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Thread: Using garageband as a "slowdowner"

  1. #1
    Registered User luckylarue's Avatar
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    I just moved the tune "The Old Mountaineer" into garageband thinking I could easily slow the tempo down to help w/ learning. However, adjusting the tempo seems to have no affect during playback. Any ideas or suggestions? I'm hoping I don't need to get the Amazing Slowdowner if this works.

    Much obliged...

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    Yes this works great. When you dump the tune from Itunes to GB (i think but will check tonight) you hold down contol-alt-G and click on the song which should be orange. After you click on the tune, it'll turn blue then you can change the tempo/timing whatever.

    Feel free to pm me tonight, I have the imac book that explaines everything.

    It does work great, way better than slowdowner or slowblast. imho.

    JM

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    OK, I checked my book here's what you do.

    After you import or drag and drop a song from I-tunes into GB the song will be orange. Press Control-Option-G and click anywhere in the song. The song will turn blue and you'll be able to change the temp from there.

    It really works great. I find the spot I want to learn, cut it out and delete everything else then tell GB to loop the track and it'll play forever or until you get sick of it.

    Hope this helps.

    jm

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    Try Audacity, it's free, one of its many uses is slowing down tunes without changing pitch.

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    Modulator ;) PhilGE's Avatar
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    I beg to differ... I am using a G4 eMac 1Ghz processor and the sound quality degrades very quickly using GB to slow down a tune. At 50% of recorded speed, playback sounds very warbly and poor in quality. At less than 50%, it's pretty bad to my ears. By great contract, using Transcribe!, I was able to slow down a tune to 15% with amazing retention of sound quality. Try playing back Thile and Marshall's Shamrock Shore at 15% of recorded speed, but turn up the volume and turn down the lights. It's, iike, wow, man... ethereal... You can hear some of the notes detune as fingers are lifted off frets - and wow, really, wow, those guys play incredibly cleanly!

    But seriously, I was quite impressed. I've owned the software for quite some time and hadn't put it to such a test before.

    -Phil




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    Don't have a problem on my quad core 2.66 intel... sound quality is fine

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    Modulator ;) PhilGE's Avatar
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    Hmm... I wonder if it's my processor speed or amount of memory. Maybe it's time for a memory upgrade to speed things up.

    One tip, if the tune has a fairly fast tempo, set the tempo in the blank GB window to over 200. That way, you will have a greater range of tempo to slow down the tune. When I first tried this, I used the standard 120 bpm, but could only drop the tune by 50% down to 60 bps. Setting the tempo to 200+ allows you to reduce tempo somewhere around 28% (my math abilities are weak this morning).

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    I'm running a new Imac duel, sound quality is good.

    jm

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    Registered User luckylarue's Avatar
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    There must be something I'm missing. Changing the tempo has no effect on the tempo when I play the tune. I did the control/alt/g and got a purple screen but, again, cannot change the tempo. So, the song plays at normal speed no matter what the tempo setting is. Any ideas?
    Thanks for the feedback.




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