For the upcoming update to its popular Melodyne audio-processing plugin, the German company Celemony has done the impossible: It has developed technology that can analyze polyphonic audio and break it up into individual notes, which can then be pitch-shifted, time-shifted, and otherwise mucked with. What this means is that the audio of anything from a guitar chord to a full symphony orchestra can be twisted into an entirely new piece of music. It’s long been possible to pitch-shift monophonic audio, such as a singer’s voice, or to pitch-shift an entire music track. What has never been possible before—and this is truly revolutionary, in a way that will eventually have a major impact on the music you listen to, whether you ultimately know it or not—is the ability to break apart complex, polyphonic audio into its constituent parts and rebuild it into something else.

To name just one application of this technology (and I’m sure someone will do exactly this): You could take the vocals-only version of the Beatles’ “Because” from Anthology 3 and completely reharmonize it into a new piece of music (even on the fly, with a MIDI keyboard), and it would still sound very much like John Lennon and the Beatles.

Celemony’s (slightly cheesy) promotional video explains everything: