Billed as software that gives you the tools to learn your favourite songs directly from the recording and to practice them efficiently — Aurally Sound Song Master Pro uses advanced machine learning and deep learning algorithms to determine a song's high-level sections, chords, bars, beats, time signature, key, and tuning. Nick Jennison reviews.
We all know how important practice is. Whether you're the kind of obsessive character that spends hours on end in the woodshed, or you have a similar attitude to practice as you do vegetables (you know you don't get enough, but you're not about to break the habit of a lifetime), we can all recognise that there's one route to getting ahead with your playing, and it's practice.
It can be a little laborious, though, and this is where apps like Song Master Pro come in. It's an all-in-one suite of carefully thought-out practice tools designed to make your practice sessions more streamlined, more efficient and ultimately more enjoyable.
You begin by importing a song, either by dragging and dropping or with the side menu. The AI almost instantly detects not only the song's key and tempo but also marks out the various sections of the song as colour-coded regions and even detects the chord changes and displays them under the sections. The detection is very accurate and makes learning the outline of a track an absolute breeze - if you know your stuff, you can have a song learned in less time than it takes to listen to it all the way through!
That's just the beginning, though. The next set of tools pertains to pitch and tempo. You can easily adjust the speed of your imported song with the speed slider, which does a very impressive job of preserving not only pitch but also tone and quality, all the way down to 10% speed, which is frankly nuts. You can also adjust the pitch in both full semitones but also in cents - very useful for learning those classic AC/DC (or Stones, or Beatles, or whoever) tracks that are in something like "A five-eighths flat", or even Pantera tunes from their "we tune down a quarter tone" era.
The next tool available to you is the ability to separate a complete mix out into stems, which you can solo, mute or remix. This is accomplished with AI, and is shockingly good for such a simple process. I you want to solo the guitars so you can hear those fine details without the drums, bass and vocals getting in the way, you can do that. You can then mute those guitars and play along with the original rhythm section and lead vocal. Once you're done, and you've decided on a key that works for your preferred tuning (or your vocal range, if you're singing), you can export the resulting remixed track as an audio file for practicing to or even playing live to if you're doing clinics or solo shows.
That said, you're probably better off just keeping the file in Song Master Pro and using that to play back your audio. It's easily stable and lightweight enough for live use, but it also allows you to trigger external devices via MIDI and OSC commands, meaning you can automate patch changes on your effects, trigger your light show or even switch cameras in a streaming setup, all hands-free and automatically at just the right point in your song. You can also stack up several of these tracks in a playlist, which you can use as a setlist for your show.
Song Master Pro promises a lot, and delivers much more. It's a very well thought out and easy to use, and offers some really powerful practice and performing tools. It's definitely something I can see myself using in the future, and if you're curious you can check out a free demo version today.
For more information, please visit:
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