I have just seen a video of the most unbelievable music software. It comes from a company called Celemony, and they have developed a way to extract individual notes from an audio performance, which can then be replayed or edited. That's individual notes from a polyphonic recording, which means the notes of a chord progression magically appear, ready to be manipulated in any way shape or form. The video demonstration literally took my breath away.
There's an interactive demonstration to play with here.
I have spent many moments in the studio over the last fifteen years or so idly chatting with other producers and musicians about how amazing it would be to be able to do this, but of course we always thought it was completely impossible. Unreal.
As one of the reviews puts it, this is pretty much the final frontier for sound editing. But as excited as I am for the possibilities (those chord progressions that we spent countless hours trying to figure out, finally laid out in front of us!), part of me is a little sad that some of the mystery of music is gone. Plus, I expect that a lot of lazy producers will just get lazier, it's just too easy to blatantly rip off other peoples music, literally note for note (and transcending the audio sampling of music). Listening to music and then trying to play something similar is a part of how music, or musical genres, evolve. Being able to peek under the hood and instantly see the notes that make up any composition would be too tempting to resist.
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