Major Breakthrough: Music's 'DNA' Decoded

For music producers who use computers -- which is just about all of them -- this constitutes a major game changer whose implications for the future of music are deep and widespread.

For example, Direct Note Access will make it possible to create an entire album's worth of guitar playing with a single chord, because it can re-form it into any other chord. Or, with the single click, a chord can be toggled between modes -- major, minor, dorian, mixolydian and so on -- in addition to transposing between keys. A string quartet can be recorded once, using a single microphone, and then a producer will be able to adapt what they played to another song long after they have left the studio. All of this is made possible by Direct Note Access' ability to separate a chord into individual notes (as depicted by the image above).

We've been fascinated by Neubcker's Direct Note Access technology since hearing about it in April, and have pressed Celemony for more information about how it works. The company responded with a video that depicts Neubcker demonstrating its powers in a clear, understandable way.

Neubcker's work on Direct Note Access began when a Melodyne user in Los Angeles complained that a marimbaphone solo he'd recorded contained a wrong note, but that the instrument had already left the studio, so there was no way to re-record it without incurring significant expense.

By inputting the specific notes he was trying to isolate into the software, Neubcker (pictured to the right) was able to associate each note's harmonics to its fundamental frequency, giving him a way to tease the mixed-together notes in the marimbaphone solo away from each other. Then he pitch-shifted the offending note to where it should be and sent the user back a sound file with the corrected marimbaphone.

The next step was to teach the software how to recognize notes without being told what they were beforehand. This was readily accomplished with the processing power of today's computers, and Celemony's Direct Note Access software started to take shape.