drnathan747 - Posted - 11/01/2009:  08:50:45

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Hello. I am trying to find the best way to slow down fiddle music so that my son could learn pieces by ear. I've heard a little about something called the "Amazing slow downer".

Does anyone have any recommendations for software that can slow a piece down wihtout changing the pitch, to use as a learning aid?

Thanks,
Nathan


[Edit: Moved from "Playing Advice" - Brad]

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Edited by - BanjoBrad on 11/01/2009 11:58:00

Harry - Posted - 11/01/2009:  09:21:49

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Perhaps you could try Best Practice, it's freeware and works fine:

xs4all.nl/~mp2004/bp/#download

If you want to slow down midi's:

vanbasco.com/download.html

forestabri - Posted - 11/01/2009:  09:23:20

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You got it!

Amazing Slow Downer:
ronimusic.com/

Or for free program, Best Practice:
xs4all.nl/~mp2004/bp/

Or you can use Windows Media Player, but not very useful, in my opinion.

Brian

" I grew up in the mountains where snakes have legs and the hoot owls speak English and the roosters lay square eggs "

tonyelder - Posted - 11/01/2009:  09:36:31

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I've used a program called Transkriber in the past. reedkotlermusic.com/
- good for play back / change tempo / change pitch.

Today I'm using mTrax. terrasofta.com/
It is a little more full featured and more on the order of something like iTunes with play/ practice lists. It will let you created as many clips from the song as you want need and save them and display them as a subfile to you original song in the playlist. You can slow down, speed up, change pitch save the settings to the clip (section) your working on - loop it enlessly and have it play the loop back at 3 different tempos progressively during play back (1st loop / 80%, 2nd loop 90% / 3rd loop 100%)

Both of those are less than $50 - and worth the money. IMO

Audacity is another program that does pretty much the same thing as mTrax. audacity.sourceforge.net/
Been around a long time. It is free, but not as user friendly. But if you can get through a learning curve with it - it will do pretty much anything you ask it to. Good program - especially for free.

Generally speaking - I have found that freeware is usually not as user friendly, and will have a few bugs. But not so much so anymore.

I guess the question is will you be more willing to invest time in learning freeware, or would a dollar investment be worth getting something a bit more user friendly.

All of them are good programs for what you need.

"Take it back, take it back. Oh no, you can't say that! "
J. Prine

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Edited by - tonyelder on 11/01/2009 09:42:42

SMDTMTL - Posted - 11/01/2009:  09:55:19

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A current version of Cool Edit Pro isn't free, but I use a version of it that's about 8 years old, and it's still great.. (I'm running it on both Vista and XP) . It does a lot more than these other products, but is also very simple to use, once you know the procedure for what you want... I never had any books or manuals... just trial and error worked fine in learning it...

One thing that I find is a great tool for learning tunes is to be able to adjust the pitch.... lots of old time fiddle recordings are only in tune, relative to themselves, and if you're working on a Tommy Jarrall tune one minute and then switch over to a Clyde Davenport tune, or Buddy Thomas thing, it's a little annoying to have to retune your fiddle over and over again ... what I've found is that, that whole Buddy Thomas record, for instance, or Jarrell, or any of them, are commonly off by just a few cents,.maybe three cents, maybe five cents- whatever- it doesn't matter. the pitch is usually uniform for the length of the record.... If I get a cd that I'm thinking I'll be learning a bunch of tunes from, I'll rip the CD to WAVs or MP3, and then load them all up in Cool Edit pro, and adjust them all the same amount to get them right on concert pitch...As I'm learning them, I'll slow things down as needed.... Anyway, I'm saying that I find it helpful to have a whole old time learning collection that's all in tune, and at whatever speed I want... Cool Edit also of course allows me to take pieces of the tune, phrases, or part.... slow them down as much as desired, and repeat them endlessly... divide and conquer.... This program has basically two modes... the multi-track recording mode, and the single tune editor... you would do all this in the the single tune editor mode...

Apparently you can download older versions of this software, for free... I'm using CoolEdit Pro ver. 2 and I see several sites offering if for free... I googled "old version of Cool Edit Pro" and found serveral sources... here's one from a neat site called
OldApp.com:
oldapps.com/CoolEdit.php



Steve Downey

smdwoodwork.com/index.html

SMDTMTL - Posted - 11/01/2009:  10:00:55

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Oh here is how oldapps.com describes Cool Edit...About CoolEdit :

Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro) is a digital audio editor computer program from Adobe Systems featuring both a multitrack, non-destructive mix/edit environment and a destructive-approach waveform editing view that has been referred to as the "Swiss army knife" of digital audio. Originally, Cool Edit was a shareware program with some crippleware features. Adobe purchased the latest, non-shareware version (Cool Edit Pro 2.0) from Syntrillium Software in May 2003 including the ability to record and mix unlimited tracks (up to the capabilities of your PC) and a large loop library called "Loopology". They renamed it Adobe Audition and released it on August 18.
CoolEdit Features

* Create multitrack mixes with unlimited stereo tracks
* Multichannel encoder to produce high-quality 5.1 surround sound
* Remove audio flaws with easy-to-use effects.
* Accepts third-party DX and VST plugins.
* Supported audio CD burning.


Steve Downey

smdwoodwork.com/index.html

woodwiz - Posted - 11/01/2009:  10:20:28

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My favorite is "Transcribe!" by Seventh String Software. It's not free, but when I was looking, a couple of years ago, I downloaded trial versions of everything I could find, and Transcribe! had everyone else beat for sound, features, and ease of use. You can slow things down, adjust pitch, mark sections, beats, and measures, loop sections as short as a single note, and there's even a frequency spectrum display that can help resolve notes that you can't hear well enough in the mix. You can also save tracks as practice tracks. I thought Amazing Slow Downer came in a pretty close second.

Everything else I tried was either hard to use / inconvenient, had bad sound, or was missing features that I found useful.

Audacity is free and will do a good job, but is a pain to use, IME.

You can download versions of most of this stuff free, so try for yourself and make your own decision. I haven't been looking in a while, so my research could be out of date.



Michael R
kcstrings.com
kcfiddles.com coming soon.....

"Hey buddy fiddle works great I love it thank u very much for...such a fine violin"
Greg Moore, fiddler, The James King Band thejameskingband.com/

"Thank you for the wonderful violin you made. I've used it on every show I've played since I've got it." John Hartford

FiddlerJones - Posted - 11/01/2009:  12:40:07

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Another option is to use the "slow" setting in Windows Media Player. It's under the "Play" drop-down menu, the "Play Speed" option. What I sometimes do is slow down a tune in Media Player and record the audio stream using Total Recorder--a nifty audio utility from a Canadian company--and then listen to the mp3 through one earphone of my mp3 player as I practice.

We didn't have these amazing tools when I was first trying to learn this stuff in the late 70's.

leather Britches - Posted - 11/02/2009:  14:07:41

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I use Audacity, while I like it okay , the User Interface could be a little more user friendly , but it is free .
Just a note,
If you purchase songs from iTunes ( and I'm sure other download sites, correct me if I'm wrong ) the files will not import because they are protected ,just something
to think about about. I have a lot of tunes that I purchased over the years , and I had to find a work around for this , but It is rather time consuming.
Everyone who posted has great ideas , experiment with all of them and you'll find something that you and your son will like best.

Good Luck
John

Whiskey Your the Devil

bowbag - Posted - 11/04/2009:  07:23:19

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I use the Amazing Slow Downer, I like it a lot. I tried Slow Gold and Audacity too but I like the Amazing Slow Downer the most so far.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
musicfuntime.com
Updated Monday and Thursday.
Tell your friends!

drnathan747 - Posted - 11/04/2009:  07:41:41

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Thanks everyone for your replies and sharing your experiences. That is part of what makes this site so great, so many great folks out there willing to help young fiddlers with the knowledge they have gained over the years. Thank you.

Nathan

fiddlenbanjo - Posted - 11/06/2009:  20:19:31

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I use Amazing Slow Downer. I've tried Audacity and Windows Media Player, but ASD is just so easy to use that I quit looking for another way.

fiddlingurl - Posted - 11/06/2009:  20:20:22

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Amazing Slow Downer is def the way to go!

Katie <3
Joshua 1:9

thewilsonfamilyband.com
myspace.com/wilsonfamilyband
reverbnation.com/fan/katiewilson

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 01/17/2010:  13:16:57

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quote:

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Originally posted by FiddlerJones

Another option is to use the "slow" setting in Windows Media Player. It's under the "Play" drop-down menu, the "Play Speed" option.

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I tried to do this with a DVD yesterday, for the first time (I wanted to use it as a way to simultaneously slow down the audio AND the video). At the time, I didn't remember the bit above about "the 'Play' drop-down menu, and the 'Play Speed' option, and I couldn't ever find a way to slow it down.

The way I was using it, was to insert the DVD into the DVD drive, and let that automatically start up the Windows Media Player. It automatically gave me the full-screen mode, which didn't seem to allow ANY options. I figured out how to get back to a smaller window, where I could see the various WMP options, but nothing I tried gave me the option of slowing things down.

In order to get at the slowdown option, do I need to start up WMP FIRST, and THEN put it in slowdown mode BEFORE I connect it with the particular DVD I want to play? Or should I be able to get slowdown mode when I automatically start up WMP by inserting a DVD first?

(I have almost NO experience with microsoft...I normally run linux on my PC. But I CAN boot up my PC with Microsoft Vista, which is what I tried yesterday).

Percy - Posted - 01/17/2010:  14:02:31

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I love ASD -- so many good things about it. Not only can you slow it down, but you can change the key -- and even modify the pitch by "cents" at as necessary; you can make "loops" of difficult phrases and play them over and over and over....and then you can export a modified file (say you want to play a tune a bit slower and/or in a different key) so you can import it into another program.

It is a great overall program. I use Audacity to record, Aria to modify midi files, Band-in-a-Box to create midi files -- but always ASD for practice time when I want to mess around with tempo, key and pitch -- and to learn new tunes in phrases...

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Edited by - Percy on 01/17/2010 14:02:57

dancinbear - Posted - 01/17/2010:  14:59:48

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If you have an iphone, the ASD app is only about 15 bucks. A lot cheaper than the computer program. I can also hook my iphone up to speakers. Not sure if the app version has less capabilities than the PC program though.

robbif - Posted - 01/17/2010:  18:25:19

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Let me add to the mix...

VLC (videolan.org/) is a (free) player.Might be worth adding to your arsenal.
It can play just about any video and audio file in existence.
It runs on Windows, Macs, and Linux.
It will slow down songs and maintain pitch (videos too!) with just the - and + keys..
It will loop between any 2 points. (See how below.)
It will play CDs and DVDs.
It will record.
It will convert some files to different formats like MP3, so it may be able to rip CDs...I'm not sure.
And a whole lot more.

To loop: click on View/Advanced controls.
In the row of 4 new controls, the loop button is the 3rd from the left - looks like a little wagon(?).
Start the audio/video playing, when it reaches the start point for the loop, click the control.
When it reaches the end point of the section you want to loop, click the control again.
I think you can even pause the playback before clickiing each point.

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 01/18/2010:  14:20:02

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quote:

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Originally posted by robbif


VLC (videolan.org/) is a (free) player. [...]
It will play CDs and DVDs.

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WOW...that's some GREAT information! I'd MUCH prefer to do the simultaneous slowdown while staying on my linux system, instead of having to boot up Windows Vista.

I've found a bunch of VLC packages in the package-management system for my Mandriva 2008.1KDE linux system. But each of those packages has this statement in the description:

"This package contains no CSS unscrambling functionality for DVDs ; you need the libdvdcss library available from videolan.org/libdvdcss/"

Do you know WHY they don't include that as part of the package? Maybe a licensing issue? Did you get the above library from that link? And was it source code that has to be compiled, or object code that would be directly usable, and compatible with my Mandriva system?

Mike Fontenot

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Edited by - Mike_Fontenot on 01/18/2010 14:21:22