Useful tools for analyzing music

[iaorana]

http://clam-project.org/wiki/Chordata_tutorial

Chordata is a simple but powerful little program that analyses the pitches in a song and displays the approximate chords that are being played. If you do a lot of covers and the such, it may be quite indispensable, since it may tell you things you did not realize or it may guide you through a song. Also, its free.

Although Chordata cannot go slowly for you and it may be sometimes bothersome to stop every second, you can make the piece slower. But just making it slower will affect pitch, so what I did was open up the .mp3 on Reaper (http://www.reaper.fm) insert a very long silence at the end, then right click and on item propertioes you can select the rate of playback, it is on 1.00000 by default. Just change that and make sure the keep same pitch checkbox is checked.

Another NOT so useful tool is http://www.hitnmix.com/ which tells you the pitch of all the sounds on a song. The problem with this one is that it is very confusing if there are a lot of notes or sounds. It may be useful for some so I also share it. But the one time I did use it I thought it was more trouble than help, since it was a jazz arrangement. There is a demo version which does provide the note information but only the full version allows you to change pitch or things like that. The biggest con is that it takes ages on analyzing a single song, up to 30 mins on an intel core i5!!

Well, I just wanted to share this piece of knowledge with everyone here and I hope at least 1 person finds this useful!!

[Hanon_CTS]

Hello Gustavo,
That Chordata is a very cool little app, thanks the information!
I wasn't familiar with that one.
I was more familiar with Tune Smithy
I'm still testing HitnMix, jury's still out on that one.
Cheers, Hanon

[iaorana]

Thanks Gustavo

For years, I have been using the Chord Wizard program that is included in Band-in-a-Box/Real Band. For jazz arrangements, it generally fails at recognizing the right chords - like most similar programs - but it helps me picking the bass lines (my ears are getting old )

[Johannes]

I knew Chordata, interesting program.
Did not now the others will check them out.

Personally I find that while Chordata works amazingly well when I consider what it does, it is most useful when my own transcribing works best as well and vice versa.
For more complex stuff I really like http://www.ronimusic.com/slowdown.htm (it is not free unfortunately and only worth if you do a lot transcribing) but the independent(!) slow down and pitch change sounds so much more natural than in audacity or any DAW IMHO.
Like tune down the solo in "In my life" by one octave and half its speed...nice

[shark]

Aah the new generation of space age whizz kids...how have we coverbands survived all these years without Chordata?

Simple: by using our EARS!!!!

[iaorana]

Well, I just wanted to share this piece of knowledge with everyone here and I hope at least 1 person finds this useful!!

Hmmm... sorry Gustavo, but after trying ChordData on Timeline, I was so disappointed that I immediately uninstalled it

[Hanon_CTS]

I just wanted to share this piece of knowledge with everyone here and I hope at least 1 person finds this useful!!

Mission accomplished Gustavo!
I find it useful, and easily worth 10 times the price

[iaorana]

Like tune down the solo in "In my life" by one octave and half its speed...nice

Formerly , we did that without any signal processing, with just a turntable or a tape recorder at half the standard speed

[Gustavo]

@iaorana I know what you mean about it not being perfect. But I use it to play jazz/blues covers and it si helpful because it "guides" me to the correct chord or key and stuff like that. In some songs it used to tell me there were chord changes where there clearly were not!! So it does not eliminate the human work, it just helps you by giving you the bases, or at least that is what I think.


The cool thing about REAPER is slowing/speeding something without changing pitch... other wise anything can slow down and tune down

Saludos, Gustavo

[Frantz]

I tried chordata on a song. Very interesting.

Here is the tune, this is the bridge part from 2:28 to 2:48 :

Here is the chord progression : Eb/1 - G - Cm/2 - F then Ab - Eb/1 - Ab - Fm , and finally : Ab - Gsus4 - G