Comments

• Buco NOVA, DCDeity Ivanovski maple/spruce

  October 2013 Posts: 4,962

  matty42 wrote:

  The play along CD can be very daunting. Never stopping. Never off time. It waits for no man, one stumble of the fingers and you are left behind...

  
  Haha great line!

  Every note wants to go somewhere-Kurt Rosenwinkel
• klaatu Nova ScotiaProdigy Rodrigo Shopis D'Artagnan, 1950s Jacques Castelluccia

  October 2013 Posts: 1,665

  Jazzaferri wrote:

  Hey Ben
  
  I have an iPad. Apparently it doesnt do an iTunes document. Do you know what that means.
  

  
  You don't need iTunes to download stuff to Anytune. In the upper left corner of the screen you should see a "Songs" button. Press that, and at the bottom of the panel that comes up, press "Tunes." You will see a download symbol at the top (a little box with an arrow). Press that, and it will give you a number of options, including Dropbox and Wi_Fi (I usually use the latter). You'll need to find the folder that contains your songs on your desktop. In iTunes on a Mac, it's Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music (probably something similar on a PC).

  Benny
  
  "It's a great feeling to be dealing with material which is better than yourself, that you know you can never live up to."
  -- Orson Welles
• klaatu Nova ScotiaProdigy Rodrigo Shopis D'Artagnan, 1950s Jacques Castelluccia

  October 2013 Posts: 1,665

  Jazzaferri wrote:

  Hey Ben
  
  I have an iPad. Apparently it doesnt do an iTunes document. Do you know what that means.
  

  
  You don't need iTunes to download stuff to Anytune. In the upper left corner of the screen you should see a "Songs" button. Press that, and at the bottom of the panel that comes up, press "Tunes." You will see a download symbol at the top (a little box with an arrow). Press that, and it will give you a number of options, including Dropbox and Wi_Fi (I usually use the latter). You'll need to find the folder that contains your songs on your desktop. In iTunes on a Mac, it's Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music (probably something similar on a PC).

  Benny
  
  "It's a great feeling to be dealing with material which is better than yourself, that you know you can never live up to."
  -- Orson Welles
• Bob Holo Moderator

  October 2013 Posts: 1,252

  wim wrote:

  ... but never bothered going below 50% tempo ...

  
  Yep, that's exactly it. A lot of songs - particularly ones with a wide range of instruments and a correspondingly wide frequency spectrum get really dicey much below that. It's hard to play along when the jitter and artifacts are as loud as the music. With Soundslice, somehow 50% seems good enough - maybe the visuals help - they certainly seem to for me. But for playing along with slowed down audio-only, man... at least for me it has to be a lot slower. 800% is obviously overkill, but 300% or 400% would be really handy. Take a song at 280bpm and slow it down to say 60 or 70 so you can really lock it in - and then have versions bumped up in 30 or 40bpm increments to solidly bring up the speed.
  
  By the way, for metronome-only practice, Troy Chapman showed me a neat device he recently bought - a metronome that snaps on to the end-peg of the guitar with a little magneto or piezo accelerator or something of that ilk. It gives a nice thumpy kind of vibration that sort of feels like someone is tapping on the guitar body. There is no way you can stray in tempo with that kind of physical feedback in your arm and chest and so it helps identify those places where you have a little hesitation and then speed up to get back on track. You just can't cheat with that thumper tapping rhythm on the guitar because it throws a big bright spotlight on all those little places where you're cheating or mumbling your way through some little passage that you never quite mastered. It's a brilliant concept but I've forgotten the name... thought I wrote it down on my phone but can't seem to find it.

  You get one chance to enjoy this day, but if you're doing it right, that's enough.
• Jazzaferri Victoria B.C.Moderator Dunn Ultrafox, DuPont MDC20 Gretsch Chet Atkins CG

  October 2013 Posts: 3,707

  Peterson do a metronome called the body beat that will run several little buzzer packs simultaneusly....to keep a band in snych.....man if a bands timing is that bad they cant be listening to what is going on.
  
  I got the iPad app and it works really well down to 40% from experience so far.

  The Magic really starts to happen when you can play it with your eyes closed
• Steveareno ✭✭✭

  November 2013 edited November 2013 Posts: 349

  +1 for Anytune. Just use the basic free version on my Ipad and it works good, especially downloading stuff from YouTube. Very fast and easy, even for an old hillbilly picker like me. Great to slow it down and just swipe you finger back to dial in the part you want, without changing pitch, at any speed. Have found it helps to download tracks where they actually play the MELODY clearly. Hank Marvin has a good version of Coquette. Even tried Cicci Guitar Condor (complete with gold chains, silk shirts and flying Ferraris) for Begin the Beguine. Between Anytune, the very cool Soundslice and my new Ditto Looper (nice SIMPLE 2 knob unit from TC Electronics)....so much amazing stuff out there to improve practice time.
  Swang on,
• Buco NOVA, DCDeity Ivanovski maple/spruce

  November 2013 Posts: 4,962

  So since a few people mentioned paid for apps and programs that will slow down a song without changing a pitch, I thought I'd ask here: are they significantly better sounding then free stuff at 50% or slower?
  For example: "transpose!" or "amazing slow downer" vs "audacity"?
  
  Buco

  Every note wants to go somewhere-Kurt Rosenwinkel
• lacrossehotclub La Crosse WI✭✭✭ Dupont Nomade

  November 2013 Posts: 116

  Can't compare to paid software I don't have but Best Practice is freeware that has a lot of bells and whistles, user friendly, and sounds decent a slow speed.
  
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/bestpractice/
• Buco NOVA, DCDeity Ivanovski maple/spruce

  November 2013 Posts: 4,962

  BestPractice won't run on my comp for some reason.
  It installs but throws an error when trying to open, tried un-installing but it does it again.
  I'll give it a shot again, thanks for the heads up.
  
  I did install a free version of "amazing slow downer" on my phone and compared it with Audacity, ASD is much, much better sounding at 50%.
  I'll see if I can get BestPractice to work but otherwise ASD app is well worth the $15.
  Buco

  Every note wants to go somewhere-Kurt Rosenwinkel
• pinkgary ✭✭✭

  November 2013 Posts: 282

  Amazing Slower Downer definitely has the best sounding tempo change algorithm, it's better (and quicker) than Cubase & Logic IMO. And the tempo increase on repeats function is invaluable for slowly but surely getting those licks up to speed. For jamming to a backing track though, i use the i real B, hundreds of Gypsy Jazz tunes you can download from the forum for free, and easy to use.