Phrase Trainer Recommendations

I use Song Surgeon, very happy with it. (I've only really scratched the surface of what it can do, though.)

 

It's not cheap, but it's worth it, imho, seems to do everything pretty well, and easy enough for me to use.

 

Super slowdowner works for me it was $50 if I recall correctly.

 

Tascam stand alone Bass/Guitar trainer

 

Audacity for Windows is great for this. It can change tempo without changing pitch, can also change pitch without changing tempo which is ideal if you're too lazy to change tunings.

 

Transcribe

 

What I use. Sure wish I had access to something like that when I was just starting out.

 

I think they're talking about the software, which is called Transcribe!

 

Anytune.

 

I've had good luck with Programs from Roni music.
In this case the "amazing slowdowner". They have a free trial version if you want to give it a shot.
!Slow down and transcribe with Roni Music software - slow down the speed of music without changing the pitch

 

Ditto on amazing slow downer. The iPhone app is great and allows you to use songs from your Spotify playlists.

 

Bear with me here, but: youtube.

That's how bandmates usually share songs to cover these days anyway. You can adjust speed without changing pitch. It doesn't support looping, but you can do a hacky approximation with some careful mouse positioning. The keyboard shortcuts come in very handy: Keyboard shortcuts for YouTube - YouTube Help

OK, to be honest, if it gets too complicated, I move to Transcribe. But for anything quick, I stay in youtube. And as time goes on I've found myself staying there longer....

 

Yep, if you look to the right of that screen I posted, the start, and end points set where to loop, and if you check the loop box it'll go till you hit the stop button. If something stumps me, I'll move the speed slider to slow it down. I'm also in a band that does a lot of things in odd keys. The program allows you to change the pitch, and save the file in the different key.

Again, the trial is free if that's a selling point. My guess is there are a lot of programs that do the same thing, this is just the one I found when I was looking.

One really good thing about these programs, if you're learning a song where the bass is so buried in the mix that you can't make out what they're playing, you can bump the pitch up an octave, and effectively eliminate a lot of the other instruments in the mix. The bass will then really stand out, (as an irritating kind of tinny sound, but easy to pick out.)

 

I have been long-time users of both Transcribe and Amazing Slow Downer. I can highly recommend these over just about any other software or hardware I have tried. They have different strengths.

For slowing down and pitch shifting multiple exercises and songs, ASD is better. Useful if you're practicing multiple exercises for example. I use ASD for primarily practicing. Customer support is good.

For transcribing, not surprisingly, Transcribe is preferable. It does most of what ASD does, albeit on a single file, but also importantly allows you to visually annotate this file as to sections, measures, and beats. This is very helpful when transcribing a song. For really difficult to transcribe passages, one can mark off the measures, visually set to the program to cycle between the desired positions, EQ to pop the bass, slow down the playback, bring the pitch up an octave and set it to a standard key, and adjust the channels (both, either, balance, out of phase). This pops the bass line right out and you can explore the relationship of the line to the beat structure at your leisure.

Both are relatively inexpensive.