I will admit right up front that I am musically illiterate.
I play several instruments moderately well, but will
break in to a cold sweat if you put me in front of a
written score, preferring instead to learn new tunes
by ear. The problem with this approach, of course, is
that fast or complex tunes can be difficult or impossible
so pick apart. Enter Transcribe! 5.0 which lets you
slow down a tune without changing the pitch.
Transcribe! can open and work with a variety of different
file formats including AIFF/AIFC, WAV and MP3. If your
song is not yet in digital format, Transcribe! can record
it to your hard drive via your sound in port or internal
mike , but only as a bulky AIFF file. iTunes can convert
AIFF files to MP3 so this is a minor issue. Once you
open a tune, Transcribe! presents it in waveform. Select
a portion of the wave (a tricky part of the tune you
are learning for example) and it will automatically
loop. On a fast G3 or G4 you can switch tempo on the
fly all the way down to 1/16th of the original. On my
G3/266 PowerBook there was a slight, but acceptable,
lag when switching back and forth. Sound quality gets
pretty poor below 1/4 speed, but most musicians are
unlikely to need slower speeds. The following are sound
samples exported from Transcribe! Original
clip (88K), half
speed (168K) quarter
speed (332K). The clip, for the record, is "Rip
the Calico" off an Old
Blind Dogs CD.
When you select a portion of the waveform, Transcribe!
will also perform a spectrum analysis and present a
graph of the dominant notes above a keyboard. Clicking
on the keyboard will play the note, shift-click on the
keyboard and Transcribe will pop up a window (pictured
below) identifying the note and where it falls on one
of several predefined fret layouts. You can also define
a custom fret layout, but there is no option to save
multiple custom layouts.
In addition to changing the speed, you can also change
the pitch without altering the speed. Adjustments are
in semitones and hundredths of a semitone. This lets
you compensate for original recordings that were off
pitch (due to weak batteries in a tape recorder for
example) or transpose to your specific instrument.
Conclusions: Transcribe is definitely a niche
product, but for folks learning tunes by ear it is a
godsend. The program is well thought out and sports
a feature set that reflects the fact that is was written
by and for musicians. There is a gentle learning curve,
and the html based help files are well written and will
bring you up to speed quickly. The only other Mac transcription
program I have used is the slower and more expensive
Slow
Tune. It pales in comparison to Transcribe!
Update: Reader Steven Palm hipped us to another
program called "The
Amazing Slow Downer." Although it is less feature
robust than Transcribe! it can work directly with audio
tracks on CD and appears to have better sound quality
on slow playback. Thanks Steven!
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