The story
Hi, my name is Sean Trainor and I am a producer/composer from Nashville, Tennessee.
I first had the idea for The Melodyne Orchestra when watching a video of producer Shawn Everett. He talked about a production technique where he used the plug in Melodyne for not only tuning vocals, but as a synthesizer.
With a collection of sounds he made from crashing cymbals onto a metal cabinet, Shawn created a beautiful synthesizer that sounded processed but extremely organic. I remember thinking, wow, I wonder if I could use this same technique but map the sounds to a keyboard so it could be playable. Like a Melodyne Orchestra.
I took three pieces of music I had previously recorded, a string quartet, a solo piano and a solo violin, loaded them into Melodyne and condensed the entire performance to a single note. I then made samples of that note for the range of the keyboard and mapped them in Kontakt. Melodyne creates odd textures that sound both real and artificial.
Layer one on the instrument is the string quartet, layer two is a piano, and layer three is a solo violin. I’ve included a range of presets of fun combinations for you to try out. This is my first go at sampling so I hope this is a useful and fun creative tool for everyone. I can see unlimited possibilities when combining the power of Melodyne and the world of sampling.
Reviews for The Melodyne Orchestra
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Great blending sounds
I remember i used to do a lot of these in my leisure. Melodyne does some really cool stuff to sounds. This was absolutely spot on. A little bit of problems. The nkr file gets lost often. But other than that sound wise, sounds incredible
Awesome, but minor things might turn away some
Initially you will probably get a notification regarding a missing "Untitled.nkr" file named, which seems to be associated with the background used in the GUI. Other than that, I didn't seem to have any other problems. The instrument works just fine without it. It's a little weird though because ultimately you can't see the options offered inside, and the sliders are meant to be knobs, so they work with vertical control instead of horizontal.
The instrument offers an amazing smooth and very textured sound signature that you can't ignore. The first three sliders/knobs are about three layers of sounds. The second is clearly my favourite, but sadly its main character is mainly panned to the left, and that's unfortunate because it makes things a little unbalanced to my ears.
I wish this was a more complete package, it would be an instant favourite!
Atmospheric
Very useful for creating a drone, with its subtle moving parts. But I also like playing a slow piano melody on it.
Lovely background sounds
I have loved popping Melodyne behind many of my little demos. It's really quite a lovely library.
I tend to use the string side more than anything else as it does make a really great sound as a background but it is nice to layer the others in, particularly piano to provide a little more attack.
Not quite there yet, but promising.
If you load this up and get an error, you can safely ignore it move on. Hopefully it gets fixed at some point.
The initial sound is pretty interesting, but I really dislike when a high note just plays an audible loop fast and a lower note just plays it slower.
Upon tweaking the "V" slider it just lowered the volume of the instrument and turning it back up didn't raise anything back up, so I had to reload the instrument (bug?)
The 3 layers I was able to play with sounded pretty good together though, I'd like to revisit this library when it gets sorted out.
