deCoda is a new app that’s designed to automatically ‘decode’ songs from audio files, showing you the key, tempo, chords, where verses and choruses are and more.
Features:
- Advanced chord and tempo detection algorithms
- Flexible looping options
- Automatic song structure detection – Part A, B C, A2, B2 etc.
- Instantly transpose to a chosen key
- Change tempo whilst maintaining the pitch
- Focus EQ for isolating parts of the track
- Melody information displayed on a piano roll
- Exportable MIDI
Pricing and Availability
deCoda is available now for macOS & Windows for $35.24 USD.
My advice for young people: Learn to do this for yourself, it just takes practice.
That’s good advice for old people as well.
Good advice for anyone who wants to be called a musician… especially those who have been ‘producing’ (cough) music by just throwing pre-made loops together…. (yeah, yeah … old man rant)
Not everyone who enjoys making music wants to be called a musician. And I know some musicians that sometimes like to work out the chord progressions and such in other people’s work. I’m pretty sure they’d be happy to use this tool. Personally I’ve been ‘producing’ crap music for years only very occasionally using pre made loops. But don’t a lot of professionals, with infinitely more skill and success than I will ever have, sometimes use pre made loops? Not sure what my point is now 🙂 except that we’re all free to make music ( or cakes, paintings etc. ) at whatever level, in whatever way we like, so I don’t get the slightly snobby ‘tude about something like this. Maybe I took u up wrong tho.
Hi
I agree with your comment that we’re all free to make music (or cakes… especially cakes!!) … it’s probably one of the most truly universal forms of art there is…. name one civilisation, race, creed etc etc etc that doesn’t make music… so – point to you.
My beef with this sort of software is that it cheapens the medium… by that I mean it seems to have got to the point where everything is just colour by numbers and rather than encourage you to understand and learn and explore how music is put together (I’m not talking about physically playing an instrument), it waters everything down so the software just spits out an answer … there’s no discovery and no learning.
I don’t mean to sound all high and mighty … I’m not and I’m the first to confess that my music theory knowledge is rudimentary at best but like the very first post said, learn to do this for yourself… I pull apart songs and work out all of the parts for every member of my band and that includes keyboards, drums, bass, guitars, vocal lines, programming etc and I can rearrange songs to suit our (usually lack of) ability … I can’t write a song to save myself but I know how they’re put together just by listening and doing.
No offence intended 😉
No offence meant or taken. And I don’t see how it cheapens anything to get a little help. You might need it yourself some time if you’re under time pressure. As Henri says below the two things- teaching yourself to deconstruct an arrangement and having the app do it- aren’t mutually exclusive. The app could support learning (or supplant for those who can’t be arsed, there’s room for all types).
And don’t knock painting by numbers, that’s just reinterpreting or rehashing someone else’s composition, kinda like doing a cover version of someone else’s song. Again, that can be a joyous end in itself and / or an aid to learning to do it on your own.
Honor thy error as a hidden intention. (Brian Eno)
@Coco You made a good point I also recommend: Listening is key to learning.
one does not exclude the other
Yes. While I appreciate tools that *assist*, nothing can (or should IMHO) replace training myself to be a better listener and musician. This, for me, is a lifetime journey and pleasure of being a musician.
I don’t think they did market research. If they were targeting youth, they’d make it mobile-only.
Technology, as its called, is making us all stupid, regardless of craft or profession. Use it or lose it applies as much to brain as muscle.
But tech makes US work faster. We used to Waste time in key detection while now it’s automated. Same goes for bpm detection.
Some people are visual learners. I see stuff like this as just another useful tool to quickly get into the mind of your favorite artists and arrangers. Nothing wrong with a good cheat code!!
As a music teacher, it is very useful to have tools that can adjust the pitch/tempo of songs independently. I do all my transcriptions by ear and am confident that my transcriptions are more accurate than ANY automated thingy. However, it is often quicker to start with a wrong transcription and just edit it, than starting from scratch (YMMV).
That window that showed spectrum and panorama (?) seems intriguing. When I was doing detailed orchestral transcriptions, used Directional EQ to help isolate parts, but the tool in decoda seems intriguing.
That price is great, too. I’m definitely going to check that out.
I just tried the demo. It’s pretty good, for the price.
Because they’ve tried to make the interface look stupid-simple, this actually makes it pretty clunky to use. Not self-explanatory or well-labeled. Just poke around and guess until your 2 minutes runs out, then relaunch, and wait a few seconds for the nag window to go away. The pitch-shift & time stretch seems good. Has the kinds of artifacts you would expect, but it’s reasonable. Comparable to very good pitch & time plugs costing quite a bit more.
The FOCUS window indeed does allow you to see/recognize, then isolate or block a window of frequencies at a given pan range. This does a good job of vocal removal, or bass removal, or isolation things.
Because I do this kind of work pretty often, I do think I’l get it.
This won’t make a bad musician good, but it can help make a good musician better. Don’t ask me to define ‘good’ or ‘bad’, that’s too subjective.
That said, this looks like a great tool to assist with figuring out which samples will work with others ripped from my record collection. Depending on how well the timestretch, pitch & EQ/isolator work it could replace a step or 2 in my sample prep process. Very cool.
*edit* Thanks for the first impression, stub. Good to read the isolator’s effective.
This looks awesome! I hope it actually works. Thanks for making such a pretty tool to help with song analysis.
Funny, everything always comes out in Sonata or Binary form.