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 abilities 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 natural sound.

The theory is that this feature, along with the improved weighting of pitch deviations, means that you can get a “musically perfect vocal performance” in no time at all. The volume balance between the pitched and unpitched sounds can be adjusted (on a syllable by syllable level if required), so you’ve effectively got a detailed de-essing tool here as well.

The other major enhancement is the Chord Track, which, when used in conjunction with the Pitch Grid, can be used to make other recordings and samples follow the harmonic structure and chords of your songs. This could be a useful tool not only for songwriters, but also remixers, and no music theory knowledge is required in order to use it.

Melodyne 5 runs in standalone mode as well as with 64-bit DAWs on PC and Mac. DAW integration is via ARA, VST3, AU or AAX.

The update costs $49/€49 for Melodyne assistant, $99/€99 for Melodyne editor and $149/€149 for Melodyne studio. For Melodyne essential owners and users who registered Melodyne after 1 March 2020, it is free of charge.

Prices for new users are €99 for Melodyne 5 essential, €249 for Melodyne 5 assistant, €399 for Melodyne 5 editor and €699 for Melodyne 5 studio.

Find out more and download a 30-day demo on the Celemony Software website.