Back in 2009, Celemony caused quite the stir with the introduction of Melodyne DNA, which amazed the audio community by allowing editors to apply pitch-correction to individual notes within a polyphonic audio file. Their latest announcement sees the company use the underlying technology to provide another ground-breaking product: Tonalic.
Virtual Session Musician
Described as “a musician by your side”, the latest addition to the Celemony line-up brings together a huge collection of musical phrases played by some of the world’s top session players, all of which can be adapted to play in any song, regardless of its chord sequence, tempo or groove. The necessary processing is all carried out by the Melodyne engine, with no use of AI in sight.
Users are provided with a collection of parts (referred to as Tonalics) that are categorised and searchable by the likes of instrument, playing style, genre and so on. When dragged onto a track, the pattern that users have selected will automatically adjust itself to suit the session — it’ll follow a DAW’s chord track and tempo settings, ensuring that all changes are ‘performed’ in exactly the way that the original player would approach the piece.
Celemony say that the Tonalic regions themselves contain neither audio nor MIDI, but instead provide a set of instructions for the Tonalic engine to follow. The approach offers far more intricate results than are possible traditional loop-based libraries and tools, with the advanced engine maintaining the style of the captured players and ensuring that created parts are musically appropriate and in keeping with the style of the song. The company are very confident in the software’s abilities, and say that the results sound so organic that you’d think the material it produces was recorded by the original players themselves.
The Players
Tonalic currently includes performances by over 30 world-class musicians, all captured in top studios around the globe. There are recordings of country legends such as Brent Mason, JT Corenflos and Bryan Sutton; rock and pop specialists like Tim Pierce, Justin Derrico, Kenny Aronoff and Uwe Bossert; soul and R&B greats like Binky Griptite, Nick Movshon, Randy Bowland and Venzella Joy; as well as funk experts like Rob Harris and Paul Turner. Members of leading bands such as Nate Mendel (bass guitarist with the Foo Fighters) and Martin “Ace” Kent (guitarist with Skunk Anansie) also feature prominently. The company say that they will continue to capture and add more Tonalics following the initial launch.
Two Versions
Tonalic comes in two editions (Arranger and Studio) that feature identical content but with slightly different function sets. Both are equipped with the full Tonalic library and control over the tone of the overall performance, but the fully featured Tonalic Studio provides users with the ability to edit individual notes on the Tonalic track — as you might expect, it’s very similar to Melodyne’s editing both in looks and capabilities.
Compatibility
Tonalic is supported on PCs running Windows 10 or above, and Macs running macOS 12 and higher. VST3, AU and AAX plug-in versions are available. ARA support is currently provided for PreSonus Studio One 7 and Fender Studio Pro 8, with other DAWs due to be added in future updates.
Pricing & Availability
Tonalic is available now, with prices as follows:
- Tonalic Arranger: $€14.90 / month or $€149 / year
- Tonalic Studio: $€24.90 / month or $€249 / year
