Alpha Choir


Listen to
Alpha Choir

What I would be the most keen to hear from Melodyne would be something a cappella oriented; perhaps in four to six voice harmony and sang at a moderate tempo so one could savor the harmonies and intonational nuance - Jacky Ligon

That message was the input for this piece, a short “
a cappella” composition for four voices at a moderate tempo tuned to a dodecatonic mode of Carlos Alpha.

AlphaChoirLMSO1

This dodecatonic mode is the one obtained playing only natural and sharp notes on my
Carlos Alpha note layout for the Opal Chameleon but this piece was composed with my Halberstadt keyboard.

Watch the scrolling score (at reduced audio quality):


Because I am the only “singer” involved on the recording of this piece I had to take into account my vocal range, even though I knew I could stretch it with
Melodyne.
I started playing with an
Omnisphere’s choir sound. Once satisfied with the composition I started dubbing my voice while listening to the MIDI tracks with headphones.

AlphaChoirArr

As you can see I recorded a few bars at a time trying to memorize notes I had just heard before starting each recording. I did not pay any attention to background noise that I discovered after the fact but with Melodyne I was able to substitute a few “offending “ notes with “clean” ones.
I am not a singer so I noticed I had to remember to breathe between notes because that positively affected intonation!
I recorded everything in one hour (I have to do something like that when there is no one else in the house) trusting Melodyne for fixing mistakes. I then started listening to each recorded track with the corresponding Omnisphere track in the background and started editing with Melodyne set to Carlos Alpha Dodecatonic. Editing pitch, attack time, amplitude and other parameters of single notes took a few days.
The final recording is not perfect but good enough to show Melodyne’s potentials. I chose to mix the Omnisphere’s tracks (low in the mix) with my vocal ones (adding a pinch of reverb) to increase thickness.