Celemony Melodyne is the studio’s precision vocal editor. Where Auto-Tune became a sound, Melodyne became the invisible tool: it shows a recording as blobs you can drag to change pitch, timing and length, note by note.
History
Celemony was founded in 2000 by Peter Neubäcker and colleagues, and first showed Melodyne at NAMM in 2001. Its Direct Note Access technology, which lets you edit individual notes inside a chord, won a major innovation award in 2009. ARA, developed with PreSonus in 2011, lets it work directly inside DAWs.
The hip hop connection
Melodyne is standard on vocals across modern pop, R&B and rap, but because it’s designed to be unnoticeable, it rarely gets credited. We haven’t found a source tying it to a specific rap record.
Getting it today
Buy the smallest edition you need. Editing chords and polyphonic parts requires editor or studio, and you only pay the difference to upgrade.
Celemony Melodyne videos: demos, history and breakdowns
