[Dixielandjazz] The Perfect Recording

[Stephen G Barbone]

OK you techies and bandleaders who want absolute perfection in  
recordings. Now you will be able to correct polyphonic sounds via new  
software. Piano chords, guitar/banjo chords having a wrong note? No  
problem, just go inside the chord and correct the wrong one without  
affecting the others.
Cheers,
Steve Barbone


June 22, 2008 - NY TIMES - ANNE EISENBERG
In Search of Perfect Harmony, Through Software

MUSICIANS who want to create note-perfect digital recordings of their  
performances may soon have a powerful tool to help them: a computer  
program designed to correct mistakes in their piano riffs or guitar  
accompaniments as easily as software now fixes the red eyes in digital  
photographs.

The new software is precise enough, for instance, to reach into an  
audio file and change any one of the six notes in a guitar chord  
without changing the sound of the other notes, said Peter Neubäcker,  
inventor of the program and founder of Celemony Software, the Munich  
company that will sell it.

The software, called Direct Note Access, will be released in the fall  
and cost $399.

Software can already perform its share of musical Botox with digital  
recordings, smoothing and correcting performances. If a vocalist  
recording in the studio sings off key, for example, programs from  
Celemony and others can nudge a note up or down digitally to get it on  
pitch.

But that manipulation works only with music that has a single line of  
notes — for instance, a solo vocal performance. The problem of editing  
mistakes within polyphonic music — in which more than one note sounds  
simultaneously, as it does in a fugue, or in songs by a barbershop  
quartet or a rock band — is much trickier.

Software like Direct Note Access that can edit single pitches in  
polyphonic music may become popular, said Brian Majeski of The Music  
Trades, a magazine in Englewood, N.J. Last year, consumers spent $150  
million on software for computer-based recording systems, he said.  
Many of these customers work in professional recording studios, but a  
growing number edit their music on computers at home, as much  
recording activity during the past decade has switched from studios to  
living rooms.

“Recording studios have millions of dollars’ worth of equipment that  
people once rented and used,” he said. “Now you can buy a computer and  
software like this and for a few thousand dollars have more capability  
than the Beatles had when they did their stuff.”

Direct Note Access is designed for music recorded on many tracks, with  
the bass guitar on one track, for instance, and the vocalist on  
another. Pitch corrections can be made for all tracks, one by one.

The software may also have applications for music of the past. “If you  
recorded a piece with a guitar that was out of tune,” Mr. Neubäcker  
said, “you could now go back and fix the tuning on the recording.”

Mr. Neubäcker’s program received a round of appreciative applause when  
it was demonstrated for professionals at a trade show in Frankfurt  
this spring. People outside the world of recorded music, however, may  
not immediately grasp its ingenuity, said Julius O. Smith III, a  
professor of music and associate professor of electrical engineering  
at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford.

“It’s difficult to separate simultaneous sounds in a recording,” he  
said. “Since our brains do this all the time, it can be hard to  
appreciate the magnitude of the task” when it is done by computer.

The difficulty is inherent in the sounds themselves. Notes have a  
basic tone, or fundamental, but they can also have many overtones that  
intermix in polyphonic music.

Mr. Neubäcker’s program is designed to tease out this musical mix of  
simultaneous sound and sort it into separate sonic envelopes that can  
then be manipulated.

Mr. Neubäcker learned his technique of sonic sorting in part by ear,  
in part by algorithms. “I listened carefully,” he said, “and I also  
used spectrum analysis,” graphical displays of the complex blends of  
frequencies in each tone he analyzed.

Professor Smith said that the demonstration of the program he saw on  
the Internet “looked superb, truly groundbreaking.”

John Gibson, an assistant professor of composition at Indiana  
University in Bloomington, has also seen a demonstration on the  
Internet but remains skeptical.

“Sound is complicated,” he said, and devising a program that corrects  
pitches of single notes within polyphonic music is a daunting task.  
“Many people think that this is not possible. I’ll believe it once  
I’ve tried it out myself.”

EVEN if the program works well, its abilities may leave many  
professionals cold, including Adrian Carr, a Grammy-nominated  
recording engineer and composer in Montreal. “More and more in our  
recorded sound, we have an obsession with perfection,” he said. “No  
artist, especially classical, wants to release a recording with a  
wrong note. People edit so much it takes out some of the spontaneity.”

Mark Schubin of Manhattan, too, showed no interest. Mr. Schubin is the  
engineer in charge of live high-definition transmissions to movie  
theaters ofMetropolitan Opera performances; in those transmissions, he  
said, “never, absolutely never” is a singer’s voice corrected by  
software.

“I just wonder how close to perfection is really desirable,” he said.

E-mail: novelties at nytimes.com.