You've heard of Auto-Tune, and I'd bet you even know that it's made by Antares, but if you haven't heard of its competitor Celemony's Melodyne software, it may be time to check it out. At Musikmesse, Celemony announces the upcoming Version 2 of their Melodyne plug-in.

The feature this update centers around is called Direct Note Access. This creates the fresh possibility to detect and edit individual notes within polyphonic audio material.

With Direct Note Access, the usage of Celemony expands its primarily vocal focus. Guitars, synths and other polyphonic instruments can now be edited within chords. With Melodyne's editor display, DNA will explode a chord to provide separation between individual notes within a chord so you can edit pitch, position in time and duration of each note along with vibrato, pitch drift, formant spectrum and volume.

This is a versatile tool that can accomplish anything from subtle correction, to unique techniques, to re-composition. Celemony gives a few examples: correct a wrong note within a piano recording, straighten out mistimed chord strums and especially retuning a string that's drifted a bit off. Hear that guitarists? Next time your engineer asks you to check your tuning, he's probably just slacking.

Celemony's Marketing Director, Anselm Roessler, confirms that last sentence.

“The possibility afforded by Direct Note Access of intervening even in the chords of a recording and changing the individual notes of which they are composed heralds not only a new Melodyne generation but also a whole new era in the treatment of audio We are looking forward to being able to offer these unique editing possibilities soon within Melodyne plugin 2 and also have exciting plans for the integration of Direct Note Access into other Melodyne products.“

As exciting as this software development is, Melodyne doesn't expect to have version 2 out until the Fall of 2008. It's priced at around $399.00, and customers who can't wait that long get a free upgrade if Melodyne is purchased between Musikmesse 2008 and Melodyne plugin 2's release.