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I'm nearing the end of a 30-day free trial of Transcibe! software. I like it but before buying it, I thought I would see what the other options are and also what others think about them.
Amazing Slow Downer is the older product and some use it. I haven't experimented with it at all.
Today I heard that VLC, a free media player, will allow one to slow down videos or audio files without changing pitch. (And speed them up too, if desired.) I don't know if it's as flexible as the other two but since I have VLC installed on an old laptop, I'll tinker with it later. As they say about chicken soup, it couldn't hoit.
I will be using the software on a PC running Windows, not a mobile device. (I don't know whether that makes a difference.)
Just interested in hearing if one of these is hands-down better than the others or whether it's "six of one, half dozen of the other."
Also, if there's another piece of software worth considering (around the same price), I'd be interested in that too.
Thanks!
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06-17-2015 05:59 PM
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Mark, I am on Mac.
It is easy with VLC to slow down or speed up a playback, and it's fine. But I use it for playback only.
I much prefer Transcribe. It is much more powerful and flexible. In addition to changing speed, you can change pitch, save multiple loops, and more. It even has a karaoke option (which is more or less effective) that gets rid (partially) of the vocals track. I don't care too much for that last tool, but it's there, and there was a time or two when it was useful. I bought my license about 10 years ago (I get regular updates), and it's paid for itself may times over.
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I use VLC. Probably doesn't have all the bells and whistles Transcribe has, but it works ok for me.
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Graham, I have VLC and use it but never thought of trying to slow things down with it. (As the old song says, "It never entered my mind.") How do you do it?
Originally Posted by grahambop
Say I have a track from a Herb Ellis book / CD and the track's a little fast for me. I just want to play it slower. I just tried doing that but failed. I'm not looking to make loops (yet) or anything, I just don't know how to make a track play slower in VLC. How does one tell the interface that is what one wants????
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In VLC (at least on Mac, but it must be the same in Windows), look at the menu bar, select "Playback", and in the contextual menu, you have "Playback Speed".
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Maybe mine's a more recent version. Not on my PC at the moment, so from memory I think it's a sort of 'chevron' button, in between the Play (triangle) and Stop (square) buttons? Start play then click the backward chevron and it slows down by a certain amount. Click again and it'll slow down more.
Also look in the Playback menu, and maybe Advanced options. There's quite a lot of extra options in there.
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Also I think I changed the interface on mine. I chose some kind of 'minimal' option. So it only shows a small panel with a few controls. I just found this more convenient.
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Thanks, Richard! Originally Posted by Eddie Lang
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I've been using Transcribe for years and have tried most of the other slowdown & loop options, both commercial and freeware. Transcribe does everything I need and then some. It loads videos quickly (occasionally useful is to have the video flip and turn 180 degrees so it's an approximate view of you looking down at the guitar). Keyboard actions are fully customizable. Pitch change by cents, semitones & octaves; transpose by instrument. Note & chord guessing. Really powerful automation which I haven't touched that, to quote:
Only needed support once & the author was quick in responding.We have a simple method whereby commands for Transcribe! can be placed in a text file and Transcribe! can be told to run those commands. This is pretty technical stuff and most people won't be interested, but it can be useful for certain things. For instance suppose you want to load a sound file, change its speed, and export it. That's simple enough. Now suppose you have a folder with 200 files in and you want to do all of them. With automation, it is possible to put the necessary commands in a text file and then leave it working while you have a cup of tea.
Also, automation makes it possible to control Transcribe! from another application or script or command line : the controlling app can put commands into a Transcribe! script file and then send them to Transcribe! to be carried out.
No hesitation in recommending this great piece of software.
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There was something I didnt like about Transcribe (but I bought it anyway). I actually flip between that and Riffstation depending on the situation..
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I've been using Amazing Slow Downer on my iPhone for a long time. It is really simple to use, saves loops, changes pitch, etc. It's just a few dollars, and since its on my phone it's extremely portable. There is a free version, so you can check out whether or not it suits you.
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Just had a look - what I said above is not quite right. The 'chevron' button is to the left of the horizontal line which shows playback progress (where the slider thing moves along while it plays). Originally Posted by grahambop
Also on mine you can just click on the little box which shows speed (1 x ) and a dropdown appears where you can change the playback speed.
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That's what I'm doing right now. Thanks! Originally Posted by srlank
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I have had it on my phone as well.. the free version used to play the first two minutes of the song and that is it which is fine with me. This is jazz.. nothing interesting happens after the first 2 minutes anyway... Originally Posted by srlank
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I used transcribe for 10+ years, but moved to Song Surgeon. To my ears, when you change to another key, Song Surgeon sounds more accurate. Maybe the latest version of Transcribe has improved it's Key change function.
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transcribe does video so that makes it much better than amazing slowdowner IMO. I haven't used the slowdown feature in VLC and until this thread didn't even know it existed. Originally Posted by SamBooka
I really like transcribe but the user interface is extremely non-intuitive. (make that klunky)
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VLC and Transcribe! are two very different guys
VLC has been designed to be a tool to play music of video, with the possibility to modify playback speed. For sure one can use it to slow down a piece of music.
Transcribe has been designed as a tool to help transcribing, so it does a lot more, spectrum analysis, piano roll, set markers, up to 20x slowdown, availability of a programming language to automate tasks, audio/video splitting, adding text notes along the piece of music or video, etc .. With it I managed to fully transcribe a piece of music containing : 2 singers, piano, flute, bass, choirs, violins. I doubt I could have done that using VLC.
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Sounds cool, but all I want to do is slow down a Sonny Stitt solo for example. VLC does also allow loop playback between 2 marker points, incidentally. Originally Posted by mhch
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No problem Originally Posted by grahambop
Matter of taste and even more of habits.
Personnally I found the Transcribe UI more visual and more appropriate to the kind of work I'm usually doing.
My recommendation would be for anyone interested to try using both and decide after enough experiments, specially since it takes time to perceive all what Transcribe can do.
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I've tried a lot of these programs, but I always come back to Transcribe. The GUI makes it easy to be very precise in creating accurate loops, the support is great and it's pretty open to different formats.
Recently, a friend asked me to look at Song Surgeon. I didn't spend much time with it, but it did have one feature that seemed unique. You could "arrange" your loops into a song and save it as a single file. Not really my cup of tea, but a neat idea that some might find that useful.
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I've always been happy with Audacity.
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Among the hidden Transcribe! gems, there is a nice "navigation" feature across all the set markers.
My usual way of using Transcribe! is the following, not necessarily in the exact same order of operations.
1) set measure markers from beginning to end (of what I'm interested in, or the whole piece), which means hitting "M" on the keyboard while the music is played back,
2) set beat markers by editing the first measure marker to use 4 subdivisions (of the piece is in 4/4 time of course), all the following measures will be also using 4 subdivisions. One can change this division factor along the music piece (for instance if the music piece contains 7/8 and 4/4 section, as in Blue Rondo à la Turk). I rarely use the Transcribe! beat marker feature.
3) possibly edit a few measure markers to change them into section markers (intro, head, solo 1, solo 2, ... extro). Sometimes I also change the displayed measure numbers according to some needs (for instance having each section numbered 1 to N measures). This is done by setting measure number as <number>) for instance default 33 changed into 1)
4) then I focus on what I want to transcribe, possibly fine tuning some measure marker positions. I do not necessarily transcribe in the forward order of sections and measures.
5) Sometimes I use the video to analyse guitar fingerings, I generally use the text annotation feature to keep track of my observations (for instance xx4556)
One of my uses of transcribe is to export several version of a playback track, each at a different speed, which I then load and play on my phone or whatever in increasing speed order. That's a good way to practice tricky pieces of music.
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I've used Transcribe for years (both on Mac and PC), and I like it a lot! I had previously used Amazing Slowdowner but switched because Slowdowner was missing important features that Transcribe has (had). To be fair, my Slowdowner experience was quite a while ago, and features may have been added. OTOH, the only big drawback to Transcribe that I am aware of is the lack of a mobile version.
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If by that you mean using it on a smartphone or a tablet. This and possible solutions are discussed in the Transcribe! FAQ located at FAQ - Miscellaneous Questions about Transcribe!. Originally Posted by HighSpeedSpoon
I use it on my 7 year old 15" 6 pound laptop , and I performed a number of transcriptions away from home, upper half display for a Transcribe windows, lower half for Sibelius, and a headset, or small bluetooth monitors. The only complaint I have is that navigating along the music piece requires different mouse or keyboard commands between Transcribe & Sibelius as set by default (I never tried to assign the same keyboard shortcuts to each for similar operations, but this can be done).
I'll soon replace this laptop with the light 13" Dell XPS13 which has the size of a 11" ultrabook. This will make my music computing environment mobile enough for my taste.Last edited by mhch; 06-19-2015 at 11:35 AM.
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