TeledyN

It's been a long time since I'd encountered software that was useful, let alone find something useful and a joy to use. This past weekend I found it, and while it may be old news to many of you musician readers, it was welcome news to me: it all started on a link to the Linux Edition of a 30 day trial-edition of the $50 (US) Transcribe!

From the Seventh String website:

Transcribe! offers many features aimed at making the transcription job smoother and easier, including the ability to slow down music without changing its pitch, to analyse chords and show you what notes are present, and the apability of adding markers and textual annotations so you can easily navigate around the track. Transcribe! also has a piano keyboard displayed on screen which you can click to play reference notes.

It is important to understand that Transcribe! does not attempt to do the whole job, processing an audio file and outputting musical notation or midi - this would be nice, but is a currently unsolved research problem. The spectrum analysis feature is very useful for working out those hard-to-hear chords, but you must still use your ear and brain to decide which of the peaks in the spectrum are notes being played, which are merely harmonics, and which are just the result of noise and broad-spectrum instruments such as drums. If you have never worked out even a simple piece of music by ear then Transcribe! will probably not help you, but if you do sometimes work out recorded music by ear then Transcribe! can make the job a lot quicker and easier.

Useful, designed for the purpose and upfront with realistic expectations? The demo is free and, so far as I could tell with a day's play, it is solid and un-crippled. For the curious there is a Linux GTK demo and for completeness also an edition for Mac OS/X and the requisite Microsoft Windows version; check it out. Screenshots suggest the program is pretty much identical across platforms although only the Windows and OS/X editions permit deconstructing soundtracks directly off videos (Linux users can peel the sound out with mencoder).

And it's all true. Well, so far as I could tell. I loaded it up with a test file, a transcription I've been putting off for years just because I know how tedious it would be to step through using Audacity (which is a very good program, but ...) I selected the mp3, and there it was, the waveform, the fourier plot with peaks dropped to keyboard, and a side window taking a best guess at the harmonic structure of this particular moment in the file. I swiped across a phrase, a single orchestral chord, played it back at 35% speed, set the A-B repeat (very useful also for practicing difficult passages, or for learning foreign languages or transcribing voice!) and then tested my best-perception guesses of the detected tones by poking the keyboard sine-tones. Now this is software that works with me!

I didn't read no manuals. I didn't need no stinkin' manuals. Ok, I probably will later, but it was Sunday afternoon, the kids were busy, the house was quiet and this was just plain fun. Too much fun. And then ... what's this? It says 'EQ'. Ok. But it isn't just any EQ, it is an EQ with presets, and with intelligent domain-appropriate presets! So nice. Want to know what's groovin' in the bass lines? click Ok, what's all that high-end horn piccolo stuff? click Give me that tenor line. click -- it's like karaoke mode for a jazz ensemble! Let me see those famous 'corrected' harmonies Sonny put into the Fletch charts, yeah, that's the one, now ZOOM it up, slow it down ...

It's like having a microscope for music

I only really touched the surface of this thing, and I still have to work out how I'd work-flow from the analysis screen to actually putting notes on paper (I may use paper and pencil for the first sketch, then clean it up in Rosegarden later) but from just this afternoon's session already I know what I want for my birthday this year! The price is more than fair, it works out to be about $54 CDN, and unlike a lot of proprietary Linux cross-port software, this one is intelligently packaged, done by someone who took the time and care to do it right. Even the help pages are useful!

Finally, a disclosure that really doesn't change much: knowing how transcribing tunes and arrangements is largely a thankless task done by musicians and copyists who are not the best paid to begin with, Seventh String offers a very generous Affiliate Program, its how they spread the word directly from one musician to another; I was all set to post this review yesterday and with no less enthusiasm (the kids can attest to how much fun I was having) and I would have posted then except that I found the affiliate details and thought hey, who knows, maybe one or two of my musician readers here wouldn't mind helping pay down the cost of my copy at no extra cost to themselves and score a pretty nifty piece of pro-gear software in the process. I'll likely just spend the money on music anyway, so it's still all in the family :)

So here it is, the commercial message: to pick up a copy, or for more information, the 30-day demo downloads, screenshots, transcription methodology tips here are the product pages: