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Show HN: SlowTube – Learn songs by ear by slowing them down

143 pointsby dkthehumanover 5 years ago

20 comments

aasasdover 5 years ago
BTW, slowing down idm and similar busy electronic music, in the manner of vinyl, is quite solid entertainment. Aphex Twin is known for this, so much so that RDJ admitted he knows about this and suggested that ‘RDJ Album’ could be listened at 33 RPM to obtain an album of ‘standard’ 45 minutes: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=aWqf17mUyoQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=aWqf17mUyoQ</a><p>You need to take care to properly slow down the audio, though, with corresponding pitch shift down. Not ‘stretching’ it keeping the pitch constant.<p>Apparently the genre of New Beat stemmed in large part from DJs playing rave records at wrong tempos: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=5yBvP3616Wc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=5yBvP3616Wc</a> (see also <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4XUipCxjmmw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4XUipCxjmmw</a>).<p>I&#x27;ve also had similarly splendid results with slowing down hard house (specifically my favorite compilation Insomnia Vol.2 from Tidy Trax). It turned into proper house with lotsa relaxed steady drive but much more engaging sound.<p>On your own machine, both workstation and telephone, VLC can alter the playing speed with good quality and proper pitch shift (or with no shift!). For batch converting, `sox` is a good choice—ffmpeg botches the sound for some reason.
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TooCreativeover 5 years ago
This is cool. But the name is a bit misleading. I have the same 0.25x - 2x speed range on Youtube anyhow. What it adds is the looping capability. So this is rather LoopTube then SlowTube.<p>By the way: It would be nice if something like this would be available with better sound quality for slow speeds. I am now half way through listening to this at 0.25:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=LjjfSESoC4s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=LjjfSESoC4s</a><p>With better sound quality this would be pretty epic ...
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reggiebandover 5 years ago
Reminds me of a simplified Soundslice[1]. I believe soundslice was started by Adrian Holovaty, one of the originators of the Django web framework.<p>For what it is worth, learning by ear is a fantastic way to improve skill as a musician. Slowing down songs is a great way to assist learning by ear.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.soundslice.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.soundslice.com&#x2F;</a>
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mb_72over 5 years ago
Good, perhaps, in a pinch but I and all musos I know already have their favourite looping &#x2F; slow-down &#x2F; EQ &#x2F; song segment apps. I use Anytune Pro on an iPad, myself, and for one thing it has fractional speed adjustment - 0.5 &#x2F; 0.75 &#x2F; 1 etc is just too broad a range, especially as I like practicing things at 0.7 then 0.8 then 0.9 etc if they are particular tricky to get down.
dekhnover 5 years ago
Also fun: paulstretch<p>I use it to take Gyuto monks chanting and turn it into cccccchhhhhaaaaaannnnnnttttttiiiiiinnnnnnggggg.
unlinked_dllover 5 years ago
ok this is awesome. I&#x27;ve been doing this manually in reaper for years!<p>One thing though, the &quot;slow down&quot; algorithm you&#x27;re using is really wack sounding. Have you looked at phase-vocoder based approaches, or overlap-save?
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leni536over 5 years ago
I have used mpv for something like this before. &#x27;[&#x27; and &#x27;]&#x27; changes playback speed and &#x27;l&#x27; sets the loop-points. Using the --af=rubberband=pitch-scale=&lt;value&gt; command-line option is also helpful if the melody you want to transcribe is too low or too high for you to decipher easily.
dingojohnsonsover 5 years ago
Sure beats recording to a loop cassette tape and pitching down with vari-speed. From a convenience standpoint anyway
mellosoulsover 5 years ago
FWIW offline alternatives include Riff Studio for Android. I assume there are alternatives for that and iPhone.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=net.brazzi64.riffstudio" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=net.brazzi64.r...</a>
lightedmanover 5 years ago
I do this using AIMP2 (AIMP3 has a worse pitch shifter&#x2F;tempo adjuster) along with the vocal remover (as most guitar parts you want to know are off to one side or another so they come through) for learning guitar parts.
tinyhouseover 5 years ago
Very cool! I installed a youtube looper in my browser that allows me to loop on selected time frames. But it&#x27;s not very friendly so I will definitely check this out.
dekhnover 5 years ago
I used to listen to Scott Joplin records at a slower speed (back in the day, my record player had a switch that ran the record at different speeds). really liked it.
cairo_xover 5 years ago
To learn something by ear is to simply remember the sound&#x2F;song and then repeat it intuitively (as opposed to reading music or copying finger positions).
1337shadowover 5 years ago
This works well, if you want to reproduce a song and get every single note right, been using mplayer myself so far which also works to slow down songs.
postitover 5 years ago
0.75x please
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schoolunchover 5 years ago
A recommendation would be isolating frequency ranges and also selecting mono&#x2F;left&#x2F;right to isolate a single guitar&#x2F;instrument.
mtb2718over 5 years ago
I developed a web app to slow down music arbitrarily, isolate tracks, set loops, and sync with video lessons a while back to solve my own needs when learning to play new songs on guitar. It’s now owned by Hal Leonard (I have no affiliation anymore), who have added a ton of amazing content. Here’s a preview (full songs are behind a paywall):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.guitarinstructor.com&#x2F;product&#x2F;g-plus&#x2F;dire-straits&#x2F;sultans-of-swing&#x2F;1000218264" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.guitarinstructor.com&#x2F;product&#x2F;g-plus&#x2F;dire-straits...</a>
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akdor1154over 5 years ago
Damnit I have wanted to make exactly this, you beat me to it. Nice job. :)
simlevesqueover 5 years ago
Any DJ Screw fans out here ?
chasebankover 5 years ago
This is perfect for golf! Thanks!