but it seems to either make too many wrong guesses or misses too many wanted notes - no matter how gently you nudge the slider. The right notes disappear before the wrong ones do. That means in order to fix the file, way too many hours on a note-by-note basis (both wanted and wrong guesses).

And it will not do drums (verified by a response from Celemony this morning). It cannot tell the difference between a kick drum, snare, or crash cymbal.

I spent a lot of time on it, and I learned a lot. MIDI is better technology.

There are just so many things you can edit with MIDI that you cannot do with audio. I'm going to stay predominantly MIDI.

People may accuse me of being a Luddite, but nothing can be farther from the truth. I've been involved in audio since my first Wollensak tape recorder. I even had one of those giant Teac 4 track machines, splicing blocks, razor blades, splicing tape, tape head cleaner, demagnetizers , and all the other tools that go with that technology.


I've recorded on magnetic tape and computers, and I've done a lot of editing in both analog and digital formats.

Until the recording tools get better, real audio is a dinosaur from the past, and MIDI is the best technology (with some exceptions like human voice).

MIDI gets a bad name however because it is easy. And because it is easy, a lot of people "program" MIDI instead of playing MIDI. Drum grids, step-entering and ignoring the 128 continuous controllers that can be used to play the MIDI instead of click it in. The result is that it is very easy to make bad to mediocre MIDI and that means there is a lot of it out there programmed by people who didn't take the time to learn how to play the instrument.

If I want to listen to somebody else's music, I'll listen to audio (CD, DVD, Vinyl, Tape), but if I want to create music, I will be using MIDI for all things that can be done with MIDI and audio only for those few things that can not be done with MIDI.

And I'll wait for better audio editing tools before I switch back to audio.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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