Riff Station(This is damn cool)

Not only is this not available on the AppStore, they're also so cheap, apparently, they don't want to pay Apple $100/yr to sign their software, in spite of charging 39 euro per copy, thus screwing their customers by asking them to relax their security settings and accept unsigned software. Unprofessional.
 
Hey Guys,

My name is Dan and I'm one of the creators of Riffstation. I saw all the activity so I thought I'd drop in and say hello. We're really excited about Riffstation and by the looks of it, so are some of you guys. There's 3 of us in Riffstation (Dan, Mikel and Martin) and we're all guitar players ourselves so we're on a mission to build the worlds most awesome guitar jam and practice tool. We still have some work to do to make it better, and feedback from you guys can really help us :) so we really appreciate all of your opinions. We have a big V2 list internally right now and if you guys want to suggest any features or report any bugs, just drop us an email to support@sonicladder.com.

If you guys have any questions about the tech behind Riffstation or questions in general, I'm happy to answer them :). There's a few questions above.

Not only is this not available on the AppStore, they're also so cheap, apparently, they don't want to pay Apple $100/yr to sign their software, in spite of charging 39 euro per copy, thus screwing their customers by asking them to relax their security settings and accept unsigned software. Unprofessional.

We are part of the Apple Developer Platform and we will have an AppStore version out very soon. We only launched on OSX a few weeks before Christmas and the problem was that Apple won't allow us to use our own activation system. As a result we have had to do a whole separate build using Apple's app verification system. This will be fixed soon

Here are a few clips for comparison. Original speed plus half-speed w/ ASD, Transcribe! & Riffstation (type 1 slowdown):

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28651/halfspeedtest.zip

This was a good test. ASD really does sound great. We'll be continuing to make all of our algorithms better in future versions. Our whole thing is to have all of the tools working together (chords, slowdown, pitch, isolate) and as result, we have to process the audio slightly differently than if we were doing any one thing on it's own.

If you have any questions just let me know.

Cheers

Dan
 
Dan,

On the demo, I wasn't able to click-drag to select areas of the file for looping as was done in the demo videos. Is this just a limitation of the demo (I didn't see that mentioned)?
 
Dan,

On the demo, I wasn't able to click-drag to select areas of the file for looping as was done in the demo videos. Is this just a limitation of the demo (I didn't see that mentioned)?

You should be able to make selections just by clicking and dragging on the waveform even with the trial version. The only thing that would stop the click drag working is if the Riff Builder tool is turned on. Go to the Riff Builder tab and make sure the little button on the bottom left is off. It should be off by default at start up.
 
CodePoet--when you drag across the waveform you should see it change different colors and show the number of beats/measures.

Then, make sure and punch on the infinity icon down by the play button. That's what starts it looping. I was having the same problem you were until I figured that out.
 
You should be able to make selections just by clicking and dragging on the waveform even with the trial version. The only thing that would stop the click drag working is if the Riff Builder tool is turned on. Go to the Riff Builder tab and make sure the little button on the bottom left is off. It should be off by default at start up.

I tried again and it works. The Riff Builder must have been turned on. Thanks!
 
Wow this is great.
Hi Dan,
I wanted to know will your updated revisions be free updates?
The chord recognition system needs a a lot of work still to recognise bigger chords like
13 chords,slash chords etc. But still the software is very promising.

Keep up the great work.
 
Wow this is great.
Hi Dan,
I wanted to know will your updated revisions be free updates?
The chord recognition system needs a a lot of work still to recognise bigger chords like
13 chords,slash chords etc. But still the software is very promising.
Keep up the great work.

The updates will be free for all of the existing tools. But, if we add some brand new tools we may apply an upgrade fee. In terms of the chord analysis...yeah, we have our work cut out for us! It's one of the most difficult problems to solve in music software. We'll be constantly trying to increase the effectiveness of the chord recognition algorithm.
 
The updates will be free for all of the existing tools. But, if we add some brand new tools we may apply an upgrade fee. In terms of the chord analysis...yeah, we have our work cut out for us! It's one of the most difficult problems to solve in music software. We'll be constantly trying to increase the effectiveness of the chord recognition algorithm.
Thanks for the prompt reply Dan.
Keep up the great work,you guys are doing
a marvellous job.
 
Hey Dan.
You emailed with me extensively a few weeks ago getting the app to install on my isolated Win7 DAW system. Glad you are monitoring the pulse of this user forum......it is a great group.

I have a feature request for you....

The ability to load multiple songs, remember transpose settings and cycle through them. I normally have to learn 3-10 new songs at a time. Right now I use Reaper to load them all up and cycle through them for practice. That relegates Riffstation to sniffing out chords or riffs in the tougher songs. If it could load up a group of songs, I could stop using Reaper for practice. For Riffstation to be that one stop shop practice tool I think it needs this capability.
 
Hey Dan.
You emailed with me extensively a few weeks ago getting the app to install on my isolated Win7 DAW system. Glad you are monitoring the pulse of this user forum......it is a great group.

I have a feature request for you....

The ability to load multiple songs, remember transpose settings and cycle through them. I normally have to learn 3-10 new songs at a time. Right now I use Reaper to load them all up and cycle through them for practice. That relegates Riffstation to sniffing out chords or riffs in the tougher songs. If it could load up a group of songs, I could stop using Reaper for practice. For Riffstation to be that one stop shop practice tool I think it needs this capability.

I've just added it to the list :) I totally see the benefit in that.
 
Thanks Dan....I don't want to be greedy, but since you do see the usefulness of multiple song loading let me add one more twist.

When I practice for a gig I like to put all songs in set list order on one track in Reaper, separating them by 5-10 secs of dead space. This way I can push play and practice the whole set front to back just as it will be performed.
This may seem a bit anal, but helps me especially remember intro riffs where I'm responsible for kicking off the songs.

So if Riffstation could load multiple songs, remember transpose settings, let the user adjust the sequence order to match a set list, play through the list of songs and let the user set a time gap between songs......that would be my perfect scenario.

Thanks for listening.
 
Hi Dan, good to talk to you :)

I'm very interested in this kind of software. I've been in touch with Andy Robinson, the creator of "trancribe!", giving input and feedback.
I was also on the phone with Heath Nicholson, who invented "Riff Master Pro". I was excited about the idea of a visually more appealing software with the featureset of "transcribe!" Unfortunately Heath was interested in all my ideas except for the most important issue... sound quality.
None of the other programms deliver the slow down sound quality of "transcribe!" or "amazing slowdowner". Also "transcribe!" being the simple little programm it is offers very nice and intuitive tools to store and organize loops. This is super handy for learning and revisiting songs!
I'm not sure if you will be able to improve the soundquality of your slow down algorythm or if you actually think it's that important. For me personally it is. That's why I'm using "transcribe!" until "ASD" catches up on features or something more modern with the same quality comes along...

Thanks for listening.
 
But my friend said that his music teacher recommended strongly not to buy this,since it may well make the ear training a lazy process and a person
would feel complacent on the ear training front.

This is fking spades.

Transcription is an essential musical skill.
I meet loads of musicians with absolutely HORRENDOUS ears.

Spend the time learning to properly transcribe and software like this is utterly pointless.

No offence to the developer but honestly if you want to be a better guitarist then you will put the work in to acquire the skills rather than rely on software such as this.
 
There's no doubt that learning to transcribe by ear is a skill that will pay off in many ways and make you a better listener. But there's definitely a place for tools like this. Being able to shift pitch and speed offers a greater chance to catch what is impossible in real time. Being able to isolate parts as done in this software lets you hear things that were inaudible - that's very cool. I don't agree that using it is necessarily bad for your musical development. It's a tool - use it as it best suits you.
 
There's no doubt that learning to transcribe by ear is a skill that will pay off in many ways and make you a better listener. But there's definitely a place for tools like this. Being able to shift pitch and speed offers a greater chance to catch what is impossible in real time. Being able to isolate parts as done in this software lets you hear things that were inaudible - that's very cool. I don't agree that using it is necessarily bad for your musical development. It's a tool - use it as it best suits you.

+1

I've developed a reasonable ear over the years, but I still find things like this useful sometimes. I probably wouldn't be using the chord thingy or whatever, but being able to slow stuff down and isolate things are great tools to have, especially when you're working on more complex music or very dense mixes. You still need to use your ears to figure out the parts from there. For more beginner types I imagine it would also be a great thing to have. Better to be still using your ears to work things out than to just rely on tabs, which are mostly rubbish anyway but you're a noob and don't know any better.

Also, most of my musical ear hasn't even come from working out songs, it's come from just playing and improvising. For a guitarist of 15 years or so, I actually know very few songs. Just not particularly interested in learning to play other people's songs. The times I do work songs out, it's usually more for other people. What I will do though is just play along to whatever I've got on in the background, follow or harmonise with vocal lines, generally piss about over the top of things. IMO, to claim these kinds of software will only slow one's development or whatever is rather misguided.
 
This is fking spades.

Transcription is an essential musical skill.
I meet loads of musicians with absolutely HORRENDOUS ears.

Spend the time learning to properly transcribe and software like this is utterly pointless.

No offence to the developer but honestly if you want to be a better guitarist then you will put the work in to acquire the skills rather than rely on software such as this.

While I agree that transcription is an essential tool, there are other parts of this software that are extremely useful. For instance, slowing things down to be able to transcribe complex passages, isolating the guitar to get a clearer picture of what's going on, and the ability to loop sections are all valuable to somebody that's working to develop their ear. The chord detection only detects the most basic things, which imo limits it's functionality to anybody besides a beginner.

Also, it's impossible to be able to identify a C7 chord if you don't know what it is or sounds like, just like you can't know Red is Red until somebody or something tells you that's what it is... though proper ear training is a much better way to go about learning that. musictheory.net is an amazing resource.

At the end of the day, I'm likely going to pick up this software because it'll help when trying to decipher some solos. This evening I learned Collective Soul's "Gel" solo by ear... that was a real bugger. I wish I could've slowed it down... I still can't quite get it up to speed, but I have the notes figured out. I have 3 more songs to learn by next weekend.
 
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