NAMM 2026: Celemony, the company behind Melodyne, has announced the release of a new plugin that puts a world-class session player in your DAW, adapting authentic studio recordings to the harmony, tempo and groove of your track while preserving the feel of the original performance.
Running as a software instrument in your DAW, Tonalic doesn’t rely on loops, MIDI or even AI to work its magic. The plugin employs the sophisticated polyphonic note separation and manipulation technology found in Melodyne to reshape its extensive library of more than 7000 recordings to gel with an existing arrangement using its one-of-a-kind Tonalics engine. It’s a unique concept, a hybrid of virtual instrument and session player that combines the organic feel of authentic performance with the flexibility of DAW-based editing.
Open up Tonalic, and you’ll be presented with a library of musical patterns, or Tonalics, categorized by session player, instrumentation and genre, with a selection of 180 guitars, basses and drumkits on offer. A cast of 30 experienced instrumentalists were called upon to record material for Tonalic’s library, including Foo Fighters bassist Nate Mendel, Evanescence guitarist Troy McLawhorn, and renowned session drummer Kenny Aronoff. The library will continue to expand as time goes on.
Tonalics themselves don’t contain audio or MIDI. They are musical patterns that instruct the Tonalics engine to pick out appropriate material from its bank of recordings that can be adapted to any arrangement. Once selected, Tonalics can be dropped into a timeline that holds a chosen chord sequence, tempo, and groove, and the plugin will intelligently reshape their pitch and timing to create a musically coherent and authentic-sounding result.
Tonalic’s Refine feature (only available in the top-tier Studio Edition) lets you open up each Tonalic and manipulate individual notes and chords within the performance, tweaking amplitude, timing and voicing on a per-note level while Tonalic automatically rejigs the surrounding harmonies to ensure the performance stays in key.
If you’re someone that works with loops and samples but find it hard to bring those elements together in an arrangement that sounds natural and musical, Tonalic opens up a world of possibilities for the creative adaptation of its rich library of source material. Alternatively, if you’re someone that’d like to work with session musicians but doesn’t have the resources to do so, Tonalic looks like it could be the next best thing.
Tonalic runs in all major DAWs, and offers ARA integration in PreSonus Studio One Pro 7 and Fender Studio Pro 8 that allows you to arrange Tonalics on the DAW timeline.
Tonalic is only available via subscription. The Arranger tier is priced at $14.90/month and the Studio tier, which includes effects, independent drum kit and cymbal control and the Refine tool, is priced at $24.90/month. A launch offer is available at $1 for the first month.
Find out more on the Tonalic website.
