Transcribing Software

[BradleyS]

I was searching the net and came across a blog discussing transcribing software,ie. Transcribe,Capo.
Does anyone on the forum utilize this software to assist with learning a song?
Any recommendation on this type of software or hardware?

[rvf263]

There's several out there as you already know. Some cheap, some free.

I still think Transcribe! is the best bang for the buck and hard to beat.

[fulfillingsoul]

My favourites are Anytune (for audio only) and SpeedUpTV (for video).

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by BradleyS

I was searching the net and came across a blog discussing transcribing software,ie. Transcribe,Capo.
Does anyone on the forum utilize this software to assist with learning a song?
Any recommendation on this type of software or hardware?

I use Transcribe, have done for years, and highly recommend it.
I've found it a very user-friendly and intuitive interface.
It's free for the first month (no restrictions), and $39 to register after that - well worth it IMO.
It will also slow down video, although youtubes need to be downloaded and converted (using other, free, software).

Capo - AFAIK - looks to be as good, but is for Macs only (and I think the demo has restrictions).

There are other programs - totally free - that will do many of the same things (slow down audio, at least).
Of those, I'd recommend Audacity. It's not quite as user-friendly for transcription tasks (a few more key presses than Transcribe), but is an easy-to-use audio editor and multitrack recorder, with effects too.
(Transcribe will record audio, but can't edit it.)

[815C]

I find Transcribe! very useful.

[mchalebk]

Just downloaded Capo yesterday, haven't had a chance to do much with it, though. This video makes it seem to be a very good tool:

http://vimeo.com/83348070

[Mr Fixit eh]

+1 on Transcribe. I don't find that the chord and note guess to be very valuable, but I love the variety of slow down speeds, you can see video (if it's a video) that synchs with the audio track even at slowed speeds. The loop feature is also excellent.

I've found it to be reliable with quick reply on support email questions.

I don't know how I'd learn new songs without it now

Steve

[mchalebk]

Been playing with Capo some. Its chord recognition is embarrassingly bad. I threw some pretty simple stuff at it and it's not even close. I can see some value in the app. It's an awfully handy way to tweak the tempo while trying to learn some passages. I was hoping it could help me with the occasional tough chord to figure out, but it can't even get the easy ones right.

[Mr Fixit eh]

Originally Posted by mchalebk

Been playing with Capo some. Its chord recognition is embarrassingly bad. I threw some pretty simple stuff at it and it's not even close. I can see some value in the app. It's an awfully handy way to tweak the tempo while trying to learn some passages. I was hoping it could help me with the occasional tough chord to figure out, but it can't even get the easy ones right.

I had the same concerns when I tried the 30 day free demo, and almost didn't sign up. It is excellent for isolating a loop covering the chord or note I question, and you can easily experiment until the chord/ notes match by ear.

steve

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by mchalebk

Been playing with Capo some. Its chord recognition is embarrassingly bad. I threw some pretty simple stuff at it and it's not even close. I can see some value in the app. It's an awfully handy way to tweak the tempo while trying to learn some passages. I was hoping it could help me with the occasional tough chord to figure out, but it can't even get the easy ones right.

Transcribe has similar issues with chord ID, but a lot depends on the audio quality. Distortion will confuse it, and in extreme cases it will sometimes give up entirely - there are simply too many overtones, too much noise.
What I've found is that most of the time, Transcribe gets the chords right (it offers a few guesses, and the first is always the best) - but in almost every one of those cases I can get it for myself anyway. When I have problems hearing what a chord is - because of too many confusing frequencies or overtones - then Transcribe does too.
IOW, the chord guessing function is mostly useless. But that's because (like Capo) it's only a piece of computer software. When we guess chords, we bring a few years of experience to it. Our ears are extremely good as disentangling timbre, much better than computer audio recognition. We instinctively know how to filter out what's irrelevant.

These screenshots show (among other stuff) the chord guessing function in operation:
http://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/screenshots.html
You can tell from the peaks against the keyboard that this is a pretty clean chord, probably something like a rhodes piano. No trouble at all identifying that as Bb9 (the supplementary guesses are pointless, as usual).
But then - even assuming you can't read piano keyboard - any reasonable pair of ears could get it right too, in a few seconds of trial and error - you can of course loop that selection (with one key press) and play along.

IOW, Transcribe (and similar programs) should not be used to provide the answers. Just as ways of helping you listen more closely.
You don't expect a microscope to tell you what you're seeing on the slide...

[mchalebk]

Two of the songs I threw at Capo last night were Brown Eyed Girl and Dock of the Bay. I thought those were pretty simple songs that it should have been able to pick up on the chords (Particularly Brown Eyed Girl).

It's no big deal. I'm pretty good at figuring out songs myself, was curious if this could help with those occasional tricky chords that I just can't seem to figure out. Guess I"ll have to stick with YouTube for those.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by mchalebk

Two of the songs I threw at Capo last night were Brown Eyed Girl and Dock of the Bay. I thought those were pretty simple songs that it should have been able to pick up on the chords (Particularly Brown Eyed Girl).

Download Transcribe (free, full program) and try it on that.

I haven't tried Capo myself, but I know Transcribe is sensitive to how big a selection you make of the waveform. Select too much and it gets confused. A beat or less is usually OK.
It has to have a clear input signal, that's the point. Us humans can guess chords from strings of notes at different times, or melodic implications (eg Brown Eyed Girl). The software needs a whole chord to be played at a particular moment, and ideally not too distorted and not too much else going on, so it has a clear set of relevant frequencies to work on.
But of course if that's the case, then it doesn't take too much for human ears to work it out!

I've personally never found that Transcribe identifies a chord I can't identify for myself - either from looking at the keyboard peaks, or playing along. I simply don't need to use the chord ID option; all the other stuff it does is much more useful.

[dorable]

Chordify.net is a non-download option. It's still being developed (I think), but you can give it a link to a song on youtube or soundcloud and it'll give you chords. I don't think it'd work on anything too complicated.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by dorable

Chordify.net is a non-download option. It's still being developed (I think), but you can give it a link to a song on youtube or soundcloud and it'll give you chords. I don't think it'd work on anything too complicated.

I've tested chordify on a few things, and it's output is basically incomprehensible. (Even when a few correct chords appear, they're displayed in an unreadable way, in a chart bearing no resemblance to a correct one.) It's so bad it's funny.

If it's under development that's understandable, but it seems like a kind of brave but pointless project. Any song that's simple enough for it to be able to produce something sensible and readable is likely to be simple enough for any musician (even a near beginner) to be able to work out.

The problem (for any software) is that determining a chord progression from a piece of music audio is a highly refined task, whittling out the "noise". It's not just about snapshots of frequency mixtures from point to point (which is what software can do). You have to be able to identify the metre (time sig), in order to produce a chart that's readable. How can software know "where 1 is"?
You have to able to reject audio information that is not relevant (drum hits, overtones, vocal swoops, etc). Humans can easily do that: we know a tom-tom or a singer when we hear one. The computer just hears another frequency.
Even if the software can identify most of the chords correctly, that's no good. (How are we to judge which ones are wrong? If we can tell which ones are wrong, then we are good enough to do it ourselves from the start.) It has to be 100% reliable, every time, or there's no point. Even 99% is not good enough, because how are we to know where that 1% error is?
OK, you might only want something that's "close enough". But if you can't get something "close enough" by ear, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, IMO. (OTOH, if you're happy not to able to do it, you accept your limitations, you won't be able to judge how inaccurate chordify is.)

[mchalebk]

Just wanted to follow up my comments on Capo. I just got a software update and the chord recognition capability is greatly improved, to the point where I think it will be a useful feature.