The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    I really detest software that tries to do your thinking for you.

    Like there's this songwriting software that generates melodies or chord sequences for you. WTF is the point??????
    Last edited by henryrobinett; 07-27-2014 at 09:50 AM.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #27

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    I would'nt say Transcribe! thinks for me .. Just helps to analyze and do a few things quicker

  4. #28

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    No, I hear you. But I don't need a software program trying to guess what the chords are called. I'd rather do that myself. They have programs that will tell you the pitch. And pitch correction software will do that. Auto-tune or Melodyne. But you're not going to learn anything that way. I mean you you get the real ear-mental workout by using your ears. Like only knowing how to tune your guitar with an electronic tuner or doing math with a calculator. I use a calculator because my math sucks. But if I wanted to improve my math skills I'd put the calculator away.

    Those writing programs that generate progressions for you- I'm a composer. 90% of my tunes have progressions you couldn't guess. I mean that's half the fun and creativity. Coming up with music is coming up with the harmony and the melody all on my own. That's kind of what makes it my own. I'd rather not share writing credit with a computer programmer.

    End of rant!

  5. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
    Speeding up by increments would be very useful. When working with a metronome, you have to stop playing to raise the tempo. Worse, you (-or at least I) change hand positions doing so....
    There is an app called 'Time Trainer' that does this on my iphone. I think that there are other metronome apps like this one available.

    I love the ASD app, and for my purposes I think it covers everything. I find it simple and friendly to use. The only thing I see listed above that might interest me is the chord identifier. And though I agree that it's best to discover these things yourself, there are times that this is very tough, if even possible.
    Last edited by srlank; 07-27-2014 at 01:52 PM.

  6. #30

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    Quote Originally Posted by Space Pickle
    Transcribe is good, although I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "must-have" or "essential". Your ears are what is essential.
    Goes without saying, IMO.
    It's a little like an astronomer saying a telescope is not essential, but your eyes are.... can't argue with that .

  7. #31

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    Quote Originally Posted by srlank
    There is an app called 'Time Trainer' that does this on my iphone. I think that there are other metronome apps like this one available.

    I love the ASD app, and for my purposes I think it covers everything. I find it simple and friendly to use. The only thing I see listed above that might interest me is the chord identifier. And though I agree that it's best to discover these things yourself, there are times that this is very tough, if even possible.
    ...and the trouble with chord identifiers is they tend to get confused by the very same things that confuse your ears: dense textures, distortion, rogue frequencies and overtones, etc.
    With Transcribe, I very rarely find the chord identifier any use. Its first guess is always the best, the others hardly worth looking at, and maybe 1% of the time it causes me to listen again (is it right, or was I?), but otherwise I can identify the chords fine. When I really need its help it says "spectrum too messy, or out-of-tune notes". Yeah thanks, I know the feeling...
    In fact, there are times when it says that that I can find other clues to give me the answer.

  8. #32

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    Quote Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
    Frank Vignola says he did this with Django records, slowed them down to 16 rpm (revolutions per minute.) Though this would drastically alter the pitch! I remember those "selector switches" on the record players of my youth. The options were 16, 33 (-an album), 45 (a single) and 78. My uncle Tommy had some old 78 rpm records, so I got to hear some of those. I never knew what the 16 was for----does anyone here???
    Some spoken word recordings were at 16.
    The great thing about 16 was it was half (more or less) 33, so - for LPs - you'd get the track in the same key, just an octave lower.

    Not that I had to do that myself (back in the 1960s). My dad had a 2-speed reel-to-reel tape deck, so I could tape records to either slow them (half-speed octave down for lead licks or fingerstyle trickery), or speed them up (octave up to hear the bass, to help ID chords - or for entertaining chipmunk effects of course ). I saved a lot of vinyl that way... and learned stuff from the radio too...

  9. #33

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    Quote Originally Posted by henryrobinett
    No, I hear you. But I don't need a software program trying to guess what the chords are called. I'd rather do that myself. They have programs that will tell you the pitch. And pitch correction software will do that. Auto-tune or Melodyne. But you're not going to learn anything that way. I mean you you get the real ear-mental workout by using your ears. Like only knowing how to tune your guitar with an electronic tuner or doing math with a calculator. I use a calculator because my math sucks. But if I wanted to improve my math skills I'd put the calculator away.

    Those writing programs that generate progressions for you- I'm a composer. 90% of my tunes have progressions you couldn't guess. I mean that's half the fun and creativity. Coming up with music is coming up with the harmony and the melody all on my own. That's kind of what makes it my own. I'd rather not share writing credit with a computer programmer.

    End of rant!

    Agree 100% .... was just saying that a single cheap tool does lots of thing vs. paying for several ones doing less each.

    I would also add I started using Transcribe! while not having a very good ear education for rythms and intervals. I'm not a pro !! but using it to analyze songs went a long way for my own ear education, for instance recognizing rythms I heard and comparing them to piano roll blobs I could see along with markers. I agree that now with a better training I don't use Transcribe! the same way I did several years ago.

  10. #34

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    For years I used ASD but a very old version.. when I tried to upgrade I found I would have to purchase the new version. So I looked at it.. vs Transcribe .. vs Riffstation.

    When I tried both Trans and Riff for the first time I found neither really intuitive but bit the bullet and went with Transcribe.. now that I have it under my belt a bit (couple of months) I still find it less than intuitive. It is cool that you can save your settings for particular songs (but I dont do that). Otherwise it would be nice if it also had a history of last X files opened.

    So bored at work I downloaded riffstation and, now that I know what Transcribe can do, I think I prefer riffstation.
    The isolation works very well.. has a file history.. sound quality is on par with Transcribe if not a little better.
    I wish you could hide thing like The chords etc but I take what I can get.

    What I like about transcribe (I think the only thing now lol) is that when you select a loop you can nudge the start/finish by just draging. In riffstation you have to select the entire section you want to loop every time.

  11. #35

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    Quote Originally Posted by SamBooka
    For years I used ASD but a very old version.. when I tried to upgrade I found I would have to purchase the new version. So I looked at it.. vs Transcribe .. vs Riffstation.

    When I tried both Trans and Riff for the first time I found neither really intuitive but bit the bullet and went with Transcribe.. now that I have it under my belt a bit (couple of months) I still find it less than intuitive. It is cool that you can save your settings for particular songs (but I dont do that). Otherwise it would be nice if it also had a history of last X files opened.

    So bored at work I downloaded riffstation and, now that I know what Transcribe can do, I think I prefer riffstation.
    The isolation works very well.. has a file history.. sound quality is on par with Transcribe if not a little better.
    I wish you could hide thing like The chords etc but I take what I can get.

    What I like about transcribe (I think the only thing now lol) is that when you select a loop you can nudge the start/finish by just draging. In riffstation you have to select the entire section you want to loop every time.
    Transcribe! does offer quick access to of recent Transcribe! saved configuration files, so history is avaliable.

    Very often, I interactively adjust the selection to be very narrow so I can focus on a very small set of notes which I can isolate by ear. This is specially true when trying to transcribe an arrangement for several instruments (I transcribed arrangements up to 8 instruments, piano included).

    I also agree that Transcribe! isn't intuitive. I sent some messages to its author about that.

    And it really takes time and effort to appreciate all things it can do.

    But I'll look at riffStation to see how intuitive it is for sure.

  12. #36

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    some of us old fogies only use transcribe to loop or slow down passages of music to decipher chords and fast single note lines....and given that transcribe meshes almost perfectly with any youtube or other downloaded video, transcribe is a more preferred choice over the Tascam CD VT2 player that I previously used for slowing down CD passages.

    I don't know all that Transcribe does, but considering I can now pick out far more youtube guitar recordings based upon sight, and controlling a videos speed, it's $39 well spent, imho...nuff said.

  13. #37

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    Quote Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
    Frank Vignola says he did this with Django records, slowed them down to 16 rpm (revolutions per minute.) Though this would drastically alter the pitch! I remember those "selector switches" on the record players of my youth. The options were 16, 33 (-an album), 45 (a single) and 78. My uncle Tommy had some old 78 rpm records, so I got to hear some of those. I never knew what the 16 was for----does anyone here??? Sometimes we kids would select 78 for records so that the voices would sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. (I always thought this is how "Alvin" was discovered...)
    A records RPM factor was based upon the technology of the equipment used in a particular audio generation. And if you're real curious about records of today, especially quality 180g recordings, have a listen at an audiophiles home...you may surprise yourself...it's not your dad's record player.

    btw....has anyone ever seen the Chrysler with the turntable in the dash?....they're now worth a small mint. To solve the problem of having to flip 45rpm records, its initial format, every few minutes, they produced 7" records in a new 16 2/3 rpm format that apparently offered up to an hour of playing time a side...the benefit too was a slower speed was less prone to sending the needle amiss...depending up the quality of the road you were on. 1956...it was a very good year, as Lou Rawls would later record.

    for a history on 16rpm, here you go:

    CAPS 2010 APN


    "16 RPM appears to have originated in the 1930s, flourished in the 1950s, declined in the 1960s, and disappeared by the early 1970s as long-playing portable tape (especially cassettes) became more popular"

    A restored DeSoto with the 'record player option' :

    Last edited by 2bornot2bop; 07-31-2014 at 05:41 PM.

  14. #38

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    Made in England.

    It's nice to hear that England is still exporting some quality merchandise.

  15. #39

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    and an interesting "fact" (ok.. just my opinion).. playing an 33 1/3 album at 45 rpm raises the pitch by a fourth

    I used to learn Rush basslines and for fun play them on 45 .. just had to bump it up a string.

  16. #40

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    I can't believe no one else uses Audacity. I use it for transcribing & recording but I've only scratched the surface of its capabilities.

    Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder

    Freeware!

  17. #41

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    So Tom.

    I use ASD/Transcribe/Riffstation (REALLY digging RS btw... when I get back from vacation it will be purchased even though I already paid for Transcribe.. live and learn) .. Anyway.. here is what I do with Riffstation.

    Open an MP3...

    Highlight the section I want to learn..so that it loops over and over

    Slow it down to 50% of it original speed

    If it is a song by SRV for example I knock it up a half a step.

    Isolate the guitar tones from the rest of the track so I hear mostly that specific guitar. (like the second guitar in the Deep Purple Highway Star solo)

    Press a button to invert the filter (so you hear everything BUT the part .. kinda like Karaoke)

    Close the program and come back the next day to find it in my history.


    Audacity IS an amazing program for free .. but I haven't been able to do the things above with it as quickly and easily.
    It is like talking to my brother in law about loop pedal. He says he doesn't need one.. he just mic's his amp.. runs it into Reaper.. trims the track and sets it to loop. OR .. with a looper.. you can just stomp your foot once to record and once to stop. Both work..

    When I was growing up I used to use tapes if I was borrowing from friends or albums if they were mine.. was pretty good at flipping the needle back 15 seconds or so (hard on the needle.. hard on the albums but whatever ) It was a PITA so I really had to train my ear too.

    Well now my ear is still pretty good BUT I have a full time job and two very young kids.. I still want to play guitar but I don't want to spend so much time trying to figure out what Howard Roberts is playing in Relaxin at Camarillo..

    WOW.. that post was too long... accept my apologies.

  18. #42

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    Riffstation sounds pretty cool. There is probably a somewhat higher learning curve with Audacity...and if I didn't have a brother that is a computer geek to show me exactly how to use it, I'd still be using the half-speed function on windows media player...

  19. #43

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    How does this compare to song surgeon which cost $59? Is one better than the other?

  20. #44

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    Quote Originally Posted by Patriots2006
    How does this compare to song surgeon which cost $59? Is one better than the other?
    There has been a older thread about them: https://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/recor...g-surgeon.html

    I never heard of Song Surgeon so far, so I had a look at the corresponding web site.

    Apparently, Song Surgeon is very similar to Transcribe! Difference probably lies in the details, which cannot really be assessed without an exhaustive comparative trial using several different music pieces. It seems that many features which appeared in Song Surgeon 4 were added to better match those available in Transcribe!

    What would really be the most important feature to compare carefully is the sound quality when the song is significantly slowed down say 5x to 20x (not sure Song Surgeon can do 20x, but Transcribe! can and I used it a couple of times to analyze very fast music segments, like 8th note triplets played at 200 bpm). A bit subjective however.

    Another aspect to compare is the UI. specially how does one navigate along the song. They look similar, but I didn't try using Song Surgeon (yet!).

    There are a few features which aren't available in Transcribe! like the ability to attach audio annotations (text only in Transcribe!), and the ability to define a set of successive tempos to be used when looping over a selection.

    On the other hand, there seem to be no MIDI piano roll display and no note recognition in Song Surgeon, which I found useful to analyse music containing many instruments. I found this Transcribe! feature very useful at times (specially the clicking on a piano roll blob to hear the note and identify which instrument plays it). The chord name recognition feature is appealing to some but not necessary to everyone. I never used it.

    Transcribe! is definitely a bit cheaper, and the demo version can be freely used for one elapsed month, while Song Surgeon can be used for four music playing hours.

    Best is to download demo versions and decide by yourself. So far, I've been very satisfied with Transcribe! and I don't perceive the need for me to switch to Song Surgeon, based on what I could read on the web site.
    Last edited by mhch; 08-04-2014 at 04:45 AM.

  21. #45

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    A feature I learnt not so long ago is the loopline which can be shown above the spectrum, which appeared in a recent Transcribe! update

    It shows all the loop sections that have been created along with their names if any. It even allows for creating loops and naming them from the current selection.

    That's super convenient to access and play created loops later on and keep track of the work you have done on music pieces: when I load an audio or a video file into Transcribe!, my first action is to run the file and create all the sections I want (not necessarily all of them at once), for instance each tune in a long fil, or subsequences in a video, or whatever.

    Invaluable to analyse a tune or a video, creating A, B \sections, naming video subsequences, and putting comments or chord names in the text zone

  22. #46

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    I just discovered the arrow key function in Youtube, moves you back or foward a few seconds. Great for learning stuff from songs.

  23. #47

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    Quote Originally Posted by fep
    I just discovered the arrow key function in Youtube, moves you back or foward a few seconds. Great for learning stuff from songs.
    Arrows go back and forward 5 seconds at a time. You can also use J and L to go back and forward in 10 second increments, or period and comma to move forward and backward one frame at a time.

    There are also extensions that let you loop and change speed without changing pitch, like Transpose for Chrome.

  24. #48

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    I do a lot of transcribing from video. Before Transcribe i use VLC player (for windows NOT mac) and enjoyed that workflow. Never enjoyed using VLC with the mac tho cuz the interface and loop functions don't work well for me.

    Enter transcribe. I downloaded the free trial on my Imac. Its so awesome with the big 27 inch monitor. I really love it. That said I never wright down solos. I only memorize. So I'm just enjoying the loop, speed and video functionality. Its pretty awesome and I will be buying it.