Although the previous incarnations of our future sounds articles have focused solely on physical instruments, today we have a look at something solely software based. It’s caused stirs since first conceptualised in 2000 and is now winning awards for innovation across the board. The concept underlying Melodyne is Local Sound Synthesis. Peter Neubäcker, creator of the program, first thought of the idea philosophically, with the desire to free sound from time. The question was posed symbolically – What does a stone sound like? – relating sound to a stone, which has a form but to which time is not really relevant. From this question came the idea that sound may exist independently of pitch and time. The program it self varies from other audio processors in that it doesn’t work to make audio samples longer or shorter but instead to view the clip as a landscape where different sounds can be found in different time locations. That landscape can be travelled through freely with the pitch of the sound at any location being an arbitrary characteristic of that sound. This manages to isolate what have previously been defined as inseparable aspects of sound: pitch, time, and timbre. It allows users to do what seems intuitively impossible, to manipulate individual notes within chords independently. Check out the video below for a better description of what is going on…
Tags: Audio, Instrument, Synthesis, Technology
