Correcting a Take

Two different things can be wrong with a take, and Melody Rack keeps them apart on purpose. In Key corrects notes against the harmony: it is the effect this product is built around, and it is the only thing in the window that has an opinion about pitch. The fix tools on the take bar correct things the detector heard wrong: a breath that came back as a note, one note split in two by a wobble, a tail cut by a consonant. This chapter covers both, and the line between them.

What you'll learn

• The question In Key asks about every note, and why it is not "is this in the scale"
• The three questions a note outside the key has to get past
• All four controls on the In Key strip
• What the roll draws so you can see what was moved, and why
• The hand fixes, and why there is no way to draw a new note
• Pinning: how you say "I meant that one"

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7.1 What In Key actually asks

Every scale-lock plugin knows a scale and snaps anything outside it. In Key asks a different question for every note: how much does this note have to answer to the harmony?

The answer comes from the note's own metric position and its length. A long note on a bar line answers completely, and gets moved to a chord tone. A sixteenth off the beat, stepping between its neighbours, does not answer at all, and is left exactly where you sang it, even at full Strength.

That much governs notes already in the key. A note outside the key has to get past three questions, and each one covers a case the other two cannot.

1. Does the harmony explain it?

A mixolydian seventh under a dominant chord is a chord tone, and chord tones were always left alone. This is what the Chords slot running underneath is for. C E B♭ G in C major keeps its B flat, because the scorer writes C7 over that bar.

2. Does the performance explain it?

This is the question no other tool in the category can ask, and it comes straight out of keeping the pitch curve.

A detector error and a blue note are both "out of key" and look nothing alike in the frames. The note's MIDI number is a rounded average of the pitch you actually produced, so the difference between the two is the rounding residual: near zero for a pitch you aimed at and held, near half a semitone for one your voice sat between and the detector had to call.

So a pitch you sang 4 cents off the note is a note you meant. A pitch you sang 43 cents off it is a guess the detector had to make, and In Key corrects it. The tolerance narrows as Strength rises: at Strength 0 it is half a semitone, at full Strength it is 5 cents.

The same residual breaks the snap's tie. Every flattened degree sits exactly between two scale tones, so a tie that always went upward fired on every blue note there is and resolved it back toward the major-scale note the flattening existed to avoid. Measured from the voice, an E flat sung a shade under goes down to D.

3. Did the person say so?

Moving a note in pitch by hand pins it, and In Key does not get an opinion about a pinned note. Evidence runs out, and when it does the answer belongs to whoever sang it. See §7.5.

With no chords in the context, In Key degrades to scale-lock with questions 2 and 3 still asked. That is the honest fallback, and it is why the strip says scale only until Chords is ahead of it in the chain.

7.2 The In Key controls

Follow the chords opens off, and the flagship behaviour being off by default deserves its reason: with it on, switching the Chords slot on rewrote your melody, pulling notes that were in the key and sung on purpose onto chord tones, and the way back was a small switch on a different strip from the one you had touched. Following the chords is what this product argues for, and an argument is something you are asked to accept.

The strip's head says which key it is reasoning in and how many notes it moved: C major · moved 3 of 14, or C major · moving nothing. Without that, "the dial is at 30%" and "this control is broken" look the same.

7.3 Seeing what was moved

Every note In Key moved is drawn against where you sang it: a dashed rule at the sung pitch, and a riser up to the block.

This exists because In Key moves the block and shifts the pitch curve with it, which is correct (the curve belongs to the note) but meant the roll was showing a note at a pitch nobody sang, drawn identically to one they did, with the sung line running neatly through the middle of it. There was no answer anywhere on screen to "is my take being snapped to this key or not".

Rest on a note and it says which question decided it, with the number you can check:

• In Key · up 1 semitone / into C major · sung 43 cents off, a detector guess
• In Key · kept / outside C major · sung 4 cents off. You meant it.
• In Key · kept / outside C major · chord tone of C7
• In Key · kept / outside C major · passing note
• In Key · kept / outside C major · Strength 85% would move it
• Held / In Key leaves it where you put it.
• 2 semitones down from what you sang / Moved by the rack, not by In Key.

A note in the key, in the chord, left where it was, gets no caption, which is most of a take.

7.4 Fixing what the detector got wrong

Click a note on the roll and a word appears on the right of the take bar: the note's pitch, or a count. Click the word (or right-click the roll) and the list opens.

Cmd+A selects everything, Esc puts it down, and you can drag a range across the roll.

Two rules decide what is in that list, and they are worth knowing because they explain what is missing from it.

Everything there fixes the detector, never the singer

There is no way to add a note. A note nobody sang has no pitch curve, which makes it silent to Expression and flat in the MPE export: the one note in the take that this product's whole argument does not apply to. That is the line between a correction tool and a piano roll, and your DAW already has a piano roll.

Nothing snaps to a grid

Feel is the quantizer, and it is a dial rather than a button, so a note hand-placed on an eighth would be humanised straight back off it the moment you touched that dial. Every move here is relative.

Corrections are written to the take, and the whole rack re-runs from them, so fixing a note the detector heard wrong fixes every part generated from it.

7.5 Pinning, and the keep switch

Moving a note in pitch by hand pins it. In Key does not get an opinion about a pinned note.

This is not a hidden rule so much as the only sensible reading of the gesture. Before it existed, selecting the E in C E G E, pressing the up arrow twice to reach F sharp, and watching the block go from E to G was the control lying about the exact thing the rest of this chapter is about. Moving a note in pitch by hand is the only gesture in the product that states a pitch rather than reporting one, so it is the right one to carry the decision: no new control, discovered by doing it, and it is the escape hatch for the case no reading of the frames can settle. I know it is outside the key. I meant it.

keep is the same state said out loud, for the two cases a nudge cannot reach: holding a note the detector already got right, and letting go of one you have thought better of. The word does not change when it is on; the lit rule under it is the state.

A held note is drawn with a bright edge down its front. It is still transposed, still humanised, still dropped by Chance: only In Key reads the pin.

keep is dead while the rack has no key, and says so, because nothing is moving your notes then and there is nothing to keep them from.

Chapter 8 is every slot in the rack, In Key included, as a reference.