By Reed Kotler

Copyright ã 1997 Reed Kotler Systems, Inc.

Transkriber is a trademark of Reed Kotler Systems, Inc.

Congratulations on your purchase of the Transkriber software.

Our goal is to provide the best software to aid the person doing transcriptions.

Up to date information on the product may be found at our web site http://www.reedkotler.com.

Tech support is provided by sending email to support@reedkotler.com as well as by subscribing to the discussion list transkribe-L and posting an e-mail to

transkribe-L@justjazz.com. Directions on how to do this may be found on the web site.

There is no phone support provided at this time for the product.

1. Place the floppy disk in your floppy drive.
2. You will see the icon for the floppy drive appears.



3. Double click on this icon which will bring up the following:

Then double click on Transkriber.sea which is a Stuffit self-extracting archive.

4. Follow the directions from the installation program, which will create the folder Transkriber.



5. You are now ready to start using the Transkriber program.

First lets start up the Transkriber.

1. Double click on the "Transkriber for PowerMac" or "Transkriber for 68k" depending on whether your Mac is a PowerPC or Motorola 68k based computer.

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2. Now you should see the main screen of the Transkriber.

The Transkriber uses Mac AIFF files. You may create these using the Transkriber or by using another AIFF file generating utility. There are many third party sound recorders as well as programs which directly transfer the audio to files without the need for resampling.

The simplest way to record audio is to record directly from a CD placed in your computers CDROM player.

It is also possible to record by playing the CD on your stereo system and sending the output of your stereo to the audio inputs of your sound card.

Depending on your current configuration, you may need to change some settings in the "Monitors and Sound" control panel. Click on the "Apple" and then move from "Control Panels" -> "Monitors and Sound".

If you forget to do this, the default on many machines will be to record through the microphone which may sort of work, though very badly because it will use the microphone to record the sound coming through your speakers.

This should bring up the monitors and sound dialog box..

Select "Sound".

The "Sound Recording Input" must be set to the desired sound input device, either the "CD-TV-Video" or the "External Audio" input. Though one could use the microphone if desired. A possible application for that could be a teacher playing some music for their student to transcribe.

1. Place a CD in you computers CDROM player. You will notice a CD Audio icon appear. Depending on which version of MacOS you use, the icon may appear different. On system 8 it appears as follows:
2. Double click on the CD Audio icon and a folder like the following, with one file per audio track will appear.
3. Click on the track you are interested in which will bring up the CDROM Player control.

Depending on which version of MacOS and whether you have a clone or not, the exact form of this control may differ from that above.



4. Begin playing the track you are interested in. If you want to start transcribing at the very beginning of the track, you need to start playing at the end of the previous track so you have time to setup the recording on the Transkriber. This process is somewhat awkward and we will be improving this in a future release.

 

5. Press the record button on the Transkriber main window. This will bring up the dialog that lets you specify which file the audio AIFF format will be placed in.

 

6. When you click on save, the sound recording dialog will appear.



7. When you reach the music you wish to record, press the "Record" button.
8. When you are done press the "Save" button.
9. Go back to the CDROM player control and stop the playback by pressing pause or stop.

When you have returned to the main Transkriber screen, you will see that the "Total Time" window and the "Select To" button now contain the amount of time in seconds that was recorded.

1. Connect your stereo (or portable CD or tape player) to the audio input of your sound card as specified in the manual for your computer or sound card.
2. Press the "Record" button on the main Transkriber screen and follow the record instructions in the previous section.

You may now play your music back by pressing the "Play" button.

All the buttons with the exception of "Record" on the main row of buttons can be used to control the sound player much the same way that they would on a traditional tape player.

When depressed, many of the buttons turn into other buttons (the label on the button will change) in anticipation of the next most common function.

For example, after depressing the "Play" button, that button turns into a "Stop" button so you don’t have to move your cursor again to stop playback. Similarly the "Pause" button will turn into a "Resume" button after being depressed.

The slider among the main row of buttons may be used to move the current position as can the "Left" and "Right" buttons next to the "Home" button.

The playback speed of the music may be adjusted using the "Speed" control.

This adjustment may occur at any time, including during playback.

Depressing the "down" button will make the playback slower. Speed amounts of up to 1/12 of the original speed are supported. The speeds are 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4….1/12.

For example, depressing the down arrow once will change to the control to 1/2.

Depressing the "up" button will speed up the playback.

After one first records some audio (or opens an audio wave file), the playback region is the entire recorded section.

When transcribing a piece of music, in general one will work on one section at a time.

The Transkriber allows many ways to create a restricted region of playback. In addition once this region is created, it may be subsequently modified.

The current playback region is defined by the values of the numbered buttons in the "Select From" and "Select To" sections.

In this case the playback region is from 0.00 seconds (the beginning) to 30.94 seconds (the end) within the recorded music. (Note: these time values are not related to the original time markings on the CD).

During playback, by clicking on the numbered button in the "Select From" section, the beginning of the playback region will be changed to the value of time when you clicked on the button.

Similarly by clicking on the "Select To" field during playback, the end of the playback region will be changed to the value of time when you clicked the button.

The playback region in the above example is now set to 7.06 to 11.52 seconds. Subsequent playbacks will playback just this section of the music.

At any time, you may revert the playback region to its initial state where it contained the entire recorded music by clicking on the "All" button.

You may decrease/increase the time value of the from/to points of the playback region by pressing the arrow buttons next to the time amount.

You may also move the playback region forward or backward in time (as a unit), by using the arrow buttons under "Shift Selection". The top row of buttons will make a fine adjustment and the bottom row a more coarse adjustment.

During playback, you may also define the beginning of the playback region by using the "Begin Select" button. After clicking on this button, it turns into an "End Select" button which can be clicked to end the region.

During playback, it the loop box is not checked, play will stop when it reaches the end of the playback region.

When the loop box is checked, (checking is done by moving the cursor to the box and clicking it), play will move to the beginning of the playback region when the end of the playback region is reached.

This feature is particularly useful for freezing piano or guitar chords.

You create a very small playback region, which just covers the chord, and then you can play things back with a continuous loop (the loop box checked).

When playing back a stereo recording, one may select that only the left or only the right channel is played back. This is primarily useful when the instrument you are transcribing is more prominent on one of the channels.

Clicking on the circle next to "Left" or "Right" will select or deselect that channel for

Playback (depending on its current state). The black dot in the circle means that it has been selected.

If only the left channel is played back, the left channel of the recording is sent to both the left and right channels of the sound card.

While transcribing, one will often need to listen to a reference pitch in order to identify the pitch on the recording.

One way to get a reference pitch is to play your own instrument.

Another way is to use the "Pitch Reference" control.

By clicking on the correspond note, it will be played on your sound card. In addition, the octave may be adjusted up or down by clicking on the up/down arrow keys on the far left.

Sometimes it may be necessary to adjust the pitch of the audio during playback.

One application for this may be for recordings that are slightly out of tune.

Another application is for transcribing rock guitar players that tune their guitar down a half or whole step. For example, if on the CD the guitar was tuned down a half step, you can pitch adjust it up a half step so that you don’t have to re-tune your guitar when checking the transcription.

We provide a pitch control that lets one adjust the pitch up or down a given number of semitones (half steps) and/or cents (100ths of a semitone).

The up/down arrows on the left will adjust by semitones and those on the right will adjust by cents.

The number X Y will change as the adjustment is made. 1 3 means 1 semitone and 3 cents.

The File menu may be used to create new sound files, open an existing sound file, close the current sound file, save the current sound file as well as view or set various properties of a sound file.

By clicking on "Properties", the property window is brought up.

You may only change properties of a new sound file which has not been recorded yet.

There are several options available.

The first one allows one to select an alternate slowdown method.

The default one provided is the best overall method but for some recordings you may prefer to change the default.

By clicking on "Alternate Slowdown Method", a check mark will appear next to the item.

The original method will be restored up clicking on the "Alternate Slowdown Method".

The "Select MIDI Output Device Allows" one to select the midi device used for the pitch reference control.

When trying to isolate a particular instrument, the first choice is to try using the "Left" or "Right" control.

When there is a lead vocal or instrument on a stereo recording (especially on a pop recording), the "Reinforce Rhythms" will in general take the lead out or at least greatly reduce it so that you can better hear the rhythm section so you can more easily transcribe those parts.

This feature may make the sound louder than before so you may want to turn the volume down before turning this feature on. On some recordings it makes the volume louder and on some it makes it softer.

Occasionally it may be difficult to hear the instrument you are transcribing due to problems with the original recording.

To help in these situations, we provide a series of filters that are designed to reinforce the sound range of various instruments.

In general, filters are not needed and this one part of the Transkriber takes some time to process so we recommend against using it unless you are experiencing some particular problems in hearing the instrument even at full speed on a particular recording.

To invoke the equalizer, click on the "Equalizer" menu item on the top of the main screen.

This will bring up the equalizer screen.

By clicking on the down arrow, you will be able to select the instrument you want reinforced. You may apply this filter more than once.

Now it’s time for you to start doing your own transcriptions.

We wish you the best of luck.

Budi Sutardja and Reed Kotler