From what I can see, they both allow you to take a source of music (i.e. an MP3 file), change its key and play the piece at variable speeds while maintaining pitch. It seems that one difference (I’m still investigating, hence this query) is that Transcribe! allows you to slow down videos as well. The benefit of both is the ability to slow a tune down to learn its rudiments.
Audacity is free, open source, and suits my simple needs (including ‘change pitch without changing tempo’ and ‘change tempo without changing pitch’). I have not used any of the other software you mention, but someone else here may be able to comment on relative merits
It’s not clear to me exactly what you need to accomplish with this software but here’s my view.
The Amazing Slow Downer is one of hundreds of programs that can allow you to change tempo and pitch. I do not use it presently because there are so many other add-ons that do the same job. Similar functions are built into popular media players like Windows Media Player and available as add-ons to Winamp, etc. I use Pacemaker with Winamp. As DrPill says, Audacity works too. I also used Slow Gold from Worls Wide Woodshed for a few years. It came free in another software bundle. If ASD has grown into something more since I used it, then please correct my aging view of things. I do find tempo and pitch shifting functions helpful in learning tunes by ear if the tuning is a bit off or the tempo is just too quick for me to pick up necessary details.
Transcribe is a different beast in my mind. It provides you with pitch recognition. It shows graphically what notes are being played at any particular moment in a recording and weighs each note played by how dominant it is in the mix. That’s really helpful in doing transcriptions (doh!). I’m using a rather old version of Transcribe. It’s grown up a bit since I last updated it but it works just fine for me. Another package with similar features is TwelveKeys. One thing I like about TwelveKeys is that it has a treshold filter for polyphonic recordings which helps to isolate the lead instrument(s) playing the melody.
There is another type of software that can be useful. Band In A Box now has a feature which allows you to import audio and it very accurately maps the chord structure of the piece. It doesn’t help with the melody but if you are writing charts for a group to play it can be a time saver.
Excellent topic and responses. If you have an iPhone or Android you can also use Capo, which, though containing many features strictly for guitar, does a great job, and is stunningly easy to use with MP3’s for changing speed without affecting pitch and vice-versa. Since I’m a MAC user, I use Audacity too because is it is available for just about every common computer platform. It works very well and as previously mentioned, add-ins help with modifying both speed and pitch without affecting the other.
Don’t know anything about the programs you mentioned since they’re not MAC compatible.
I’ve made a note to myself not to type a post here while the wife is vocalizing concerns about cleaning up the stuff all over our property that will blow away when the hurricane hits.
Life in Florida was easier. Hop in the car and get out of Dodge, pray the house will be there when you get back.
Both ASD and Transcribe! are useful for learning tunes.
I’ve been a user of Transcribe! for as long as they’ve been selling it, haven’t found any reason to change to something else.
It meets my requirements of:
Opening most common audio file formats
Ability to independently adjust pitch and speed
Ability to drop markers while the audio is playing
Keyboard shortcuts to move between markers and select between markers
Clean/simple user interface
External device control via MIDI (so I can use my Tranzport control surface) so I can run the app remotely from my practice chair instead of sitting at my computer desk
Ability to export both full files and selection regions with pitch and/or speed adjustments
Transcribe! is also able to slow down/pitch shift videos.
A couple of demo videos I did showing the program in action doing these common tasks:
I’m sure there are other programs that would meet my requirements, but for desktop Mac and Windows systems, Transcribe! does all these things very well. The only feature I wish they would add on the Windows version is direct export of .mp3 files instead of just .wav format, but no big deal, I just export to .wav and then edit/resave to .mp3 in my audio editor.
On my iPhone/iPad I use the mobile version of ASD, also does the job quite nicely.
I appreciate all the comments and suggestions. My interest in such software was simply in slowing down the process (their function) so that I can pick up on proper fingering that sometimes is too fast for these aged eyes and ears to perceive.
I’ll look into the other options mentioned. In the meantime, I found a bunch of them on the Transcribe! site, including some noted in your replies.
There are about sixty or more links noted and I’ve already checked out a couple of them. There are of course similarities but there are differences as well, worth a bit of research. As a newbie my needs are simple and I’ll make a choice based upon your feedback, but its good to know there are options
Good to know that Transcribe works for you. I was, apparently mistakenly, told that the MAC implementation of Transcribe was not very well done. I know ASD is PC only. I may give Transcribe a shot. With CAPO on my iPhone and Audacity on my MAC I’ve been able to muddle through quite well but if there’s a better way…
If this is the wrong place for this post, or if it’s altogether inappropriate, I’m sure it will be moderated accordingly.
I’d like to post a warning!
First I must emphasize that this is absolutely 100% not a criticism of Feadoggie or his post above.
I hadn’t heard of TwelveKeys until he mentioned it, so I checked it out and it looked good. It was also being offered at half-price until the end of August. So, after a bit of thought, I bought it. Perhaps I should have downloaded the trial first, but I was fairly sure I wanted it. After purchasing, I did download. As soon as I had finished, my anti-virus software told me that the download contained a number of trojans and worms. Later it told me the software was trying access password protected files. So I restored my system to before the download, and I think I’ve cleaned things up, but I’m obviously concerned that information may have been gleaned before I restored.
I thought I should mention this in case anyone else is tempted to try it. I’ve contacted the vendor but haven’t had a reply yet.
Clearly this is my come-uppance for wanting to cheat!
It seems that some other users of the same anti-virus software have discovered that it classifies parts of TwelveKeys and other software from nch as viruses or trojans and that this prevents complete download. nch have acknowledged my e-mail but I’m still waiting for further information from them, and from Kaspersky. So I’m not much further forward and still don’t know whom to believe.
Maybe my warning was redundant - I hope so; my assumption was in any case that it was not nch who were responsible (which is why I e-mailed them, to alert them) though I’m not now sure that this was clear from my previous post. If anyone else has had a similar difficulty, I’d appreciate some information about how they resolved it. Thanks.
Edit to include final (I hope) outcome : after corresponding with both Kaspersky and nch, it seems that the Kaspersky Proactive Defence Monitor quarantines things that resemble trojans and that sometimes it subsequently decrees them to be clean. There is something about nch software which triggers this response regularly. This may be resolved at some point, but meanwhile I think I should rephrase my warning:
If you are using Kaspersky anti-virus, you may find that it is over-zealous occasionally. This is much better than being under-zealous, I think, but if you are as neurotic as I am, knowing this may help while you wait for it to update its opinion.
Amazing Slowdowner does work in Mac and has for many years. I currently use Amazing Slowdowner on my Macbook and I also use the iPhone version as well. It changes the pitch and/or speed on the fly and the sound quality of the processed music is excellent.
But I also am curious as to what Transcribe! has to offer that I don’t already have with Amazing Slowdowner. There is no wave-form view in Amazing Slowdowner, but I use Audacity for that kind of work and can’t see why I would want them all in one program. As a practice play-along tool for a musician (which is mostly how I use it), the Amazing Slowdowner seems to have a cleaner GUI without it.
Amazing Slowdowner can save and store any number of loops (with or without up to 99 repetitions) so that makes it easy to practice the “hard parts” of charts over many practice sessions. Amazing Slowdowner doesn’t appear to handle video files directly, that I know of, but video files can very easily be converted to audio files with other programs I have, so . . .
Anyone else have any reasons for going with one or the other? (Transcribe! is still $10 cheaper, I think, so I guess that’s one.) More importantly to me, really: Is there a good reason for buying Transcribe! when I already am using Amazing Slowdowner and Audacity and format conversion programs?
I find the Transcribe waveform display very useful for discerning phrasing and articulation. You can often distinguish clean breaks, and legato vs. staccato by using the display as a visual reinforcement of what you’re hearing, at a level of granularity that might be difficult to perceive by ear alone. The waveform also makes it easy to zero in on a particular bit; for example, when you do a pitch or harmonic analysis. And when you don’t want/need the display, you can easily hide it for a cleaner look.
Yes, you can do all that in a separate audio editor like Audacity. But it’s convenient to have it all together with your basic slowdown functions.
Is there a good reason for buying Transcribe! when I already am using Amazing Slowdowner and Audacity and format conversion programs?
If you’re happy with the suite of tools you have, probably not. But the Transcribe download does give you a 30-day free trial if you want to check it out.
From what I can so-far tell from working with each of them myself:
For practicing with play-alongs: Amazing Slowdowner. (It lets you import a whole gig’s playlist and does everything on the fly.)
For transcribing by ear: Transcribe! (It has a wave form window and does everything on the fly.)
For editing files: Audacity. (It has a wave form window and myriad music file editing features.)
I use Amazing Slowdowner for daily practice with a list of play-along files or a CD. I use Transcribe! for picking out notes by ear from a tune on an audio or video file. I use Audacity for turning a 20-second audio exercise file into a four-minute audio exercise file.
Transcribe!, Amazing Slowdowner, and Audacity will all change the tempo and/or pitch, and loop–and they all work with Youtube video files. But each has features that make them better for different purposes. Transcribe! and Amazing Slowdowner have trial versions, and Audacity is free period. So try them each out at various tasks and you’ll see what I mean.
