Transcribe! Chord recognition software notes

[buzzsmith]

I wasn't born with "Golden Ears" like an Edgar Winter, or a Shelly Berg amongst many others where they have perfect pitch and amazing recall...

I like to think of myself as having "Silver Ears" (my wife claims they've gotten a little tarnished...yeah, real funny)

Anyway, when asked to "lift" or "peel" an existing arrangement for a dance group, performance track, or whatever, I try to do it the old fashioned way with repeated listenings and score paper, or just jot down some of the more difficult passages.

Recently, I had to do a condensed version of the song "Step In Time" from the original London production of Mary Poppins. The song itself is not difficult, but some of the modulations and dance section orchestrations were extremely challenging to hear through, especially with all of the loud vocals, sometimes screaming.

The last 5 bars were especially trying...I could hear what the orchestrator was intending...basically a chromatic walkdown with the bass, and parallel major triads ascending chromatically and contrapuntally, but it goes by so fast! (About 15+ chords in just 3 or 4 seconds)

So I pulled out "Transcribe!" which allows you to slow down difficult passages, and even highlight individual parts of the waveform, and with it's built in analyzer, it makes pretty good guesses of what the chord and root are. I find that it makes some incredibly funny guesses on occasion like a BMaj7 (b5, b9, #13) over F that are just flat out incorrect!

However, by tweaking the selection of the waveform, and using your ears, you can usually determine what's going on.

It will also repeat just that chord, ad infinitum, in real time, 25 or 50% speed to compare with one while playing a live keyboard along with the output of the software to match it.

So, just in case anyone is interested, here's the link...

http://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/version6.html

I try not to use it too much, to force my ears to hear, and stay in shape, but under deadlines, and for other reasons, I like the availability of another tool.

Buzz

[nickysnd]

Looks like a cool tool, it makes some pretty accurate chord guesses. I have put it to a test with a Takemitsu-on-strings cue and I managed to confuse it! But it has found the louder notes alright.

Thanks for posting it!

[FMiguelez]

Looks like a cool tool, it makes some pretty accurate chord guesses. I have put it to a test with a Takemitsu-on-strings cue and I managed to confuse it! But it has found the louder notes alright.

Thanks for posting it!

Imagine with Penderecki. Not much easier, for sure