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)
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
.
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
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