essential user manual
Melodyne essential user manual rev 2 This documentation refers to Melodyne essential 1.2. Authors: Uwe G. Hoenig, Stefan Lindlahr, Alex Schmidt Translation: Ewan Whyte Layout: Saskia Kölliker Celemony Software GmbH Valleystr. 25, 81371 München, Germany www.celemony.com Support: support@celemony.com The manual and the software described therein are supplied under formal licence. They may be used and copied only under the conditions of this licensing agreement.
Content Content Installation and Activation.........................................................................6 Melodyne essential Introduction..........................................................11 For those in a hurry: Melodyne essential in 10 minutes..............16 Loading, transferring and saving Transferring audio material to Melodyne essential...................................................
Content Defining the Pitch Grid, Scale and Reference Pitch................................................56 The ‘No Snap’ and ‘Semitone Snap’ grid options Choosing a tonality and scale Use of the [Alt] key for grid-independent movement Selecting a reference tone Selecting and copying audio notes Selecting notes....................................................................................................60 Standard selection techniques Snake Selection Selection using the Note Ruler Copying notes.
Welcome! Many thanks for your interest in Melodyne essential and a warm welcome to the circle of Melodyne users! Melodyne is at home in all the great studios of the world and has for years been appreciated for its intuitive editing possibilities and the high quality of its sound.
Installation and Activation Installation and Activation Installation and Terminology Melodyne is extremely easy to install: just launch the installation program (either from the program CD or the download) and follow the onscreen instructions. The whole installation takes, at most, a few minutes. Before using the program, however, you must register and activate Melodyne.
Installation and Activation bear the name “Melodyne” and all the stand-alone editions “Melodyne singletrack” (to distinguish them from the multi-track ‘Melodyne studio’). The name of the current edition is displayed between the tools and the macros in the user interface. You may need to increase the size of the Melodyne window to see it. The common program code primarily serves to make full compatibility between the Melodyne editions editor, assistant and essential possible.
Installation and Activation Melodyne editor and then activate it – all of which can be done with a few clicks in our Web Shop. Important Information Regarding Activation The first time you launch Melodyne, the Activation Assistant appears. If you purchased your Melodyne from our Web Shop, a single click in the Assistant is all that is required and your Melodyne will be activated and ready to use.
Installation and Activation So our server provides you with two activations that you can share freely between your various computers. This makes it very simple, for example, to switch to a new music computer. Instead of having to worry about whether or not you will be entitled to activate Melodyne on the new computer, you just deactivate the old one, thereby automatically freeing up an activation credit for the new one.
Installation and Activation computer-based activation method affords you the possibility of running Melodyne on two computers at once. One further point: if you are selling Melodyne, you cannot just transfer the license to the iLok account of the purchaser; instead you must contact our support.
Melodyne essential Introduction Melodyne essential Introduction About this manual This manual deals with the actual operation and use of Melodyne essential. You will find information about the installation and activation of the program in a separate document. We know no one likes reading user manuals. It’s far more exciting just to dive in and pick up the essentials as you work.
Melodyne essential Introduction What Melodyne essential is and what it’s for Melodyne essential allows you edit and display different types of audio material – such as vocals, saxophone, flute or even drum loops and percussion – in a highly musical way. What’s special about it is that Melodyne recognizes the musical tones in the audio data and displays them on pitch and time grids.
Melodyne essential Introduction Melodyne has for years enjoyed an outstanding reputation for its editing of lead vocals, since corrections can be made in a musical and intuitive manner and are virtually undetectable by ear. And what works for this most critical of disciplines, works wonders as well with other instruments. Once you’ve worked for a while with Melodyne essential, you’ll realize that aside from the correction of errors there’s a wealth of other valuable applications for you to discover.
Melodyne essential Introduction Rhythmic material in Melodyne essential The willful use of ‘unsuitable’ material or editing of suitable material in ‘inappropriate’ ways can yield a multitude of interesting effects. Melodyne offers you the highest possible sound quality and authenticity for ‘normal’ audio editing, but that’s not to say rewarding results can’t be obtained through the creative misuse of its functions, by transforming radically the sound or structure of the original track.
Melodyne essential Introduction The need for this analysis explains why Melodyne essential cannot operate as a real-time effect like a reverb or an echo: only when the analysis is complete can the tones be displayed and the unique functions of Melodyne used. These, of course, do work in real time: every alteration you make to the audio tones in Melodyne essential can be heard instantly – with no delay.
For those in a hurry: Melodyne essential in 10 minutes For those in a hurry: Melodyne essential in 10 minutes The following section delivers in a nutshell everything you need to know in order to make successful use of Melodyne essential. The rest of the introduction contains more detailed information on each of the points addressed. In this document, where we use the term [Command] key, we mean the key on the Mac described either as the ‘Command Key’ or the ‘Apple Key’: on a PC it is marked [Ctrl].
For those in a hurry: Melodyne essential in 10 minutes delete a few blobs and select ‘Set Replace Ranges to Notes’ from the context menu of the Bar Ruler. Detection and algorithms The audio material must first of all be analyzed by Melodyne essential so that notes within it can be detected and later edited. Melodyne essential can edit monophonic (melodic), and rhythmic/unpitched material. It is Melodyne essential itself that decides, based on its own analysis, what type of material it is.
For those in a hurry: Melodyne essential in 10 minutes Hold down the [Command] key and drag the editing background to move the area displayed (same functionality as the Hand Tool) Use the Mouse Wheel to scroll up and down or else (holding the [Shift] key) left and right Press [Command]+[Alt] and drag in the editing area to zoom the display horizontally and/or vertically (same functionality as the Magnifying Glass) Press [Command]+[Alt] and use the Mouse Wheel to zoom both axes simultaneously Press [Command
For those in a hurry: Melodyne essential in 10 minutes Drag horizontally in the lower part of the Bar Ruler to define the Cycle Zone Double-click in the cycle zone to toggle Cycle Mode on and off To move either of the cycle locators, simply click on it and drag Drag the center of the Cycle Zone to move the entire zone to the left or right If active, the selected Time Grid influences the position of the Cycle Locators Holding the [Alt] key as you drag the Cycle Locators causes the Time Grid to be ignored [S
For those in a hurry: Melodyne essential in 10 minutes tion operates on all the notes. Manual editing is performed using Main Tool on the left in the Toolbox. This tool is context-sensitive, offering different functions when moved over different parts of a blob. For finer adjustment, hold the [Alt] key when changing parameters. You can also open the Toolbox by right-clicking in the editing area.
For those in a hurry: Melodyne essential in 10 minutes Tempo functions Next to the Tempo box, there is a button that opens a tempo dialog. The Tempo box and dialog have the following functions: The Tempo box merely displays the tempo; this cannot be adjusted because the tempo is determined exclusively by the DAW.
Loading, transferring and saving Transferring audio material to Melodyne essential In this tour, you will learn how to transfer audio material to Melodyne essential as well as the fundamentals of its use.
Loading, transferring and saving transfer readiness. You can also interrupt a transfer in progress at any time by clicking the Transfer button. If you wish, you can transfer to Melodyne essential further passages from different parts of the DAW timeline. Clicking the Transfer button during playback by the DAW toggles Melodyne essential’s Enable Transfer function on and off, enabling you to transfer only the passages you wish to edit. In other words, you can punch in and out, as the playback proceeds.
Loading, transferring and saving Related topics Checking and editing the note detection within melodic material Checking and editing the note detection within rhythmic material Working with the Main Tool Managing transferred audio files and assigning missing files 24 Melodyne essential user manual
Loading, transferring and saving Loading and saving audio in Melodyne essential Stand-Alone In this tour, you will learn how to open and save audio files in Melodyne essential Stand-alone and which data formats can be used.
Loading, transferring and saving If you have already saved an edited document, you can revert at any time to the most recently saved version by selecting ‘Revert to Saved’, in this way discarding any changes you have made since the file was last saved. Opening files by drag-and-drop If Melodyne essential Stand-Alone is already open, you can drag an audio file into the empty window Melodyne essential displays when first launched (or that you yourself have created by choosing ‘New’ from the File menu).
Loading, transferring and saving As soon as you release the file, it is analyzed and the notes detected are displayed in the editing area. In this way you can also drag multiple files into the window, positioning them wherever you like, in order, for example, to compose a new sample from multiple takes. The tempo of the document is derived from the first file loaded, though it can naturally be altered at any time.
Loading, transferring and saving Once you have chosen a file format and saved the file for the first time, as you carry on working on the file, this dialog will no longer open. Each time you use the ‘Save’ command, the previous file will be replaced by a new file in the same format. In the ‘Save As ...’ dialog, either the first time you save or at any time subsequently, you can select another format and assign a new name to the file.
Loading, transferring and saving have to be analyzed a second time and you can continue with your editing exactly where you left off last time. The audio file itself has still not been changed since your edits are always implemented by Melodyne essential in real time. If you want to continue your work later you should save the document in MPD format and only save it as an audio file when you are sure you have finished working on it.
Loading, transferring and saving Recording audio in Melodyne essential Stand-Alone In this tour you will learn how to record audio with Melodyne essential StandAlone and what you need to bear in mind when doing so.
Loading, transferring and saving functioned, you can just leave the existing settings. (On the Mac, the internal Core Audio hardware is used by default; on the PC, the ASIO driver of your audio hardware should be selected). In the lower pane, you can select the audio inputs of your audio hardware you wish to use. This parameter is naturally only relevant if your audio hardware actually has multiple inputs.
Loading, transferring and saving If you would rather use a fixed tempo and uniformly spaced gridlines as the basis of your recording, simply set the desired tempo manually prior to recording and/ or activate the metronome. As soon as you do either or both of these things, Melodyne essential Stand-Alone will conclude that you want a uniform tempo.
Loading, transferring and saving You can stop the recording at any time by clicking the Record Enable button a second time and resume by clicking it yet again; it’s a toggle in other words that allows you to punch in and out at will during playback. Clicking the Stop button also ends the recording, stopping the cursor at the same time.
Displaying, navigating and playing back audio Playback, navigation and zooming In this tour, you will learn how to navigate through Melodyne essential’s blobs, play them back, and zoom the display to suit your wishes.
Displaying, navigating and playing back audio Resizing the window To change the size of the window, click and drag the bottom right-hand corner. Controlling playback using the onscreen controls and the keyboard Melodyne essential is integrated into the DAW and remains perfectly in step with it during playback. When you reposition playback cursor in the DAW, this information is conveyed to Melodyne essential, which mirrors the new position. As soon as the DAW starts, Melodyne essential also starts.
Displaying, navigating and playing back audio Click somewhere in the Bar Ruler to move the playback cursor to that point, at the same time stopping the playback. Click and drag in the Bar Ruler to scrub through the audio material. Navigating through the blobs and zooming Select the Scroll Tool (the hand icon next to the Main Tool) or hold down the [Command] key to move the display area by dragging it with the mouse.
Displaying, navigating and playing back audio [Command]+double-click zooms in on one blob, or several (if several are selected). Double-click in the editing background to return to the previous zoom level. Drag the Horizontal or Vertical Scrollers (i.e. the scroll boxes or ‘thumbs’) to move the display. The Horizontal Scroller contains a miniaturized image of the contents as an orientation aid. Drag the ends of the Scroller to zoom the display.
Displaying, navigating and playing back audio Use the Slider in the bottom right corner to make the blobs bigger. This does not alter their volume. Your likely motive will be to obtain a clearer view of material containing a lot of quiet notes.
Displaying, navigating and playing back audio Activating and setting a cycle range In this tour, you will learn how to perform cycling using Melodyne essential. “Cycling” here means playing a selected passage repeatedly (in a ‘loop’). You can only activate Cycle Mode when the DAW is stopped. If the DAW is running, any cycling – like the playback itself – is controlled by it.
Displaying, navigating and playing back audio Drag the right- or left-hand borders of the cycle zone to alter its length. If, as you do so, you hold down the [Alt] key, the Time Grid will be ignored, allowing you to position the start and end points freely. Drag the middle of the cycle zone to move it en bloc to the left or right. If, as you do so, you hold down the [Alt] key, the Time Grid will be ignored. If you [Shift]+click near either of the cycle borders, it will move to the designated position.
Displaying, navigating and playing back audio Select display options In this tour, you will learn about the options Melodyne essential offers you for working with your audio notes. All the following options are to be found in the View menu.
Displaying, navigating and playing back audio Show Pitch Curve If you check the option ‘Show Pitch Curve’, a thin line tracing the exact pitch of the tone at each instant will be superimposed on the corresponding blob. On the left, you can see the ‘naked’ blobs (with none of the View options selected) and to the right, the same blobs with the Pitch Curve.
Displaying, navigating and playing back audio Show Blob Info With the option ‘Show Blob Info’, you can elect to show or hide a variety of display elements designed to facilitate working with individual tones. The most striking of these elements is an additional Pitch Ruler that appears directly in front of any note over which you move the mouse pointer. Within the blob itself, thin red lines mark the drag zones of the context-sensitive tools.
Displaying, navigating and playing back audio Show Intended Notes If you check the option ‘Show Intended Notes’, what Melodyne has identified as the starting point of each note is indicated by a vertical red line and gray frames appear around each blob. These invariably lie directly on the semitone and begin precisely on a gridline.
Displaying, navigating and playing back audio This information is conveyed by the fact that the ruler is shaded more palely throughout the entire length of all such passages.
Checking and editing the note detection Checking and editing the note detection within melodic material In this tour, you will learn how to check the note detection in monophonic material and how to reassign notes. S UMMARY Occasionally the pitch of a note may, on account of its pronounced overtone content, be displayed an octave too high or there may be a note separation too many or too few among the detected tones. You can correct these things very easily.
Checking and editing the note detection Against the editing background, you see in this mode solid (active) and hollow (potential) notes. The active notes are those for which Melodyne essential in the course of the detection has assigned the greatest plausibility. The program proceeds on the assumption that these are the notes that were actually played and can be heard in the material. The hollow potential notes represent alternative notes with the next highest plausibility.
Checking and editing the note detection To correct this error of interpretation, one way is to double-click the potential note at the correct pitch. As a result, the potential note will be activated and the falsely assigned note deactivated. Alternatively you can simply drag the falsely assigned note towards the correct pitch (in this case, obviously, upwards); it is not necessary to drop the note exactly on the correct pitch.
Checking and editing the note detection The Monitoring Synthesizer A considerable aid when checking and correcting note assignments is accessed by clicking the Sine Wave icon, which you will see beneath the Toolbar. This is both a switch and a rotary control. When activated, this causes the sound of a synthesizer to replace the normal sound of each blob.
Checking and editing the note detection Note separation When you place the mouse pointer somewhat above a blob, the arrow turns into the Note Separation Tool. With this you can separate notes or remove separations in exactly the same way as when the Main Tool undergoes the same transformation. Leaving Note Assignment mode To quit Note Assignment Mode simply select one of the other tools. As you leave the mode, based on your changes, the detection will perform a fresh analysis, which could take a moment.
Checking and editing the note detection Checking and editing the note detection within rhythmic material In this tour, you will learn how to check the note detection in rhythmic material and reassign notes. Since in the case of rhythmic material there are no tonal assignments to be performed, it is only the checking and correction of note separations that need concern us.
Checking and editing the note detection The simplest way now of checking the note separations is to select the first of the blobs and step forwards and backwards through them using the [Arrow] keys. If a blob contains two drum strokes, double-click in the upper part of the blob (at the point at which you wish the second stroke to begin) in order to introduce a note separation.
Setting the Time Grid and the Pitch Grid Time Grid selection In this tour, you will learn how to set the time grid in the editing area and work with it. The grid serves to provide a clearer overview of the audio data by displaying in the editing background a meshwork of either seconds or beats. If desired, notes can also be made to snap to the nearest gridline as you drop them, which means they should sound precisely on the beat.
Setting the Time Grid and the Pitch Grid When the grid is active, the calibration markers extend from the top to the bottom of the Bar Ruler. When the Grid is inactive, these shrink to around a quarter the height of the ruler. If you select the option ‘Dynamic’ from the cascading Time Grid menu, the grid will adjust automatically to the current horizontal zoom level: in other words, the further in you zoom, the finer the mesh of the grid.
Setting the Time Grid and the Pitch Grid If, while the Grid is active, this is moved to the second beat, there, too, it will sound slightly after the beat – the offset in the two cases being identical. Even if the Grid is active, you can still adjust the position of a note (or a selection of notes) independently of the grid by holding down the [Alt] key as you move them.
Setting the Time Grid and the Pitch Grid Defining the Pitch Grid, Scale and Reference Pitch SUMMARY In this tour, you will learn how to activate and deactivate the Pitch Grid when moving notes and how you can use a scale as a grid. When a scale is selected and you move notes, these will gravitate only towards tones that belong to that scale.
Setting the Time Grid and the Pitch Grid words, by the same amount. When the Semitone Grid is active, lines appear in the Pitch Ruler between all the notes of the chromatic scale. Regarding the ‘correct’ pitch: Notes often fluctuate slightly in pitch, so their position is based on a mean pitch for the entire note, which is something Melodyne essential has to calculate.
Setting the Time Grid and the Pitch Grid You can, later, switch freely between ‘No Snap’, ‘Semitone Snap’ and ‘Scale Snap’ in the Pitch Grid menu without your scale selection being lost. If you now double-click on a blob (or one of a selection of blobs) with the Pitch Tool, the tone (or tones) they represent will snap to the nearest degree of the scale selected.
Setting the Time Grid and the Pitch Grid you have transferred to Melodyne essential the recording of an instrument tuned slightly lower than normal, Melodyne essential will take note of that fact as it analyzes the material, and you will find waiting for you as an option in the combo box when you open the window a new value for A based upon that analysis. If you now select this value, the entire ruler will move, and the grid will match more closely the tones actually played by the instrument.
Selecting and copying audio notes Selecting notes In this tour, you will learn which techniques you can use to select notes in Melodyne essential prior to editing them.
Selecting and copying audio notes Another way of selecting multiple blobs is to ‘lasso’ them by clicking in the editing background in one corner of the desired selection and then dragging the pointer to the corner diagonally opposite. This is sometimes called ‘rubber-banding’. Snake Selection If you press the [Shift] key, click a note and then move the mouse pointer away, Melodyne essential’s Snake Selection mode is activated. You can now add notes to the selection by ‘painting over’ them with the snake.
Selecting and copying audio notes Selection using the Pitch Ruler Click a note in the Pitch Ruler to select notes of the corresponding pitch. If Cycle Mode is active, the selection only affects such notes if they lie within the cycle range. By [Shift]-clicking other notes in the Pitch Ruler, you can add them to the selection and later remove them by the same means.
Selecting and copying audio notes By using the [Shift] key in the Pitch Ruler, you can remove from the selection a range of notes or individual notes. Here too, if a cycle is active, only notes within the cycle range will be selected.
Selecting and copying audio notes Copying notes In this tour, you will learn how to use Melodyne essential’s command set for the copying and pasting of notes.
Selecting and copying audio notes Move the playback cursor to the destination by clicking/dragging in the Bar Ruler. Select ‘Paste’ from the Edit menu or the context menu. If the Time Grid is active, the note is inserted on the quarter note closest to the playback cursor. If the original note was slightly offset from the nearest quarter note, the same offset will be preserved. The length of the note will remain unchanged.
Selecting and copying audio notes … and then paste, the second note would disappear. The note copied would occupy the same space in time, beginning at the same instant and lasting the same amount of time, but would sound at the same pitch as it did before. Of course, you will be able to drag the new note subsequently to any pitch you like, including that of the note replaced. When replacing notes in this way, the Time Grid settings are of no relevance.
Selecting and copying audio notes the notes will remain unchanged; the existing offset from the quarter note will be retained and the result will look like this: If the Time Grid is not active or is set to Seconds, the beginning of the first pasted note will coincide exactly with the Playback Cursor.
Selecting and copying audio notes If, prior to pasting, multiple adjacent notes are selected, these will be deleted in the same way, and the pasted notes stretched or squeezed to occupy the same time interval as the deleted selection.
Selecting and copying audio notes … the result after pasting will look like this: Related topics Selecting notes Time Grid selection Working with the Main Tool Melodyne essential user manual 69
Editing notes using the Macros and Tools Correcting intonation with the Macro In this tour, you will learn how you can correct out of tune notes or unwanted wavering in pitch quickly and easily with the Correct Pitch macro. SUMMARY The Correct Pitch macro affects only the notes selected – unless none at all are selected, in which case by default it affects them all.
Editing notes using the Macros and Tools The processes involved are no different in principle whether intonation is corrected automatically with the Correct Pitch macro or by hand with the Main Tool. With the lower slider, you can progressively reduce the amount of pitch drift exhibited by the notes in question. By ‘pitch drift’, we mean the kind of slow wavering in pitch that is symptomatic of poor technique. More rapid fluctuations in pitch, such as pitch modulation or vibrato, remain unaffected.
Editing notes using the Macros and Tools manually are not affected by the macro. If you wish the pitch of these also to be affected by the macro, check ‘Include notes already edited manually’. The option is grayed out, of course, as being of no relevance, if no manual editing of intonation has been performed. Exit with ‘OK’ to keep your changes or ‘Cancel’ to discard them.
Editing notes using the Macros and Tools Correcting timing with the Macro In this tour, you will learn how to work with the Quantize Time macro, in order to correct the timing of notes swiftly and easily. SUMMARY The Quantize Time macro affects only the notes selected – unless none at all are selected, in which case by default it affects all notes.
Editing notes using the Macros and Tools frame. As you can see, the beginning of the frame always coincides exactly with a gridline. If you now quantize notes, the starting point of each note will snap to the beginning of its gray frame. This is the fundamental principle of quantization in Melodyne essential. It is important to understand, however, that what is regarded as the ‘starting point’ of a note is not necessarily the exact left-hand extremity of the blob you see on the screen.
Editing notes using the Macros and Tools quantization you have to move the note manually to the preceding or following beat.) By selecting ‘None’, in other words, you are telling the Quantize Time macro to move notes to (or towards) the beats assigned them by Melodyne essential, based on its own analysis of the material. ‘None’ is not the only option, of course, which explains the presence of the radio buttons to its left.
Editing notes using the Macros and Tools then to straighten up the timing within the sequences themselves, you can do that in a second pass, this time using sixteenth notes as the quantization factor. Experiment with the various possibilities; but always, when adjusting the timing of your audio, rely on your ears rather than your eyes. The timing may look correct without being so.
Editing notes using the Macros and Tools Working with the Main Tool In this tour, you will learn how to work with Melodyne essential’s Main Tool. The Main Tool is context-sensitive and therefore exercises different functions depending upon its position with relation to the blob. The two tools next to the Main Tool, the Hand and the Magnifying Glass, serve respectively to scroll and zoom the display and perform no editing functions.
Editing notes using the Macros and Tools While you are dragging a note up or down, you will hear the ‘frozen’ sound of the note at the point where you clicked. If, whilst dragging, you move the mouse to the right or left, you can put other parts of the note under the acoustic microscope. Modifying note lengths In the View menu, check the option ‘Show Blob Info’. Zoom in on a few individual blobs, so that you can study them more closely.
Editing notes using the Macros and Tools In the same way, you can move only the rightmost part of the blob (corresponding to the end of the note). Notice that as you move the beginning or end of a note in this way, the preceding or following note, if adjacent, is either stretched or compressed by the same amount to avoid either the two notes overlapping or white space (silence) appearing between them. This happens whenever a Pitch Transition between the two notes has been detected.
Editing notes using the Macros and Tools Don’t be surprised if the two notes that result move apart in pitch: this is because a new tonal center is calculated for each of the newly created notes, and that may differ from the tonal center they shared when they were one note. In such cases, each therefore moves to a new vertical position based on its newly calculated pitch center. You can move an existing note separation horizontally with the Note Separation Tool.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Plugin Adjusting to Tempo Variations In this tour you’ll learn how to handle tempo variations in your DAW project. Normally Melodyne essential remains perfectly in step with your DAW and the Bar Rulers as well as the Tempo displays of your DAW and Plugin show the same thing.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Plugin If you have simply changed the overall tempo in your DAW and there are no tempo changes within the song itself, select ‘Constant Tempo’. This tells Melodyne essential that the new tempo registered applies to the entire song and that it should adjust its own Bar Ruler accordingly. If you want Melodyne essential to stretch or compress the audio material to reflect the new tempo, check the box below.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Plugin Melodyne is perfectly capable of registering tempo changes and implementing them correctly without any assistance, but it can only do so if they occur within a passage that has been transferred to it. If a variation in tempo occurs between two transferred passages, Melodyne is obviously in the dark.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Plugin type of bar to plug-ins, but, sadly, the plug-in interface at the moment does not provide for this. Melodyne is therefore obliged to learn all the relevant information during the transfer. However, since transfers as a rule do not extend the full length of the song, the Tempo window makes it possible for Melodyne to learn about changes in the tempo or time signature during pure playback – in other words, without any transfer being necessary.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Plugin Managing transferred audio files and assigning missing files SUMMARY In this tour, you will learn what management functions exist for the copied audio segments that Melodyne essential generates during transfer.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Plugin In the central area of the window, you will see a list of all the transferred audio extracts belonging to the instance that is open. Each entry in the list represents an audio file that Melodyne has stored on the hard disk and that it requires for this instance to operate correctly. Above the list, you will see the storage path of the folder in which Melodyne is currently storing these transfer files.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Plugin Exceptions: some DAWs are capable of telling Melodyne where the project folder for the current project is to be found. In these hosts there is no way of selecting a storage path manually; instead, Melodyne will always use the current project folder as a storage location, in this way ensuring that your transfer files remain part of the project and do not get lost.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Plugin In the File Manager, they will be listed in red: If you know in which folder the missing files are to be found, you can use the drop down menu ‘Find file’ in the File Manager. Select the entry ‘Find Missing Files …’. Navigate then in the file selection box to the folder containing the missing files and exit with ‘OK’. The missing files in the folder will then be reassigned.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Plugin The Preferences of Melodyne essential Plugin SUMMARY In this tour, you will learn about Melodyne essential’s Preferences. The Preferences property sheet governs Melodyne essential Plugin’s language, reference tone and update schedule.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Plugin Top frame Language: determines the language of the user interface Reference Pitch: defines the frequency of the reference tone i.e. A This Version: states which version of Melodyne essential is currently installed Check for updates: lets you decide how often the program checks automatically for updates on the web.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Stand-Alone Matching the Time Grid to the audio In this tour, you’ll learn how to manually adjust the Grid.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Stand-Alone When you have finished, the “1” should be perfectly aligned with the beginning of the first drumbeat. Correcting the tempo interpretation Once the “1” is correctly positioned, the ascertained tempo should be checked.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Stand-Alone There you can choose between two ways of defining the tempo. Since in this case, we want to halve the current tempo, we select the entry beginning ‘1/2’ from the list box provided. When we now exit with ‘OK’, we will find that the one-bar loop extends over one bar only in the grid, and that the value in the Tempo box has been halved. Problem solved.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Stand-Alone tempo variations to his or her performance. When you now open the recording in Melodyne essential Stand-Alone, you will see that these tempo variations have been detected and are preserved in the playback. If you watch the Tempo display during playback, you will notice it constantly changing, with the values hovering around 120. Now, however, the tail is wagging the dog.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Stand-Alone The Preferences of Melodyne essential Stand-Alone SUMMA RY In this tour, we will learn about Melodyne essential Stand-Alone’s Preferences. The Preferences property sheet governs Melodyne essential’s language, reference tone, update schedule, recording path and various audio hardware settings. The various settings and their significance The Preferences property sheet in Melodyne essential Stand-Alone comprises two tabs: The first is entitled Settings.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Stand-Alone Check box: allows you to determine whether the original file should be preserved or overwritten by the new one when saving This Version: states which version of Melodyne essential is currently installed Check for updates: lets you decide how often the program checks automatically for updates on the web.
Special functions of Melodyne essential Stand-Alone audio hardware is often very sensitive to dropouts and can even provoke a crash. If you have the feeling this is happening, check this option; as rule, though, it’s rarely needed and can safely be ignored.
