Transcription technology

[michael sam wild]

I am working on some transcriptions of older players I have finally converted from audio casettes to digital.

 

I've now got a slowdowner on VLC media player which is very useful.

 

Is there any way of getting from the notes to ABc or musical notation other than by ear and playing?

 

Also can Youtube be slowed down so you can see what people are doing?

 

I'm sure this is all simple to some folks on the forum but I am still a technohoper!

[Steve Mansfield]

Is there any way of getting from the notes to ABc or musical notation other than by ear and playing?

 

Also can Youtube be slowed down so you can see what people are doing?

 

There have been various stabs at auto-converting audio to MIDI down the years (and the hop from MIDI to abc is already catered for by various packages).

 

However none of them produce anything like reliable results on anything other than the purest sine wave tones played in a pristine environment - anything less optimum than that and you will spend so much time correcting the resultant files that you might as well transcribe them yourselves in the first place. None of them remotely cope with the subtle changes of rhythm and pace that we call technique and the software just sees either as errors, or as a note which lasts 13/16 followed by a 3/16 rest before the next note; whilst any kind of tremolo, or even wet-tuned reeds, drive the pitch recognition demented (particularly if the source material tuning isn't brilliant in the first place)

 

If it's audio you want to transcribe, various packages (I use Freecorder, which is a browser plugin, other packages are available) which will record any audio off of the web as it plays, and save it as MP3 - you can then slow down the MP3 in just about any half-decent audio package (Audacity for example).

 

If you literally want to *see* what the musician are doing, e.g. slow down the video to study fingerings etc., there are again various utilities which will download YouTube videos to your local drive (again, Freecorder will do this) and you should then be able to drop them straight into the VLC player to use the slow-downer in there.

 

And anyway, Personally I've always found that the actual act of making a careful transcription by hand teaches you far, far more than the resultant sheet music itself ever does.

 

[michael sam wild]

Thanks Steve that's most helpful. I'll let you know how I get on.

 

I do agree about using the ear and it's how I've always learnt tunes at full speed! Sadly my facility may be slowing down I think and anyway, I want to do a proper job of transcription of some of the old boys.

 

By the way it amazed me the other day how the Tunepal app. allowed some young friends to get the name of a tune on the iPhone in a session in very few minutes .. Must be using The Session database? That must have analysed some mixed up sound waves.

[Kautilya]

Mike - if this is not clear give me a bell. Or I will show u at Grinton, or William Irwin Langdale meet if u are going).

Drawback with this approach - it lowers the key (but some of the smartypantscomputerati out there may be able to offer a similar solution via Audacity which slows but does not lower/raise key, but I find audacity generally baffling to my illogical mind).

 

HOW

Using firefox/mozilla as your browser ( I don't know if Interent Explorer offers this as I dont use that)

 

Install the addon offered here (I use it all the time)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fast-video-download-with-searc/

 

Go to Utube

Open your youtube video:

Copy the tile of the video (highlight with cursor and do control c)

 

then:

To the top left, as video plays, you will see three different coloured pawnbroker balls (that;s the download function button)

 

Click on down arrow next to balls to get options. I use the download option(not the quick download)

 

A separate screen asks you to name and save the file. Just paste (control v) into the file name line, hit save and it will save it while you watch and normally save it in 'downloads'. If you can;t find downloads folder later you can just go to START, choose search and then paste in the filename already sitting hidden on your clipboard to find the file saved earlier) It will be an MP4 and the VLC symbol is a road traffic

cone.

 

To Practice:

Search for the saved file

Open it.

It will open in VLC and at the very bottom in line where your file name appears, to the right there is a small box with [1.00 x] in it.

Right click and it will open up with an up/down control to make it go slower OR faster.

You can also set it to replay small sections in a loop so you can practise the same phrases repetitively.tHAT'S the football goalposts on left (to right of the go stop start buttons )- bit awkward to set but...

click on first blue goalpost button to set start poinnt. It goes red then click right blue button forr end of clip and it goes red.

To clear looping click and blue buttons come back.

 

Edited April 23, 2012 by Kautilya

[Steve Mansfield]

Drawback with this approach - it lowers the key (but some of the smartypantscomputerati out there may be able to offer a similar solution via Audacity which slows but does not lower/raise key, but I find audacity generally baffling to my illogical mind).

 

Well I'm not sure if I'm of the smartypantscomputerati , but to change the speed of playback in Audacity without changing the pitch ...

1. Load the file into Audacity.

2. Select the area of the file you want to slow down (Click and hold at the start of the section, drag, let go when the area you want is highlighted). If you want to do the whole file, ignore this step as the next steps will automatically select the whole file.

3. Go to the Effect menu.

4. Select Change Tempo.

5. Either drag the slider, or type a number, to select how much you want to change the tempo.

6. Click Play and listen.

 

Those instructions are for the current version of Audacity on Windows, other versions and operating systems may vary.

[Kautilya]

Drawback with this approach - it lowers the key (but some of the smartypantscomputerati out there may be able to offer a similar solution via Audacity which slows but does not lower/raise key, but I find audacity generally baffling to my illogical mind).

 

Well I'm not sure if I'm of the smartypantscomputerati , but to change the speed of playback in Audacity without changing the pitch ...

Of course you are! U just proved it! Don’t be modest.

Problem may be that Audacity does not seem able to handle the quick download VLC MP4 as a video as it does not recognise it. It asks you to convert it (?to an audio).

 

I think Mike also wants to slow down the visual to see where to strongarm his pinkies on the keyboards.

 

Unless:

(waddya think?) he plays separate sound and video files of the same performance simultaneously - Audacity for slowing sound in key and VLC (muted) for slowing the video, and synchs them.

 

I have used the Audacity slow sound thingy as you are saying Steve in Audacity for sound practising. But I did not get moving piccies.

 

To convert MP4 for Audacity:

free video to audio conversion 2010 v 3.9.2

http://download.cnet.com/Free-Video-to-Audio-Converter-2010/3000-2140_4-10909427.html

 

There is a (typically!) teeny smartypantscomputerato here but you will see it needs Apple gear and also you seem to have to hold down the go button (one-handed concertina playing).

You may be able to use a carrot end or slice of potato to replicate the epidermal digital (as in finger) screen contact function! I remember someone has used little salami chew 'plugs' on their mobile phone screens for this too.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ts6vF5fllQ&noredirect=1

 

This is the same but you press down the Apple space bar.

 

Just tried this on PC spacebar - it only offers pause and stop and not forward and back as on Apple. And if you hold space bar down it jumps between go and pause and goes even faster than original!

:rolleyes:

 

One other visual problem (which has improved dramatically after encouragement in the melodeon community) is avoiding camerawork which records the whole body, the dog in the foreground, the freezer and the dirty pint glass next to the embers of the fire.

 

Trick is to shoot, close up, on the hands. The best would be to shoot down from above for melodeon and accordion and not front on at all but that is remains another step towards the light.

 

Tina players cannot easily show the fingers which are operating on the sides out of view.

 

One tina solution would be two cameras recording at the same time shooting the sides from an slight rear angle, but fingers may block view of some buttons!

 

Then the learner could open two windows on the screen and see “real” fingering as it is played.

 

The best solution for teaching the tin whistle for learners is to shoot the hands from behind-above - you then see the fingers as you would play them yourself.

 

Here is a robotic example for tin whistle used by French bagpipers. It could be something our computerato Michael Eskin might have some thoughts about. But again you have to have Apple gear for his e-squeeze apps. I think his demos show the buttons as they are seen by a “forestander: not as played by a player or as seen by a “rearstander” or in the case of tinas a left- or right-bystander.

 

 

Unfortunately the tin whistle robot only works online (the author and I have tried and failed to find a way to save and use offline, but it is made of giff files or something). But that problem would not be there using camera recordings such as those put on youtube.

 

Open http://www.playintune.net/fr

and then rotate it 100 per cent** and you see the whistle as it is played and it is not necessary for the learner to get h/is/er eyes brain and fingers to reverse everything before they even try to 'copy’. No one would teach flying a plane (or riding a horse) by forcing the pupil to try to see everything backwards contrary to reality. You will see how difficult it is rotating back to "normal" as your mouse will be going in the opposite direction to your brain!

 

**You can rotate your screen with free irotate which I have used for a year or more.

http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/irotate.shtm

or on your keyboard

http://www.pcmech.com/article/how-to-rotate-your-screen-image/

 

rotating eyes........

:rolleyes:

[Bruce McCaskey]

By the way it amazed me the other day how the Tunepal app. allowed some young friends to get the name of a tune on the iPhone in a session in very few minutes .. Must be using The Session database? That must have analysed some mixed up sound waves.

 

TunePal is quite an impressive App. I was an early advocate for it back in the days when PDA's and "Pocket PC's" were the big thing and "smart phones" had not yet evolved to dominate as public favorites. Since then TunePal has been enhanced and refined and is now available on many different platforms including iPhone, iPad and Android systems. Its creator, Dr. Bryan Duggan, has been researching and developing a software approach to analyzing and identifying tradional Irish Dance music and has had considerable success. He has posted an interesting video on YouTube that demonstrates some of his recent work and offers insight into this analysis and identification process, I suggest accessing it from his website.