THIS MONTH IN SOFTWARE

Melodyne 5 promises to give you “musically perfect” vocals and can make any audio fit the chords in your song

Sometimes, you just know that a piece of music software is going to be a gamechanger as soon as you see it, and that was certainly the case when we first clapped eyes on Celemony Software’s Melodyne at the NAMM Show in 2001. Since then, its ability to play with pitch and time have steadily improved, and now we have version 5 of the software to consider.

“Better, faster, more musical” is the tagline here, with some key changes to Melodyne’s “core competence”. Specifically, the software can now detect unpitched sounds in vocal tracks – breaths and other noises, for example – and lets you process them separately for a more