It's not really impossible in theory, or possible in practice. Or something.
They just changed the rules a little bit. Since one goes into it knowing that the music is being played on even tempered instruments, you've already ruled out a near infinite array of possibilities. It's just the remaining infinite array of possibilities that they have to deal with. So, you see, it's simply a matter of reducing the problem to its simplest form.
Seriously, though, if given a very complex piece of music played on oddly tempered instruments instead of a traditional piece of music played on even tempered instruments, this software would croak (unless they specifically trained it to deal with those tunings, and even then if the music is particularly complex/dense, there would be artifacts). But, since it knows the basic rules by which the music is playing, and traditional harmony is not very dense--stacked thirds are pretty wide open--it can mostly pick out the bits it needs. If you look at a spectrum analysis of a piece of music at a reasonably high resolution and sample rate--a single track with a single instrument, of course--you can quite easily pick out the individual notes. Combine this kind of analysis with the existing auto-tune functionality (up or down sampling a sound without affecting time) and you've got this tool.
I'm not saying it's not cool. It definitely is. But, it's been possible for quite some time to do this manually...the magic is in the automation, and the accuracy of it. (Though I'm betting there will be artifacts in many situations.)
I don't record music much anymore, but I'll probably pick up a copy of this just for fun.
They just changed the rules a little bit. Since one goes into it knowing that the music is being played on even tempered instruments, you've already ruled out a near infinite array of possibilities. It's just the remaining infinite array of possibilities that they have to deal with. So, you see, it's simply a matter of reducing the problem to its simplest form.
Seriously, though, if given a very complex piece of music played on oddly tempered instruments instead of a traditional piece of music played on even tempered instruments, this software would croak (unless they specifically trained it to deal with those tunings, and even then if the music is particularly complex/dense, there would be artifacts). But, since it knows the basic rules by which the music is playing, and traditional harmony is not very dense--stacked thirds are pretty wide open--it can mostly pick out the bits it needs. If you look at a spectrum analysis of a piece of music at a reasonably high resolution and sample rate--a single track with a single instrument, of course--you can quite easily pick out the individual notes. Combine this kind of analysis with the existing auto-tune functionality (up or down sampling a sound without affecting time) and you've got this tool.
I'm not saying it's not cool. It definitely is. But, it's been possible for quite some time to do this manually...the magic is in the automation, and the accuracy of it. (Though I'm betting there will be artifacts in many situations.)
I don't record music much anymore, but I'll probably pick up a copy of this just for fun.