How I'm using Melodyne Editor

sharke
After some initial frustration I am totally stoked with this thing and I'm glad I upgraded.  I'm a way better guitar player than I am a keyboard player and to be honest this whole audio to MIDI thing (polyphonic in Editor) has revolutionized my creativity within Sonar. It's not as foolproof as I thought it would be, but as it turns out that's actually a good thing.  What I do is come up with a guitar part, usually fingerpicked. I take care to play it "for Melodyne," i.e. as cleanly and clinically as possible. Straight guitar, no effects or processing at all. Then I let Melodyne's polyphonic algorithm at it. Of course it picks out way more notes than I played (overtones) and misses a couple, but I'm really not worried about that at this stage. I just weed out any of the obviously wrong notes (pulling the curtain down to hide the notes that are obviously overtones etc) and drag it straight across to my MIDI track. I like to start with something like a Native Instruments A-200 or Lounge Lizard to play with the MIDI - it immediately sounds nice.  First thing I do is quantize it and set all velocities to 100 (Melodyne's velocities from a fingerstyle guitar part are going to be all over the place). Then I set about going through the clip on a note by note basis and editing everything by hand. I'll delete some notes, add some notes, tie some, lengthen some. Then when I have the notes down, I'll go back through the clip note by note and work on the velocities to give it some expression. Kind of like how you'd compose a piece in the PRV from scratch, only this time you have a great foundation to work on. I know I could have theoretically composed the whole thing like this in the PRV, but playing it on guitar allowed me to express a level of harmonic and melodic sophistication that I could never have played on keyboard and which would never have come about via the PRV's lack of spontaneity. Using Melodyne like this has enabled me to utilize the best of both worlds....the musical expression I have on guitar and the creative precision I have in the PRV. What I end up with is something that I could never have played on guitar, could never have played on keyboard and could never have come up with in the PRV alone. It's not a time saver, since I'm spending even more time creating and editing parts than I was. But I'm having a lot more fun doing it and I'm way happier with the results than I was when I was just using my keyboard with the PRV. Couldn't recommend it more. 

noynekker
Interesting Sharke . . . so you're creatively using Melodyne Editor as a compositional tool, from a guitarist point of view.
Sounds like you're recording your guitar somewhat robotically, and then injecting some more natural feeling by editing in PRV. (okay, I have oversimplified your method, but that`s what I`m getting from your explanation)
 
I haven`t done the upgrade to Melodyne Editor yet, but  it looks like it does add some new possibilities like you`ve described here.
I`m all over any compositional tools my DAW can provide, so it`s yet another temptation to buy that Melodyne Editor upgrade.
 
QUOTING YOU: ``but playing it on guitar allowed me to express a level of harmonic and melodic sophistication that I could never have played on keyboard and which would never have come about via the PRV's lack of spontaneity``
 
I was originally thinking it`s kind of a clinical way of getting inspiration, but the above quote from you leads me to agree that from a guitar player point of view this could really work, to come up with some great musical ideas. I hope you explore it further, and get back to us how the end result worked out, maybe even post the result in the SONGS forum.