Audacity

[norvegicusbass]

I have a copy of Audacity from which I am trying to slow down and part isolate bass tracks to be able to learn them more accurately. Thing is when I try to slow down the track even a little bit the level of distortion makes listening to the line virtually impossible. For those of you who have tried Audacity what manipulations do you use to better hear the bass part? I used to have a copy of transcribe which was superior in my opinion so I might just end up buying that instead.

[ChrisB]

I used to use Audacity a lot but found that Reaper does a much better job of pretty much everything. You can import mp3s and slow them down without altering the pitch or loop specific parts you want to learn and there's plenty of EQ and effects included as standard. It's awesome for recording too. There's a free trial which is essentially unlimited and loads of tutorials available online....

[Mornats]

+1 for Reaper in general although I did something quite different for my attempts at learning YYZ. I found a midi file of the track (not easy to find for most tracks to be fair), split it out into separate channels, popped a suitable virtual instrument onto each track and halved the BPM. And of course with it being virtual instruments being triggered by midi events there's no distortion at all. I can even mute the bassline and er, mangle it myself and have a listen back too.

[norvegicusbass]

Thanks for the replies. Never heard of Reaper but going to give it a try.

[51m0n]

+1 for Reaper, it uses far more advanced stretching algorithms than audacity for this kind of thing

[heminder]

If you want to stay with libre software, give Ardour a shot. [url="http://ardour.org/"]http://ardour.org/[/url]

[uncle psychosis]

I use audacity to slow down tunes all the time and never had problems. How much are you slowing it by?

[norvegicusbass]

[quote name='uncle psychosis' timestamp='1345186999' post='1774615']
I use audacity to slow down tunes all the time and never had problems. How much are you slowing it by?
[/quote]

I have tried all speeds from say 30-90 percent. It also doesnt allow me to alter the speed or EQ while the mp3 is running so I have to stop it and alter it then restart.

[uncle psychosis]

[quote name='norvegicusbass' timestamp='1345198242' post='1774794']
I have tried all speeds from say 30-90 percent. It also doesnt allow me to alter the speed or EQ while the mp3 is running so I have to stop it and alter it then restart.
[/quote]

90%? I don't think there's any software that will cope at anywhere near that. I typically use between 15-20%. The Tascam "slowdown" practice tools will only go up to 50% and even then I imagine they sound pretty crap at 50%.

[Norris]

If you pitch shift everything up an octave it will make it much easier to hear the bassline.

[51m0n]

Just get Reaper, its free to try out, andf cheap as hell for what it does.

You can slow down whilst playing etc

Audacity is free, but a toy in comparison.