Transcribing solos is an essential instructional project for intermediate/advanced level improvisers. Over the years, it has been the "bread and butter" activity to analyze the artistry of the great jazz artists. But because so much time and effort are required, it is not the most popular assignment! One shortcut is to record the original recording onto a tape recorder, and play it back at half speed making it easier to hear and analyze the faster licks. Unfortunately, playing back a solo at half-speed results in the solo sounding an octave lower so the tenor sax or trombone solo sounds like a tuba, thus muddy and difficult to clearly hear pitch. Another limitation is that half speed is often not enough. For the beginner, even slow solos may need to be heard at much slower speeds so the notes can be heard cleanly and clearly. Besides, many solos are even too fast to transcribe accurately at ˝ speed. It's nice to have 1/10 speed when you are transcribing Oscar Peterson for example. Bebop style jazz lines often contain lot of chromatic approach notes which are very difficult to transcribe accurately.

But here comes new technology to the rescue! Now you can use your personal computer (Windows or Macintosh) to do professional quality transcriptions. Transkriber by Reed Kotler Systems, allows you to duplicate the original recording onto your computer and save it as a .WAV file on PC computers or AIFF files on Macintosh. Once duplicated into RAM, Transcriber allows you to digitally slow down the original recording without changing the pitch. The solo instrument will sound identical to the original recording while you listen to it at any playback speed. The slowed playback happens in realtime, which means that there is no need to generate intermediate .WAV or AIFF files at different speeds. You can even change the speed while playback is going on. The original recording can be on LP, tape or compact disc as long as it is connected to the input jack of your soundcard.

There are only three steps to transcribe with Transkriber. Before using the software, plug the recording source into the input the input connection on your soundcard. You can by-pass this if the recording source is the internal CD player of your computer. Once the Transkriber is running, go to the appropriate screen selection for either record or CD player. Now your ready to transcribe.

1. Play the solo you want on your computer's CD, tape recorder or record player hooked to your soundcard.

2. Record as much music as you want using the Transkriber, using the easy recording panel.

3. Play the music back at any speed, from 3/4, 2/3, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, .. 1/26 of the original speed without changing the pitch.

There are also other features that can further enhance your transcribing experience beyond playback speed reduction. For example, you can opt for phrase selection which allows you to focus on one section of the music at a time. This looping feature is helpful when the part is difficult to understand or the notes are too fast to clearly discern from each other.

Another feature is the ability to incorporate different algorithms, tuning and smoothing filters. You can configure the Transkribers' speed mechanism to your own taste, including transposing the solo into any diatonic key up or down an octave. This can be particularly useful when the original solo is in a difficult key and by transposing you can put it into an easier key for your instrument.

There is a built-in pitch generator to help you identify which note is being played on the recording without the need to go back to your instrument for reference. So you can transcribe at night without making a sound or in a college lab without bothering others. I particularly like the built-in equalizer and filters. They reinforce or remove certain frequency bands from the music so you can focus on the part you are transcribing. The left/right stereo control is useful when one of the stereo tracks needs to be amplified more. In addition, there is a pitch control option that allows you to change the pitch slightly. This can be helpful when the recordings are slightly out of tune. Adjustments can be made to adjust the pitch up or down to within 100^th of a semitone. You can also select output channels which is useful when the instrument you are transcribing is more prominent on one of the channels.

Transkriber has a vocal eliminator which offers some creative ways to transcribe. This feature takes the "center" out of the mix on a stereo recording. Generally on pop recordings, this is where the vocal is mixed so by turning that feature on, the vocal will almost disappear. It works great on Ella Fitzgerald big-band stereo recordings and the like. This greatly simplifies transcribing the rhythm section and also can be a nice tool for a singers or others wishing to create play-along practice materials from original recordings..

What makes this product work so well is that the interface is so intuitive with screen displays that look like a tape recorder/compact disc display. With relatively few pull-down menus to work with, the software management is very simple and straight-forward. There is even a volume control to give you the best playback control. I really appreciate the many increments of playback speed that are possible. In order to get optimum results, you need a full-duplex soundcard on your computer so that you can record the solo and simultaneously listen to the solo to insure that you are recording the what you want. Notebook computers usually do not have full-duplex soundcards, so you can't simultaneously listen to the recording as you are recording on this type of computer. There is a new PCMCIA soundcard by E-mu that offers full-duplex capabilities for notebook computers. See sidebar for more information. Desktop computers usually have full-duplex capabilities.

Installation is a snap. Hardware configurations are not complicated except that you will need a full-duplex soundcard to be able to hear the solo excerpt you are recording into RAM. Macintosh system requirements include PowerPC or Motorola 68k with a minimum of 20 MB RAM with an optional CD player for CD features. PC Windows 95 requirements include: a Pentium computer or faster. A 486 DX 66 MHZ computer will have trouble running in real-time with the newest algorithms. Hard disk drive space is minimal except that I don't recommend recording a long solo of five minutes or more because digital recording space generally requires 10 MB for stereo per minute at a sampling rate of 16 bit, 44 Khz stereo. That means a five-minute solo could be a 50 MB file! Instead, I recommend saving the solo in shorter segments of 30 seconds or so which are also more convenient for transcribing. Be aware that on a Windows machine, you don't need to save the wave file, but most people choose to. On the Mac platform, you have to. On the Windows platform, there are more recording options so you could choose to use a lower sampling rate or number of bits per sample. On the Mac side, it's more restrictive for recording, but playback is flexible. The Mac recorder only gives a few options for recording sample rate. However in practice, it's not a limitation and there are a lot of shareware recorders for the Mac which will let you set the parameters anyway you want. For some older Macs, you might choose a lower sample rate so that the Transkriber can keep up. But with the new version of Transkriber, you can save the AIFF file and play it back at full speed so even the old Macs will work fine. It's also possible on the Mac to get the audio transferred directly to an AIFF file without the need for the recording step. You can either use Apple Movie Player (free on Mac) or use a third-party program (FWB CD ROM Toolkit - free on most Mac clones and $49.95 for others. See http://www.fwb.com). The beauty of the full-duplex soundcard capability is that you can record just the excerpts as you desire to transcribe.

To my surprise, the Reed Kotler Music also produces a "black box" called the TR-1000 Digital Music Study Recorder. It is a standalone unit (no need for a computer) used as an aid to learning licks and solos from CD's and tapes. Solos may be slowed to as much 1/26 of the original speed without changing the pitch. It can digitally record 95 seconds of music at 22 khz or 190 seconds of music at 11 khz with playback speed from 3/4, 2/3, 1/2, 1/3, to 1/26 along with playback controls for play, rewind, pause, etc. It has features such as looping left/right channel selector, pitch adjustment +/- 100 cents and transpose +/- 12 semitones. Two features it doesn't presently have that the software has are the equalizer and the vocal eliminator (reinforced rhythm section) features. But it does have 2 RCA jack stereo line inputs with line adjust control and LED overload indicator along with 1/4 inch guitar input and 1/4 inch stereo/mono keyboard input plus 2 RCA jack stereo line output, stereo headphone output, headphone volume control. The advantage of the TR-1000 is that you don't need a computer. You simply plug in the external CD-ROM, record player or tape recorder and start the transcribing process exactly as described previously but without a computer. It uses AC power. An external battery pack may be available in the future. The TR-1000 is a must for the avid transcribing students. List price is $219.95. Important: the TR-1000 uses a socketed pre-programmed microcontroller which may be upgraded with new features and improvements as they become available.

How well does Transkriber work? The fastest answer is to check out Reed Kotler's web page at: http://www.reedkotler.com. Besides all of the info about the product, there are audio samples where solos that have been slowed down using the Transkriber can be heard in different audio formats. The samples are saved at the web site in RealAudio, Windows 95 .WAV and/or Macintosh .AIFF file formats. There is also a handy selection at this web page that provides questions and answers to common operating procedures. For example, "when I insert a CD into my CD-ROM drive, Windows 95 immediately starts playing the CD. How do I turn this feature off?" Another question is "I can only record form my microphone, and not the CD-ROM or external line-in. What should I do to correct this situation?"

No question about it, Transkriber is an innovative product that opens up new frontiers for jazz educators. The nice thing about it is that once you have saved the solo, you have a multitude of ways to enhance it so that you can transcribe it quicker and easier. I particularly like saving the solo on my hard disk drive as a file. You don't need the original recording. And with the TR-1000, you can go any place without a computer and conveniently transcribe on demand. At $49.95 for the software and $219.95 for the TR-1000, both products are priced right! Both products are also useful for playing a transcription along with the original recording. Some people like to do this. They play a transcription along with the original at slower speeds until they work the tempo up to the original speed or close to it. What a challenge to get an Oscar Peterson or Tal Farlow solo up to tempo.

The need for full-duplex soundcard capabilities is becoming more important. Today's computer music software applications are more demanding with digital recording sound-on-sound tracks, transcribing from analog recordings, jamming "live" on the Internet, and video conferencing. Notebooks have long been manufactured with SoundBlaster Pro compatible soundcards that are half-duplex. And while you can do sound-on-sound recording in MIDI with a half-duplex soundcard you can't outside of MIDI such as with digital recording and transcribing software applications. One company, E-mu, has paid particular attention to full-duplex soundcard capabilities on both Windows 95 desktop and notebook computers.

The EMU8710 Audio PC Card (PCMCIA type II) is for musicians and professional presenters who need to take full-duplex professional-quality software applications on the road with Windows 95 laptop computers that can capture, edit and produce digital audio files outside of a studio environment. It provides both streaming audio capabilities and high quality music featuring wavetable synthesized sounds of 16 bit/44.1 khz stereo audio playback and mono recording capabilities. It has true 32-voice polyphony with no "double voice" presets, 2 MB general MIDI wave table synthesizer with built-in special effects. It can be loaded with up to 512 KB of RAM of new sounds utilizing Soundfont Technology to compliment the 300+ integrated General MIDI and GS sounds. Individual presets, entire banks and even individual .WAV files can be loaded into memory and triggered by MIDI. I particularly like the MABOX (MIDI/Audio Breakout box) with stereo headphone out (3.5mm), stereo audio line-level, input (3.5mm), S/PDIF digital line out and MIDI in and out connectors. Also comes with full versions of Cakewalk Express SETM, Sonic Foundry SoundForge xP 3.0, SoundTrek Jammer Hit Session andn Creative Labs Vienna SoundFont Studio that isi valued at $300+. Minimum hardware for the PCMCIA card is a Pentium 75 MHz CPU with a PC card slot and Windows 95.

For desktop computers, the E-mu Creation Studio takes an industry soundcard by Creative Labs and makes it better via hardware/software bundling. The Creation Studio is for the person who needs a complete, affordable solution for desktop music, sampling, and sound production. The E-mu Creation Studio bundles the Creative Labs AWE64 Gold audio card with an additional 4 MB of Soundfont RAM (8 MB total) and a suite of full versions of the popular MIDI audio/music software such as Cakewalk's Express SE, Sonic Foundry's SoundForge XP 3.0, SoundTrek's Jammer Hit Session, and Creative Labs' Vienna SoundFont Editor and several SoundFont examples. Also included is a S/PDIF digital output connector and a free MIDI interface cable. I particularly like how this bundling contains a standard soundcard for professional applications with the additional RAM and suite of popular software at a street price of about $325.00. That represents a great price when considering the soundcard with additional RAM is not much beyond the soundcard's list price. The list price of the bundled software is over $300.00 by itself! What makes this soundcard exceptional is the EMU8000 synthesis chip set.

With either of these products by E-mu, you are hardware ready to go work on either a notebook or desktop computer with the latest music software applications out there at professional standards! E-mu Systems, founded in 1972, has been an industry pioneer in the digital sampling technology market.

Mac's without full-duplex capabilities include: the Quadra 630, Quadra 605, all PowerBook 1xx, all Duo 2xx, and all Macintosh Performa and LC models with 680x0 processors. In addition, the MacII series either have no built-in audio input or they have the same hardware limitation. For Mac users without full-duplex capabilities, there are some trick's to help you overcome this situation for Transkriber. See Reed Kotler's home page, http://www.reedkotler.com/transkriber/macfaq.htm, for information and specific directions on how to transfer audio directly form a CD to an AIFF file. There is also a preview option to let you know that the recording was done in the right place before saving to the hard disk drive. This procedure will also produce the best quality sound for transcribing purposes since the binary data from the CD is copied directly to an AIFF without the need to sample the data through an audio path.

There's also a permanent software fix for Macintosh's not capable of full-duplex audio or without built-in sound capability. Consider installing Sound Advantage by Heart Computer, Inc.; it will let you produce sounds in full-duplex mode. For example, if you are video conferencing, it allows you to interrupt someone as they're speaking, just like a telephone. Although it is not designed for music quality, you may want to investigate its full-duplex capabilities. Installing Sound Advantage is simple. Place an extension in your system folder, and plug the Sound Advantage into your Macintosh's serial port. The Sound Advantage's pass-through serial port connects you to another serial port device. Switch between the two by simply flicking a switch. Sound Advantage features include: easy plug-in installation, and 8-bit sound up to 22 Khz which matches the older Mac's sound output capabilities and is quite adequate for telephony and some music applications. The switched pass-through serial port connector eliminates fumbling with cables. The hardware device has a sliding gain level control along with a built-in microphone, mike-level and line-level sockets. The Sound Advantage is compatible with most video/audio - conferencing software, such as QuickTime, the Apple Sound Input Manager, Virtual Memory and RAM doubler software products.