I’ve been writing for a long time about how I use “Transcribe!” by Seventh String Software to learn tunes, I finally put together a live video demonstration of the program:
High Resolution version on Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/1252232
(Click on the zoom button in the lower right of the video window to view full screen.)
You’ve got great talent for this type of presentation. The software looks great, you should send them the URL to your presentation and give them permission to use it etc etc because this type of software maker deserves all the help we can give them.
You might want to consider possible copyright problems using a commercial recording of a professional musician in your example without written permission to do so.
But, just to be safe I’ve added a citation of the original recording source to the video descriptions on YouTube and Vimeo. I’ll take it down if specifically requested by the copyright owner.
Interesting demonstration that will probably be useful to folks.
FWIW, the same thing can be done with audacity (open source and free), which is what I use, with the following minor limitations: audacity doesn’t have a “50%” tempo change button in the toolbar, and tempo or pitch changes can’t be modified “on the fly”, i.e. as the selection plays - you must change pitch/tempo of a selection first and then press the ‘play’ control. It does have a “preview” button on the tempo and pitch change controls so you can at least see what the result will be. These differences are at most matters of convenience rather than functional differences (and audacity does have tons of other features too). BTW the ‘set marker’ keyboard shortcut for audacity (which calls it ‘set label’) is Control-B, which causes a “label track” to appear - no label track is visible until you set the first label. You can of course save and/or export tracks that have been entirely or partially altered in pitch or tempo, and audacity can be used to export to mp3 or wav.
It almost looks to me as though ‘Transcribe!’ copied audacity’s interface, and added a couple of tweaks - perhaps it’s a case of parallel evolution, or they are both copying some common inspiration/ancestor. I see that ‘Transcribe!’ does offer a 30 day free trial, so perhaps it would be worth doing a side-by-side comparison before committing to spend the money for the non-open-source product.
These abilities have been in audio recording software for quite a few years. They are certainly in Cool Edit, which precedes both these apps. Cool Edit was later bought out by Adobe and re-released as Adobe Audition. But the point is, it’s none of it very new - at least 12 years old.
oh yeah?
well, I have a copy of PsalmScribe.
David actually used it to do some of his Psalms, and my understanding is that he used it to rip off some Egyptian tunes.
It dates from like, 980BC or so..
Nice presentation. I’d like to see how you use the wave-analysis information. I’ve use it a bit, but I haven’t really explored it fully, it’s generally quicker to fiddle about on my concertina to identify notes and chords.
Transcribe also is nice in that it doesn’t alter the original file to change the speed or tuning, like Audacity does. So you can change them as often as you like with no degradation. The speed and tuning changes sound better than Audacity too.
What version of Audacity are you talking about? Audacity doesn’t touch the original file to change speed or tuning either… . The speed and pitch algorithms are very sophisticated now, better as far as I can tell than Transcribe (and way better than the old CoolEdit effects) - and you can change pitch and tempo as many times as you like “without degradation”. Perhaps you have used an outdated audacity version? That would at least explain your comments, above, which do not apply to the version I am using. (v 1.2.4).
The other possibility is that you were repeatedly re-stretching your selections in Audacity, rather than using the ‘undo’ button and choosing a new tempo or pitch change - in which case your problems may have been a case of operator error.
I use Amazing Slow Downer (www.ronimusic.com). I’ve used it for my professional endeavors and recreational explorations as well. It is written (the application) by a very serious musician
I cannot recommend it highly enough and that is mentioned w.all due respect to the torch bearers of the other software.
No arguement here, you can make nearly any audio editor with non-realtime effects and undos to do the sorts of things that Transcribe does in high quality with realtime interaction.
I’ll have to check out the Amazing Slow Downer at some point because I know Kynch wouldn’t recommend it unless it was great. Kynch, can you possibly post a similar screen capture demo of the Amazing Slow Downer like I did? I’m using the free version of “CamStudio” to do the realtime screen+audio capture. It would be great to see both in action to compare and contrast.
Sounds like maybe Audacity is now able to do this non-destructively, that’s great, if the quality is good and the user interface straightforward. If it can’t, having to apply a pitch or time shift function, wait for it to take effect, then play the file just isn’t the same as dragging a slider and treating the timing and pitch as completely elastic properties when learning tunes.
I want to be able to open a file, adjust the tuning quickly, drop markers quickly, select the sections to play quickly, change the speed, and then loop play the sections. I then want to quickly select with a keystroke the next section to play, or be able to quickly extend selections between markers (OK, lets try the A and B sections together now). I also want to be able to quickly export a file with the effects, and perhaps multiple times through a selection region without having to do manual cut/paste of the waveform. Transcribe! does all these things effortlessly.
We haven’t even started talking about the seemless integration of Transcribe! with my Frontier TranzPort control surface using the MIDI message to command mappings so you don’t have to be at your keyboard to run the program and do everything I showed in the demo wirelessly from where I sit to practice rather than being glued in front of a computer desk.
I’ll have to figure out how to do this same thing in Audacity and post a comparison video, because from the responses, it sounds like a a real pain to do the sorts of things I very quickly and effortlessly accomplish using Transcribe!, and I didn’t even start to delve into the more advanced tuning features, realtime pitch analysis, loop marker saving, karaoke features, ability to do the same pitch/timeshifting with videos as well as audio files, live recording, multi-platform compatibility…
My secret hope is that the folks at Seventh String will consider porting Transcribe to the iPod Touch and iPhone after the SDK is released in July and the platform opened for developers. That would be awesome. I’ve already approached them about this idea…
I think if there’s a comparison of Audacity it should be posted by an Audacity user, as you seem to have already formed your opinion.
I don’t find it a “pain” to do any of the things which I find useful.
Basically I think this is an 80/20 issue, or perhaps 90/10… for the majority of people on this list Audacity will do all they need, and the sound quality is excellent. As you point out, this is likely to be true of most other modern audio editing packages.
Of course, both Transcribe and Audacity have rafts of additional features, some perhaps unique to their respective products, but not all of which will be of interest to the majority of the list. I use Audacity for frequency/power spectrum analysis, editing recordings, and other tasks.
If you want to control your software via a remote MIDI controller, definitely, go with Transcribe!. A few people will just not be able to live without realtime control over tempo and pitch - but most people will. Changing pitch on the fly is in fact not that useful once you’ve determined the pitch of the original recording - you just want to do it once per session or per section and leave it at that. Similarly, I don’t find that much value in changing tempo on the fly - it wreaks havoc with the rhythm, so mostly you just want to “explore” to find the optimum tempo setting for learning a particular section. At worst this takes one or two iterations of 3 seconds each with Audacity on my pokey laptop, and the “preview” feature can make it even faster if you choose a shorter preview duration.
Audacity’s labels are as easy to add as Transcribe’s markers, but, once placed, they don’t support navigation/selection keyboard shortcuts so “shift click” is required. A “snap to” feature in the Edit menu makes this pretty quick but you do have to move from keyboard to mouse; this is the sort of thing that would make a nice request for enhancement to the Audacity team (since the software is actively being maintained and enhanced). For that matter, a software developer who wanted the feature could just patch it in. I agree that the marker/label support in Audacity would be worth improving, but it’s functional as-is.
I just tried this with a Seamas Ennis recording of Bonny Kate;
load file: about 4 sec.
play and drop markers: real time (Ctrl-M)
select A part and drop pitch one semitone: 5 sec including preview
slow to 70% and preview: 2 seconds
undo and slow to 80%: 3 seconds
play looped: Shift-spacebar
Of this operation, only a few seconds would have been saved with the addition of realtime pitch and tempo control - a good deal less than the time spent playing the selection and dropping the first two markers.
There are keyboard shortcuts for Play, Pause, Play looped, Play 1 sec.
You can save the Label track for later use if you want, but I never bother.
My point in posting this is not to make any claim for superiority of Audacity, but rather to let readers know that they don’t need to purchase Transcribe or any other software product in order to carry out the basic operations demonstrated in your video. Some folks would not know that these features are fairly common, and so might not realize the degree of software choice available.
Good thing you said “probably”. If you had said “I’m sure”, certain people might take umbrage: “Why are you so “sure” folks will find this useful…?” Blah, blah, blah…
I’d never assert that I know what the needs are of the majority of this list unless I actually polled them. My only assertion I’ve ever made about Transcribe is that it meets my needs and I’ve demonstrated how I use the program. If that is useful for others to the point where they buy and use the product, great. If some other software works better for them, that’s great. Its all just tools. If another software package, free or otherwise, works well for someone else, great, lets hear all about it.
The fact that Audacity is free is just one factor of many in deciding how to setup a practice workflow. I’ve already invested way too much in my music hobby so the cost of Transcribe isn’t really going to make or kill the deal.
I also believe in supporting to those few rare software developers who spend their efforts writing useful software for musicians and selling it at a fair price. What’s your thoughts on that? You can’t get a 45 minute private lesson around here for the cost of a copy of Transcribe.
Getting back to specific features and procedures:
The on the fly pitch shifting is very useful when tuning up an out-of-tune recording to a reference tone. The realtime tuning process I use with Transcribe is:
Start playback
Open the tuning window
Enable the reference tone to the pitch you want to tune against
Drag the tuning semitone and cents sliders as required until the recording playback sounds in-tune with the reference tone.
Turn off the reference tone
Close the tuning window
Would this operation be a realtime or iterative non-realtime process with Audacity?
Perhaps I could do something really quick. I’m not sure about a mic etc. to capture my lovely baritone (i’m not really a bari.).
MHO:
From what I saw from you vid. that I quickly scanned, there is too much mousing about for me..and i’m not a big fan of viewing a region (accept when using a DAW i.e. ProTools/Ableton Live/Logic/ whatever). I want to work fast, not be distracted (which regions do for me). I assoc. regions w/ editing something I’ve recorded. Transcription/figuring out tunes etc., is a different mindset.
ASD works with a Clock. Everything you need to do is key-controllable. Therefore, you have to use the keyboard. 'Tis not a big deal, but in my dream world, I’d have a start-stop operated by a bikini clad Hawaiian Tropic model pressing the start-stop pedal upon my verbal command, OR.. I’d settle for the pedal if the the model was busy.
finally, Some people can’t get their heads around using new software, no matter if it’s better and i;m not saying ASD is!. Kind of like not wanted to give up that Teddy Bear you like. It’s not a bother to me. I’ve chosen the fastest tool for the way my head works. I’ll look into making vid ..
I also use Amazing Slow Downer and can post some screen snapshots for comparison later this evening. It is quite nice, but there are a couple features that don’t exist that do exist in Transcribe (like markers) that would be nice.
My main problem with Audacity (on the Mac at least) is that it is incredibly unstable for me. That may just be my situation, but I’ve always had to use different editors for actual audio editing.
Sounds like a buggy version all right - FWIW I’ve never had mine crash (1.4.2 on Ubuntu Linux).
I like supporting small shops; I like supporting free and open source software (e.g. GPL etc.) even more, except in the most vertical markets (where no freeware tends to exist anyway).
I don’t think Michael is showing bias here, just stating a fact about the two
programs’ intended purposes. I use Audacity a lot, and it’s perfectly good
for editing waveforms, but less good at making temporary changes on the
fly the way programs like Transcribe!, the Amazing Slow Downer, or even
the open source BestPractice are designed to do.
It’s not a bad thing about Audacity, it’s a design choice. Different tools for
different tasks.
