What do you use as a media player when learning a song?

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hywelghywelg Frets: 4302
I've been using Amazing Slow Downer for years 'cos it brilliant at saving clips and loop points, slowing down awkward phrases.

Anything else out there that you are using?
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  • JalapenoJalapeno Frets: 6378
    Audacity - for exactly the same reasons.
    Imagine something sharp and witty here ......

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  • stickyfiddlestickyfiddle Frets: 26753
    Jamup Pro XT on iphone/ipad- the sampler/trainer/slowdowner on there is brilliant
    The Assumptions - UAE party band for all your rock & soul desires
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  • Jalapeno said:
    Audacity - for exactly the same reasons.
    Audacity - because you can do so much more with it than a straight phrase trainer. You can change the pitch (which is handy 'cos my band tunes to Eb/drop-Db), the speed, boost frequencies to emphasis certain instruments etc.
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  • hywelghywelg Frets: 4302

    Jalapeno said:
    Audacity - for exactly the same reasons.
    Audacity - because you can do so much more with it than a straight phrase trainer. You can change the pitch (which is handy 'cos my band tunes to Eb/drop-Db), the speed, boost frequencies to emphasis certain instruments etc.
    I'd like to know 'what more'?

    Long time since I tried Audacity but it was anywhere near as easy to use as ASD. Don't have iAnything.

    Amazing SlowDowner, does pitch (without affecting speed), speed (without affecting pitch), has simple loop point creation and precision setting of start/end points, easy to store for later recall, has a graphic for EQ, and playlists for songs. Has anyone tried it for comparison? I'd be interested to know of anything better, but I'm sceptical. The one thing it doesn't have which I'd like is beat recognition to make setting loop points a little quicker.

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  • Yup, Audacity does beat detection. It also has things like normalisation (handy for working out quiet bits in the middle of loud bits) and noise removal, which I use quite a bit.

    It's also free, so £34 cheaper than Amazing Slow Downer ;)
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  • I use Transcribe!.  I sometimes use Audacity to record stuff (eg from spotify or youtube) so that Transcribe! has a file to access but my impression is that Transcribe! is more user friendly for learning tunes. 
    “To a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail.”
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  • Transcribe! As recommended by Justin Sandercoe! If it's good enough for Justin then...
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  • CatthanCatthan Frets: 355
    Youtube and media player.
    I usually learn from sheets so I just need  smth to listen to the song.

    And transcribe for the whatever else I can't get the sheet of or anything that needs proper transcription like a jazz solo or a someone's lick on youtube etc.
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  • I use Sonic Visualizer (http://www.sonicvisualiser.org/) for this kind of thing. To be honest I seldom use any of its transcription features, I just use the little knob to slow down or speed up the music.
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  • GrunfeldGrunfeld Frets: 4028
    +1 for Transcribe!

    Utterly brilliant.

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  • JetfireJetfire Frets: 1687
    Ive been using Riffstation and its amazing :)
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  • nickpnickp Frets: 183
    for pc - winamp coz it is a free media player and the free plugins loopmaster pro and the other one which I can't remember to do the pitch shifting

    all free which makes me v happy

    now i'm using an ipad all the time and I blame @stickyfiddle for getting me hooked on jamup pro coz it is brilliant

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  • MaxiMaxi Frets: 13
    I guess Im a bit old school so i just use my Tascam guitar trainer CD GT2 . If I wanted to I could also use my Jamman solo xt . before slowing down methods took off I used to use my korg multi tracker to set the loops & jump to locations etc .
    Flown the nest .
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  • vizviz Frets: 10647
    Record player
    Roland said: Scales are primarily a tool for categorising knowledge, not a rule for what can or cannot be played.
    Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
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  • LixartoLixarto Frets: 1618
    Sheet music.
    "I can see you for what you are; an idiot barely in control of your own life. And smoking weed doesn't make you cool; it just makes you more of an idiot."
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  • Lixarto;83838" said:
    Sheet music.
    But sometimes some good music too.





    I'll get me coat :o3
    Tipton is a small fishing village in the borough of Sandwell. 
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  • hywelghywelg Frets: 4302
    Still amazed (!) that so few people use Amazing Slow Downer. I think its brill. Second only to my ears in usefulness.
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  • GrunfeldGrunfeld Frets: 4028
    edited December 2013
    hywelg said:
    Still amazed (!) that so few people use Amazing Slow Downer. I think its brill. Second only to my ears in usefulness.
    Does that show you the waveform?  I didn't think it did?

    I think what I really like about Transcribe! is that it shows you the waveform of the song and you can add markers.  The markers can be anything you want but the first thing I do is chop the song into parts: Intro, Verse, Chorus, Solo (and I usually add bar markers here), and so on, and that, for me is a "picture" of the whole song -- makes it so easy to remember what comes next when playing it live.

    It does, of course, all the slow down stuff, keep pitch, alter pitch, everything else, too.
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  • hywelghywelg Frets: 4302
    No it doesn't show you the waveform, but I'm not entirely clear why you'd need that.

    I also chop the song into parts using the Loop presets, quite often chopping a difficult solo into smaller sections. What I like about ASD is that you can specify pitch (if you need to) and speed by presets and you can change these on the fly whilst the song plays. Presets are very easy to set up simply by clicking a start and stop button whilst the song is playing.

    As regards learning the structure, that goes into a word doc with the lyrics with chords above, that gets shared with the whole band so we are literally all singing from the same hymnsheet.
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  • GrunfeldGrunfeld Frets: 4028
    hywelg said:
    No it doesn't show you the waveform, but I'm not entirely clear why you'd need that.
    ....
    As regards learning the structure, that goes into a word doc with the lyrics with chords above, that gets shared with the whole band so we are literally all singing from the same hymnsheet.
    I suppose it depends what you mean by "need" -- because all of this can be done the caveman way of just playing the song and using one's ears.  Then something like ASD can chop a song into sections and you can alter the pitch, on the fly. 

    And then something like Transcribe! can do all of that, on the fly too, (including changing the pitch by just a few cents so Mr "non standard tuning Hendrix" can "tune" to you rather than you have to tune to him; and dropping Living On a Prayer a semitone or two cos your singer can't manage the original key), and then adds another layer of usefulness in the way you can navigate a song.  (It also has a display which is invaluable on occasions which can tell you what note it is that you're listening too -- because occasionally it's difficult to work out by ear -- and you can toggle that display on and off.)

    I find the waveform incredibly useful (not "need" just "bloody useful") cos I can see what parts I know and what parts I have yet to learn, how soon the various parts of the song are coming up, and so on.  Maybe it's because I have to learn songs which I've never heard before, I dunno.  Songs I'm familiar with probably wouldn't need this but it's so much a part of my workflow now that I use it all the time.  As you say, the presets are useful and I use those in Transcribe! too.

    The other thing is that Transcribe! can plays video too so you can see the vid in one window and the audio in another.  As you slow the audio down the vid slows down too.  Again, when it's there you use it.  There was a recording of Satriani playing La Grange live and I just slowed it down lick by lick and that was a very useful way of learning those licks.
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