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The Cider Press: Music To Your Ears - Transcribe! 5.0 Reviewed

by Don Engstrom

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!

Product: Transcribe! 5.0
Company: Seventh String
Shareware Fee: £28 or $40
Hits: Indispensable tool for learning tunes by ear, changes speed on the fly, lots of well thought out features.
Misses: Can't save custom fret layouts, sound quality suffers at slower speeds.
Rating: (5 possible)
Requirements:
- Power PC or 68020 with Sound Manager 3. G3 recommended.
- OS 7.5 or newer. OS X version planned

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