Melodyne is a software application for OS X or Windows with which you can edit audio in a more musical way than was ever thought possible. In Melodyne, you work with notes – and not with a meaningless wave form. You don’t just see where the music gets louder or quieter but also where notes begin and end and at what pitch they lie.
You can modify each note and thereby influence directly the intonation, phrasing and dynamics – and do this not only with vocals and monophonic instruments but with polyphonic instruments such as pianos and guitars as well.
Working with Melodyne is like being able to say to a vocalist “sing this note a bit longer” or to a pianist “give slightly less weight to the third in this chord” – hours, weeks, even years after the recording session.
In the editing area, you can see, take hold of and modify the notes in your music. The x-axis represents time and the y-axis pitch – just as in a typical MIDI editor, only in this case you’re working with audio.Here you will find the important global functions and the tools for editing notes.With the intelligent macros for pitch and timing, you can correct your recordings fast and in a musical manner. The real-time controls for pitch, formant and volume can be automated in the DAW.
Notes are displayed in Melodyne in the form of "blobs" - the precise path traced by the pitch is indicated by the wavy line. With Melodyne’s tools, you can edit the blobs directly and modify all important musical parameters. Just grab the blobs and adjust in an intuitive manner their pitch, vibrato, volume, timing and much else besides.
The decisive factor is its understanding of the music.
Melodyne identifies the notes and the relationships between them. It is only as a result of this knowledge that Melodyne’s algorithms are able to “think” and operate in such a musical way. The benefits to you as a musician and producer include the famously superior sound of Melodyne and many other advantages that software lacking this understanding of musical contexts is incapable of offering.