Mandolin/Music Software

[Randy Linam]

What's the most useful mandolin/music software that you have ever purchased and briefly explain why.

Thanks-
Randy

[dhbailey]

Band In A Box -- it is an excellent way to get a backup band to practice with and these days with their "real" instruments and styles, the sound quality is excellent also. It's easy to enter the chords to a song, select a style, save it to your hard disk and click the Play icon and you've got a backup band that never shows up drunk, is always there when you want them (even at 3am if you can't sleep), can play a huge variety of styles and genres, can even generate solos to give you more to practice and learn from. And you can create audio files of the accompaniments you generate so you can save them as mp3 files to take with you to use when you're not near your computer. Will create jazz, rock, bluegrass and even some classical accompaniments. Check it out at www.pgmusic.com -- I've been using it since version 5 for DOS and it is the piece of music software that I use practically every day in my private teaching studio as well as for myself.

[John Kelly]

Not purchased but got free: ABCEdit or EasyABC, two programs for creating and reading abc notation files. They give you access to countless tunes in abc form (it's a language which is easy to learn and tunes can be created quickly using it. The programs mentioned allow you to listen to the tune as a midi file and to save it in standard notation as a pdf (and other forms too). I use it a great deal for all the tunes I play with my band.

[kkmm]

Is there an "Band In A Box" kind of apps for Android ? It would be nice to have one of these to create backing track on the go. I use gStrings as a free tuner apps, and Drum Friends to help me playing to the beat.

[Pete Martin]

Is there an "Band In A Box" kind of apps for Android ? It would be nice to have one of these to create backing track on the go. I use gStrings as a free tuner apps, and Drum Friends to help me playing to the beat.

iRealPro

[pit lenz]

You can use IReal Pro on Android.
It's not as detailed as BiB, but it gives you nice backing tracks to practice along. I enjoy it very much on my iPad and iPhone.
Originally coming from the Jazz scene, it offers a ton of songs through their community network, plus you can easily create, change, transpose your own stuff and upload it for others to use. During practice, you can even accellerate or transpose a running song every new turn. So you can start a tune slowly and build up speed or get to know your fretboard. Very helpful tool...

Besides that, I like to use Capo on my computer as a slow-downer. The audio algorhythms have become very good, it's excellent to work and understand fast mando breaks.

My 0,017997 €...

[kkmm]

Hi Pete,
thanks for the "iRealPro". I watched a youtube video on this and it is exactly what I have been looking for, especially it costs only 13$ compared to the full blown BIAB costing 100+$.

[Mark Wilson]

Transcribe!

I use it to slow down and loop sections of prerecorded tracks so I can learn them by ear.

I also use it to slow down and loop 'backing tracks' like "flatpick apprentice" so I can play along at 'my' speed.

[Randy Linam]

Transcribe!

I use it to slow down and loop sections of prerecorded tracks so I can learn them by ear.

I also use it to slow down and loop 'backing tracks' like "flatpick apprentice" so I can play along at 'my' speed.

If you are referring to Transkriber by Reed Kotler Music, I used it for years and loved it. I got a new computer and attempted to reinstall it and it would not allow me to register it. I attempted several time to contact Reed Kotler concerning the problem but no one ever responded. I still have my receipt but I can't use the software. Are they still in business?

[Mark Wilson]

I don't think they're the same. http://www.seventhstring.com/ which sells Transcribe! is a London based s/w company.

There's many ways to do what I mentioned. Many are free - some are side features of other apps. I tried a few and prefered transcribe. Amazing Slow Downer is very popular. Both free trial d/l.

I probably use it everyday

[Gelsenbury]

For Android, I also use Chord Bot and Easy Band. The same idea as Band in a Box or I Real Pro, but I find them easier to use. They don't currently do 6/8 time, though, which is frustrating.

[kkmm]

Hi Pete,
thanks for the "iRealPro". I watched a youtube video on this and it is exactly what I have been looking for, especially it costs only 12.99$ compared to the full blown BIAB costing 100+$.

After reading some reviews of this apps, I decided to buy it on my Android tablet, then spend 2 hours to create backing tracks for 6 songs. It took me a good 30 mins to figure out how to use it and afterward It becomes very easy to use.
Here are some nice features:
1) you can change key, rythm and tempo as your likings. You can also add drum fill on any measure
2) all the songs created by user can be backed up via either eMail, or in Dropbox
3) I also have an Android phone, and I can download to the Android phone without charge as I am using the same Google account as on my Android tablet.
4) I could download the songs to my phone from the Dropbox backup.
The music quality is not good as backing track for serious live performance but still very good for practice (anywhere).

As I understand, there is also a iRealPro on the PC allowing easier and faster editing. The mobile device needs to install a iRealPro client app, so songs can be transferred between the devices and the Windows PC / laptop. I will try this later.

[Pete Martin]

If you go to iRealPro forums, under the "bluegrass" heading you can download a playlist with 300 tunes/songs. I also loaded 20 improv play alongs and you can get that in the same category

[kkmm]

If you go to iRealPro forums, under the "bluegrass" heading you can download a playlist with 300 tunes/songs. I also loaded 20 improv play alongs and you can get that in the same category

Hi Pete,
Thanks for sharing this very useful info including your own improvements.
I created backing track for 3 bluegrass songs yesterday and play along with my mandolin. It's great.
And I was mistaken about the sound quality. When I plug the tablet to the AUX input of my keyboard amp, the sound is good enough for casual live performance (one man). The bass comes out very nicely.

[kkmm]

I downloaded quite a bit of backing tracks for different genres. The main thing is to get music sheets for the songs I am interested in playing. Also, by looking at some of these songs, many of them are quite sophisticated (for me). These are good examples for me to learn how to use iRealPro effectively. This apps does a lot more than I could imagine (have not seen a ritard symbol yet).

[Pete Martin]

I don't think there is a retard symbol but I could easily be wrong. Ask on the forum.

[Beanzy]

I'm using both iReal Pro and Notion for various uses.
IReal Pro has stacks of well laid out arrangements, but the instrument sounds aren't too hot so I export it to Notion as MIDI and use the instruments and scores in that to generate backing tracks. I also import music XML files and manually write in arrangements for the mandolin trio. It really speeds up our rehearsal progress if we've all been playing along with our respective mix-minus track before we meet.

[fscotte]

iPad app, Sessionband. Real loops recorded by some of the best session players. Easy chord based input. Several styles of music.

[kkmm]

IReal Pro has stacks of well laid out arrangements, but the instrument sounds aren't too hot so I export it to Notion as MIDI and use the instruments and scores in that to generate backing tracks.

I will try to export to MIDI files and load them in my Tyros3 to hear how they sound.

[DroneAlone]

I use Audacity a lot for slowing down and looping tunes that I'm learning by ear. Also for converting backup tracks to different tempos for practice, pitch correction and transposing between keys. It is free software, and I would imagine that there are commercial programs that are more user friendly and have more/better features (although I'm using only 1% of it), but it works well for me.

On my android phone I use:

* Metronome Beats Pro
* DaTuner Pro (works well for tuning the banjo head, too...)

I also have the iStroboSoft tuner app, but I don't like it (or maybe didn't use it long enough to get used to it)

Peter

[kkmm]

I will try to export to MIDI files and load them in my Tyros3 to hear how they sound.

It sounds worst than from the tablet !!! Probably due to incorrect MIDI instrument mapping.

Backing tracks created with Tyros3 sound really good. I have created a lot of them. The only issue is when I play mandolin along, it's very hard to keep track where I am in the song, unless I have play that song a hundred times (literally hundred+, I have played a dozen of them more than one thousand times each over the years). And If I do not practice some songs for a few months, I have to rehearse again to sync with my MP3 backing tracks.

With iReal Pro, the screen shows where I am in the song and it is hard to get out of sync. And backing tracks can be created within 10 to 15 mins anywhere. So, I could play more songs with backing tracks.