Slow down software = cheating?

Ahab

Hi guys,

I use slowdown software when I'm transcribing sometimes (I use Amazing Slow Downer for Mac which is excellent by the way) and I've found it very helpful especially with old recordings where the sound quality isn't great. I've been able to pick out subtle nuances and things that are practically invisible to the naked ear and it's given me a lot of confidence to try to transcribe challenging solos and other things. Still I have a nagging feeling that I'm cheating a little bit somehow, and by using the computer it may be hampering the development of my ear.

I'm sure most of the forum users are familiar with the stories about how gypsies learn to play. Their lack of formal musical training in some cases forces them to develop their ear to point where they can pick up new music with astonishing ease. I read in an interview with Bireli Lagrene that he never used to slow the records down, he'd just keep at it until he got it more or less spot on. Perhaps it's one reason why he developed the way he did (aside from being a musical genius of course) because he didn't slavishly mimic every last frequency of each Django solo, but learned the licks and phrases until they were his own and moved on. Anyway I'd be curious to know what anyone else thinks or if they have any better methods. Thanks for reading!

Jazzaferri

I think when one is first learning to transcribe fast pieces then slowing down is useful. Dont forget that the gypsy way is to show and to hear.

As one gets better, then I think it could become a way to teanscribe without fully learning.

I dont usually transcribe whole solos, I work out the phrases I like until i have em...but solos that I think are really special i will do the whole thing.

For many tho, copying someones solo is their way and far be it for me to say its wrong in any way.

Jazzaferri

Double post

murillo

Actually a friend of mine that is a professional musician introduced ASD to me. His advice was to transcribe music (chords and songs) as much as I could and to use ASD for fast passages/solos. If it werent for the ASD I would never learn some of the stuff that I know. After a while you will recognize some of the phrazes that you learned in other songs just by hearing them and transcribing will go much easier. The other option is to move to a gypsy camp somewhere in France, which I think would be much more interesting.

Jon

One difference between the way most of us learn the style and the way it seems like the gypsies have, is the availability of mentors in our culture. When you learn something in isolation, maybe with books or videos or the occasional lesson, but with no constant feedback, the mistakes you make go uncorrected and stick, so it's much more important to be able to error check. Most of us don't have someone around to tell us (and correct us) when we've misheard a phrase that we think is ok, or close enough, and wewould sound really terrible if left to our own devices without things like slow-downers.

Probably though, Bireli's aural training started much earlier than most of ours, and was - admittedly informally - more smoothly graded, so that he started very young by working on extremely simple tunes, and worked up to more complex structures. We to often miss a thousand small steps and dive right into full tempo craziness (which we do not and cannot really understand yet), when we should have started with three blind mice (which is easy enough in tempo) and worked our way up.

Jon

Bones

I was at a lecture/demo that Bireli did here in Santa Barbara a number of years ago.

He didn't talk in detail about his learning experience but as I recall he started when he was so young that he had to sit on the floor with the guitar neck laid across his lap and the body on the floor since he wasn't big enough to hold it.

He would sit in his room like 8-10 hours a day and drag his finger on the edge of the Hot Club 78's to slow them down so I guess it is permissible to slow use a slow down software.

I'm sure if he would have had amazing slow downer back then you can bet he would have used it.

adrian

No way is slow-down software cheating! For every awesome guitarist who claims not to have ever slowed stuff down, I'll show you 50 who *have*.

More broadly, I think it's counterproductive to intentionally "neuter" the tools we have at our disposal these days. Deliberately not using slowdown software is sort of like the guys who tape their fingers so they can emulate Django and only play with two. If you have five working fingers, use them all!

My own experience is that, having transcribed a lot of stuff by slowing it down, I've gotten better at transcribing stuff *without* slowing it down. Which may seem counterintuitive, but it's all exercising the same muscles, ya know?

Adrian

P.S. I would be remiss not to mention my project Soundslice, which lets you slow down YouTube videos. ;-)

spatzo

Hi everybody!

Some great GJ player consider that slowing down is not good for the ear... but I remember pretty well that some old gypsy player told me that at the beginning they used to slow down the 78 rpm records of the HCQ at 16 rpm to be able to pick up Django's solos. In fact it slows pretty well and even if you have to transpose the melody you learn it is very easy to transcribe that very bass and sloooow sounds.

Above all I think we have to consider that we cannot transcribe what we do not ear clearly and we do not understand what we cannot transcribe. So the fact we cannot transcribe something is positive because it indicates what we have to learn.

That only my opinion of course

kevingcox

The beautiful thing about slow down software is that when you get good enough you can speed those solos up and learn them extra fast! So much more efficient that way!


Anyone who says it is cheating is crazy. No musician in the world was forced to learn at full speed, even from childhood.

Ahab

Thanks for the comments, that I was kind of thinking. Having said that though, one of the things that appeals to me about playing this kind of guitar is that it is so simple. You get a guitar and then play and that's pretty much it. You may use a pickup and an amp but you don't have to spend hours obsessing about technology. One of the things that you hear often repeated by the top players is the importance of training your ear, does anyone have any good tips for this apart from the obvious one which is listening to the music.