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Show HN: SlowTube – Learn songs by ear by slowing them down
- TooCreative 7y agoThis is cool. But the name is a bit misleading. I have the same 0.25x - 2x speed range on Youtube anyhow. What it adds is the looping capability. So this is rather LoopTube then SlowTube. By the way: It would be nice if something like this would be available with better sound quality for slow speeds. I am now half way through listening to this at 0.25: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjjfSESoC4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjjfSESoC4s With better sound quality this would be pretty epic ...
- waiseristy 7y agoThe looping feature is a nice addition
- felipellrocha 7y agoImo, not everyone knows they can slow things down on youtube, and "slowtube" transmit the idea they're trying to build much better than "looptube" despite it being slightly inaccurate.
- aasasd 7y agoIn my experience VLC is pretty good at slowing sound down. It can also play videos straight from Youtube.
- TooCreative 7y agoTrying it now. At 0.3x it also has these weird ripples in the sound as if it just loops very short sequences. There must be a better way!
- aasasd 7y agoThere are very specialized filters for extreme stretching, e.g. ‘PaulStretch’ is popular among the ‘800%’ stretch-meme crowd. But it adds a distinct ethereal quality. Audacity seems to have this filter, and might be alright at stretching in general. Command-line `sox` also does slowing down better than ffmpeg at speeds like 0.7, but dunno about 0.3.
- TooCreative 7y agoInteresting. Just tried PaulStretch. While it sounds more "logical" without the strange micro-repeats, it takes all of the punch out of the music. On youtube, at x0.25 a drum hit goes from KABOUM! to something like: KAKAKABOBOBOBUMUMUM While with PaulStretch, it goes to something like: FFHHAHAHCHCHOHUHMHH No kick, no pressure behind the lower frequencies anymore. It sounds like it is far far in the distance.
- aasasd 7y agoSounds about right, that's why PaulStretch is typically used to create otherworldly ‘ambient’ soundscapes. Something like Brian Eno turned back into proper Eno: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnoX3E2WFcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnoX3E2WFcc
- elwell 7y ago> With better sound quality this would be pretty epic ... Yeah I was hoping it had some kind of aesthetically advanced interpolation on the audio.
- frosted-flakes 7y agoYou can loop on YouTube, at least in the browser. Just right click on the player and select "Loop".
- waiseristy 7y agoYou can loop the entire video, not sections of it
- rozap 7y agoI built a similar web thing a while back, except it allowed real-time arbitrary slowing down, and at high quality. The issue was that it was a copyright lawsuit waiting to happen, given that it ripped the audio from youtube. It works well and is all web based, but I'm too scared to release it to beyond just my friends and myself. The options that won't make lawyers get involved are limited, which is possibly why op did it this way.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- unlinked_dll 7y agook this is awesome. I've been doing this manually in reaper for years! One thing though, the "slow down" algorithm you're using is really wack sounding. Have you looked at phase-vocoder based approaches, or overlap-save?
- undefined_user6 7y agoI think it's just youtube's playback algorithm
- dkthehuman 7y agoYeah, unfortunately, YouTube's algorithm causes a lot of noise so I may try one of the approaches you mentioned down the road. Thanks for the pointers!
- reggieband 7y agoReminds me of a simplified Soundslice[1]. I believe soundslice was started by Adrian Holovaty, one of the originators of the Django web framework. For what it is worth, learning by ear is a fantastic way to improve skill as a musician. Slowing down songs is a great way to assist learning by ear. 1. https://www.soundslice.com/ https://www.soundslice.com/
- adrianh 7y agoYour belief is correct. :-) Greetings from Adrian. Yeah, we started Soundslice as a way to sync guitar tablature with YouTube videos, and it included a very nice UI for making precise loops (by dragging across a timeline). That was launched in 2012, but in 2014 we changed our product considerably, leading to the product we have today.
- reggieband 7y agoAs an aside - I've been following you on youtube since long before 2012. I think I found you looking for Django Reinhardt videos and I was surprised when I realized you were also associated with the Django web framework which I had been using. You were one of those weird cross-over moments where two seemingly unrelated interests of mine happened to share a common link. When I first started watching you I believe you were just learning the guitar. I've watched as you learned and grew as a musician, then you toured I think with some Gypsy Jazz group. Heck, you just appeared on Josh Turner's channel doing a duo ... another surprising cross-over. I just thought it might be nice for you to hear that someone is quietly watching what you are up to and that I draw inspiration from the things you produce.
- adrianh 7y agoThanks for the nice comment! Made my day. :-)
- postit 7y ago0.75x please
- lhuser123 7y agoThis. Also 0.95x and 0.90x. Even better, let user put whatever speed feels better. That way can also be used for improvement in foreign language accent reduction.
- tinyhouse 7y agoVery cool! I installed a youtube looper in my browser that allows me to loop on selected time frames. But it's not very friendly so I will definitely check this out.
- aasasd 7y agoBTW, slowing down idm and similar busy electronic music, in the manner of vinyl, is quite solid entertainment. Aphex Twin is known for this, so much so that RDJ admitted he knows about this and suggested that ‘RDJ Album’ could be listened at 33 RPM to obtain an album of ‘standard’ 45 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWqf17mUyoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWqf17mUyoQ You need to take care to properly slow down the audio, though, with corresponding pitch shift down. Not ‘stretching’ it keeping the pitch constant. Apparently the genre of New Beat stemmed in large part from DJs playing rave records at wrong tempos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yBvP3616Wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yBvP3616Wc (see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XUipCxjmmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XUipCxjmmw). I've also had similarly splendid results with slowing down hard house (specifically my favorite compilation Insomnia Vol.2 from Tidy Trax). It turned into proper house with lotsa relaxed steady drive but much more engaging sound. On your own machine, both workstation and telephone, VLC can alter the playing speed with good quality and proper pitch shift (or with no shift!). For batch converting, `sox` is a good choice—ffmpeg botches the sound for some reason.
- solstice 7y agoNewpipe (very good alternative YouTube app on android) also supports independently changing speed/pitch. (The button to unlink both is a bit hidden: press the "1x" control when playing a video, then scroll down in the modal that pops up)
- spats1990 7y agoI too love slowed songs, and slowing down songs myself. Also, would recommend DJ Screw as a classic entrypoint into the closely related and timehonoured rap tradition of chopped and screwed songs.[1] There are also quite a few people on YouTube who do solid slowed versions of... a lot of different genres. Some of their versions I like better than the originals. Some channels keep getting copyright-struck though. I'll edit some links into this comment when I'm not at work,if any of those are still up. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y4qntzxdoF0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y4qntzxdoF0 DJ Screw wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ_Screw https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ_Screw
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
- dekhn 7y agoAlso fun: paulstretch I use it to take Gyuto monks chanting and turn it into cccccchhhhhaaaaaannnnnnttttttiiiiiinnnnnnggggg.
- dekhn 7y agoI used to listen to Scott Joplin records at a slower speed (back in the day, my record player had a switch that ran the record at different speeds). really liked it.
- dingojohnsons 7y agoSure beats recording to a loop cassette tape and pitching down with vari-speed. From a convenience standpoint anyway
- chasebank 7y agoThis is perfect for golf! Thanks!
- mellosouls 7y agoFWIW offline alternatives include Riff Studio for Android. I assume there are alternatives for that and iPhone. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.brazzi64.riffstudio https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.brazzi64.r...
- simlevesque 7y agoAny DJ Screw fans out here ?
- lightedman 7y agoI do this using AIMP2 (AIMP3 has a worse pitch shifter/tempo adjuster) along with the vocal remover (as most guitar parts you want to know are off to one side or another so they come through) for learning guitar parts.
- akdor1154 7y agoDamnit I have wanted to make exactly this, you beat me to it. Nice job. :)
- schoolunch 7y agoA recommendation would be isolating frequency ranges and also selecting mono/left/right to isolate a single guitar/instrument.
- cairo_x 7y agoTo learn something by ear is to simply remember the sound/song and then repeat it intuitively (as opposed to reading music or copying finger positions).
- mtb2718 7y agoI developed a web app to slow down music arbitrarily, isolate tracks, set loops, and sync with video lessons a while back to solve my own needs when learning to play new songs on guitar. It’s now owned by Hal Leonard (I have no affiliation anymore), who have added a ton of amazing content. Here’s a preview (full songs are behind a paywall): https://www.guitarinstructor.com/product/g-plus/dire-straits/sultans-of-swing/1000218264 https://www.guitarinstructor.com/product/g-plus/dire-straits...
- adrianh 7y agoAh, you’re the guy who made that? I make Soundslice (https://www.soundslice.com/ https://www.soundslice.com/), which is also about synced sheet music. Kudos from an industry peer. Did you make it to sell it? I assumed it had always been a Hal Leonard product and didn’t realize they’d done an acquisition.
- mtb2718 7y agoI’m a big fan of Soundslice! More specifically, the G-Plus lesson interface of Guitar Instructor used to be Tunessence. It was a labor of love that we definitely did not build with the intention of selling. We wanted to teach people music through their favorite songs. Ultimately the licensing required to do that proved to be a hurdle we couldn’t clear, so we’re very grateful the product is able to live on in a great home. As the largest publisher of music, Hal Leonard was an obvious and great fit.
- mb_72 7y agoGood, perhaps, in a pinch but I and all musos I know already have their favourite looping / slow-down / EQ / song segment apps. I use Anytune Pro on an iPad, myself, and for one thing it has fractional speed adjustment - 0.5 / 0.75 / 1 etc is just too broad a range, especially as I like practicing things at 0.7 then 0.8 then 0.9 etc if they are particular tricky to get down.
- 1337shadow 7y agoThis works well, if you want to reproduce a song and get every single note right, been using mplayer myself so far which also works to slow down songs.
- leni536 7y agoI have used mpv for something like this before. '[' and ']' changes playback speed and 'l' sets the loop-points. Using the --af=rubberband=pitch-scale=<value> command-line option is also helpful if the melody you want to transcribe is too low or too high for you to decipher easily.