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Software To Slow Down Music | Riffmaster Pro Review


Riffmaster Pro Review | Software To Slow Down Music

Why using a slow down software could make you a better musician

One of the best ways to improve our musicianship is to

listen to our favorite tunes

and
try to play them
correctly. Nowadays tons of ear training apps and many

guitar learning software

are
available, but nothing can beat the

old-fashioned
way

to practice along with our preferred artists.

Article Update: what happened to Riffmaster Pro?

This article was about Riffmaster Pro, which now is discontinued.

A better alternative is
Songsurgeon
:

a full suite of tools for analyzing, processing and slowing-down songs in an easy way.

Check It Out Here

Here’s an epitomizing example:

Frank Zappa hired an 18
years old Steve Vai

after the Guitar God sent Mr. Zappa a recording with some of his music
transcribed
perfectly (and with an additional version played at double speed, but this is another story).
Reproducing such complex music undoubtedly helped Steve Vai develop his incredible skills.

But sometimes reproducing music without a score could be

frustrating

: some passages are

too fast

, or we are not able
to understand well the moving parts in an intricated harmony. In this case a

software to
slow down music

could be helpful (if you are not Steve Vai)

riffmaster pro review
There are many different

time stretching

apps and software
these days. In fact, if you use a

DAW – Digital
Audio
Workstation

it is likely it has the capabilities for
time stretching. However, for the

regular guitar student

it is more realistic to find
some simple and affordable ways to slow … your … audio … down. Because when we
slow a
song down it
makes it a
thousand times easier to figure out how to play it on the guitar. In this article we’re going to take a
look a popular slow down software,

Riffmaster Pro

.

How Riffmaster Pro works | Full Review


Riffmaster Pro

is

very
straightforward and easy to learn

. As soon as it is installed and
opened you click on the plus sign and load a song. It takes a variety of files that
can
even be dragged
right onto the screen. I simply clicked on my iTunes and picked a song to load.

You can begin playing the song from the start or easily

select a loop

. Simply click on
the

waveform file

and highlight exactly where you want the loop to
start
and stop. If you wish to delete a
loop region you have made, it’s a matter of pressing delete or backspace. These loops

can also
be exported to other apps

and audio software.

The speed and pitch functions are rather obvious and allow you to slow down the song to the desired speed
and semitones. These along with the

vocal reduction ability

are the
most
important
aspects of this software.

Riffmaster Pro Review: slowing down The Rolling Stones

One of the first songs I loaded into Riffmaster Pro was The Rolling Stones song ”

Can’t You Hear
Me Knocking

“, a go to favorite of mine. Within a few seconds I was time
stretching
the famous intro
riff to

about -45

, which slowed it down perfectly. My first thought being,

I
wish this software was around when I was a kid

.

riffmaster pro review
My second thought was that
Riffmaster Pro will pair well with tabs,
often when trying to

read
tablature

it helps to hear the music. With this software you can load the music
right up
and slow it down to pay along with tabs! (In fact now that you can slowly and
more accurately pick out the notes of a tune

it will be easier to tell if you have some bad
tabs

).

Because it is so easy to load a song,

it can be very addicting

. My first few times using
it I spent a little less time practicing and too much time slowing down songs. It

helps break down musical
parts

, even ones not on a guitar. If you happen to have a toddler at home, you will get a
lot of laughs when you load a song they like and drastically adjust the speed and
pitch!

Riffmaster Pro also has a

Super Vocal Reducer

, which will lower the vocals depending on
the song. Keep in mind it all matters how the original song was mixed and mastered,
but
the Super
Vocal Reducer usually

does a decent job of at least decreasing the vocals

by a little
(it is usually almost impossible to completely take vocals out of a finished mix).

Technical Details

  • Riffmaster Pro runs on

    Windows 7, Windows 8, Vista, Windows 10, and Mac OSX 10.5

    and
    above.
  • Songs can easily be loaded into Riffmaster Pro under the audio formats

    MP3, WAV, MP4, WMA,
    AIFF, FLAC, M4A, and CDA

    .

  • Pitch and speed parameters

    can be adjusted independently. Back in the day when you
    would slow the speed down on a song it would also change the pitch, Riffmaster Pro
    keeps
    the pitch the same
    unless you wish to change it
  • Making adjustments is quite simple with basic functions such as

    rewind, fast forward, play,
    and stop

    . The speed and pitch can be adjusted manually with simple + and –
    controls. The pitch
    allows for adjustments of two octaves in both directions.

Limitations

It does have a few limitations.

It is not available for Android

and does not support

video files

. Also the waveform amplitude cannot be adjusted so songs
that
are heavily compressed are
harder to make out waveform changes. (These days many songs are unfortunately heavily compressed!) Also
extreme pitch shifting

may lead to pitch artifacts

. Which are
basically
discrepancies
in notes once the pitch has been shifted. However, real extreme pitch shifting usually isn’t necessary
for learning a song on your guitar.

Riffmaster review: a perfect software to slow down music

riffmaster pro review

One of the obvious points of this software is that it

is only useful if genuine effort is put
forth

. Riffmaster Pro works like this; you sit down at a designated time every
couple days with
guitar in hand, load a song into Riffmaster and start practicing. I find that if I turn the speed all
the way down it can be a bit too slow, so each song needs a little tweaking on which
speed
works best. By looping parts of the song you can practice specific sections until you get each one down.

At the time of this writing the Riffmaster Pro was

running
a promotion and only
cost about $34

. The

iPad app was
running at $6.99

, both prices reasonable for the amount of use this app could
bring.

Riffmaster Pro, like most music software,

has a 10-day
free trial

. For
those 10 days you can use it on demo mode, a great way
to find out if you will stick with it or not. For those guitar
students who really put the time into practicing, this software is a no brainer. It’s an app that should
always be open while practicing so you can load a song and use it as a reference.
Even if
you are practicing for your own band you can always record live audio and later pop it in Riffmaster to
slow it down and play along with. I would highly recommend downloading the free trial
and
giving it a test, I think many guitar students will find Riffmaster Pro to be an excellent and
affordable addition to practice time!

Pictures and videos courtesy of riffmasterpro.com

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