There are times when the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune lead OS X users into using Windows keyboards. Should you find yourself in such a situation, one of the first things you need to deal with is the lack of a standard Command key. The following mini tutorial will show you how to identify keyboard mappings and, if needed, switch around those mappings so you can touch type on that keyboard with familiar shift-modifier placements.
Dirac Time Stretch/Pitch Shift technology is licensed from the DSP Dimension / Stephan M. This is a free version of Music Factory - Change key, change tempo and remove vocal. Jun 15, 2010 If that option is not available, you may wish to try changing the default program for opening music files. I don't believe that the keyboard music 'hotkey' attempts to specifically open Windows Media Play, rather it opens the program assigned as the default for music. So you'll need to get to the Control Panel's Default Programs applet.
Here is an image of a Dell keyboard. It's unusual only in how extreme its OS X-unfriendly layout is. Other than that, it offers typical keys, including the Alt and Windows items near the space bar.
On the left side, there's the control key, a function key, the Windows key, and then the Alt (option) key. On the right, there's Alt, the quote key, and then three arrows. From a Mac OS X point of view, this is less than ideal; the Alt key (which appears on both sides) is the best candidate for use as the Command key. Obviously this configuration varies by laptop.
Although this layout is uniquely awful, it's not extremely common. Larger notebooks and desktop systems use a more standard layout with the left and right sides mirrored. As a rule, notebooks have pretty good layouts; netbooks (their smaller brothers) do not.
Whether or not the keyboard layout 'makes sense,' you'll want to know how keys are being interpreted by OS X and maybe make some changes to have them behave better with your touch-typing skills.
Detecting Keyboard Configurations
When remapping keys, you'll first want to see how the original configuration is mapped. To find this out, take the following steps. They'll show you which physical key matches which logical key.
- Open System Preferences > International > Input Menu and enable the Keyboard Viewer. This option appears in the first group, toward the top of the settings pane.
- At the very bottom of the settings pane, check Show Input menu in menu bar. This creates a flag-emblem item in your menu bar. Mine looks like the US flag. Yours may vary based on your International settings.
- Choose Flag-Menu (U.S.) > Show Keyboard Viewer to open the floating keyboard panel. The panel looks something like this:
Once you see this palette, start tapping each of the shift modifiers on your keyboard, including the Control, Alt and Windows keys. OS X uses the Keyboard Viewer palette to mirror all your keyboard entries. When you press those modifier keys, you'll see exactly how they're mapped and being interpreted.
Updating the Command Key location
For touch typists, the Command key should ideally be placed just to the left or right of the space bar. If your keyboard has Alt and Windows mixed up relative to that space bar, you can remap them in System Preferences.
Go to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse and click Modifier Keys... Use the following dialog to map your keys into place. Often this involves nothing more than switching the Command and Option keys.
Testing and mapping your keyboard allows you to touch-type with ease. Plus, it's good to know that you're not limited to Mac-specific equipment when Windows keyboards abound. The steps you've just seen will help you evaluate and adjust your mappings as needed.
Ars Tip!
Having problems with a missing-in-action character palette? This tip, which shows you how to delete your International data caches may do the trick. It worked perfectly for me!
beat detection, chord
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Song Surgeon was first released in 2007, and is now a decade old... From its first humble beginnings it has grown to be one of the most popular and valuable tools used by musicians – both students and teacher. At last count Song Surgeon has been sold in more than 120 countries worldwide – and by musicians that play 37 different instruments.
Our newly released Version 5 of Song Surgeon takes the program to a whole new level with the addition of key detection, automatic beat detection, and chord detection. What that means is that when you open a song, Song Surgeon will automatically detect the tempo of a song in BPMs, in will determine the key signature, it will detect the chords – and it will display all of this information on the main user interface so you can see and use it. We know of no other audio slowdowner software that provides these three features in one program. And of course, that’s just the beginning.
In addition to providing nearly flawless, distortion-free key and tempo change of audio, Song Surgeon has a long list of other useful features:
- The chord detection features will detect the chords of a song and immediately display them for you to use. You no longer need to search for chords or tablature on the internet. Additionally, the Pro model makes these chords along with their time stamps available for printing so you can take them with you.
- Speed Trainer is a function within a looping area that automatically increases or decreases the speed of playback each time it loops, based upon our customized settings. You select a beginning and ending tempo – and a percentage change, and Song Surgeon will do the rest. Speed Trainer allows you to practice with increasing speed, thus enhancing your learning.
- The ability to create an unlimited number of loops with a single audio file means you can isolate and customize each of these looping segments individually, applying different keys, tempos or EQ’s to each loop..
- You can transpose an audio file into another key in just one click, and then hear this change in real time, and continue to change key up or down until you get it just right. In addition, Song Surgeon's formant preservation ensures that there will be no chipmunk or munchikin vocals as you apply key changes to your song.
- In addition to opening most standard audio files, Song Surgeon also can open and strip the audio from most standard video files. Once you have stripped the audio from a video, it will open in Song surgeon and then you can save the audio in any standard audio format.
- Based upon the detect BPM of a song, Song Surgeon can create a 4 beat click track at the exact tempo of the song and insert it at the beginning of your audio file.
- Helps you create library of customized, edited audio filesThanks to the export feature in Song Surgeon you can create new audio files with your changes embedded. These files are permanent and portable and can be used on any standard audio playback system. (CDs, iPod, mp3 player, smartphones, etc.)
- Helps you learn music or a song much quicker and easierBy slowing it down significantly, without distortion, to any tempo that you prefer. Our surveys show an increase in learning of 2 - 10 fold with an average increase of 614%.
- Song Surgeon’s built in metronome is automatically synchronized with the tempo of each song as you open a song file. The independent volume control of this metronome allows you to change volume as desired, allowing you to hear the metronome over top the song,
- Song Surgeon Pro’s 31 Band EQ allows you to provide laser-like control over the frequency changes applied to a file. It allows you to enhance specific instruments or sounds and diminish others. These EQ changes can be permanently applied and saved in a new file.
- While you can’t create a Karaoke type track from a final mixed track with multiple instruments, by using Song Surgeon’s VR Slider in combination with the 31 band EQ, you can diminish or enhance specific instruments within a mix making it easier to hear only that frequency or sound you are most interested in.
- Song Surgeon has basic editing and recording functionalities. While not built to replace high end audio software like Cubase or Pro Tools which cost many hundreds of dollars, many Song Surgeon customers find its more modest editing and recording features quite useful for many situations where pro quality editing or recording is not required.
Regardless of whether you are a performer that needs a simple key transposition, a musician practicing new material, or a worker whose job requires you to listen to a piece of audio over and over again, dissecting and looping that audio for slowed down detail, Song Surgeon is an absolute must have tool on your computer. With sound quality that matches - and in some cases even surpasses - what thousand-dollar studio quality software products can offer, it will save you time, help you lean more easily and quickly, and make you a better musician.
Whether you are a beginner, intermediate, or pro, or whether you plan to use it for practice or performance Song Surgeon will allow you to change key and/or tempo with little to no distortion. distortion.
Song Surgeon comes in two models: Standard and Pro. The Pro model contains all of the function we’ve discussed and more. The Standard model looks the same as the Pro but does not have all of the features enabled. In the top navigation bar on this page you will see a Std vs. Pro button, click this to see a comparison table of the two versions.
- Accordion
- Acoustic Guitar
- Bagpipes
- Banjo
- Bass
- Bass Guitar
- Bodhran
- Cello
- Clarinet
- Dobro
- Drum/Percussion
- Electric Guitar
- Fiddle
- Flute
- Guitar
- Harmonica
- Horn
- Irish Tin Whistle
- Keyboard
- Lever Harp
- Lute
- Mandolin
- Oboe
- Pedal Steel guitar
- Piano/Keyboard
- Saxophone
- Trombone
- Trumpet
- Violin
- Viola
- Voice
- Recorder
- English Handbells
- Ukulele
- Autoharp
- Dulcimer
- Concertina
- Music Practice
- Music Performance
- Music Transcription
- Translation
- Dance Studios
- Karaoke Music
- Backing Tracks
- Worship Music
- Music Production
- Exercise Classes
- DJs
- Teachers
- Students
A product is only as good as the company that stands behind it. Todd, Michael & James, Inc., the parent company of Song Surgeon, has been marketing products on the Internet since 2001. We have an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.
Product Quality
In addition to the BBB rating we have hundreds of testimonials from customers, not only about the quality of Song Surgeon but also about the quality of the service that we provide.
Guarantee
Song Surgeon offers a fully functional 4-hour demo so you can test drive the product before you buy it. But beyond this we offer a full 60 day, 100% money back guarantee - no questions asked. In almost 10 years of doing business we have NEVER refused a refund.
Customer Service/Support
As a small company we recognize the importance of customer service. We have a full service Help Desk with a Knowledge Base, Download Links, Incident Support. And, as needed, we also provide phone support AND remote assistance.
Time Limited Version of Song Surgeon Right Here!Whether you are considering Song Surgeon for one of the uses mentioned above, or for something entirely different, there is only one way to find out if it's right for you - Try It.
You can download, install and begin using the DEMO version of Song Surgeon within 5 minutes.
Song Surgeon is indispensable tool that is available at the surprisingly affordable price. Song Surgeon will have you feeling like you got your money's worth with just a few sessions of use, thanks to its incredible range of functionality and efficiency. Moreover, Song Surgeon does not have a recurring fee. Pay for it once, download and keep it forever!
SS V5 runs on Mac (OSx) and Windows. Specifically this is Mac 10.8 – 10.12 and for Windows XP – Win 10. Some of the machine on which the older OS’s are installed may not have sufficient resources to run Song Surgeon 5 well.
Song Surgeon V 5 is a desktop application. We do have a “lite” version of Song Surgeon, called, Song Surgeon Trainer available as an app. It is free and can be found on both the Google Play and Apple Stores. http://songsurgeon.com/page/mobileapp.html
Here are the suggested requirement for running Song Surgeon Version 5.
(Windows XP – Win 10)- 2.0 GHz CPU with dual-core processor minimum (Recommended: Quad-core i5 processor or better)
- 4 GB RAM minimum (Recommended: 8 GB or more)
- 200 MB of hard-disk space for program installation
- Display dimensions of 1024x768 or greater
- Mac computer with an Intel processor (Recommended: Dual core 2.0GHz or faster)
- 2GB of RAM (Recommended: 4GB of RAM or greater)
- 200 MB available disk space for program installation
- Display dimensions of 1024x768 or greater
In the past, Google among others, have sued to block some products that perform downloading functions. However, it’s important to remember that many uses of copyrighted material are considered legal under the fair use doctrine to U.S. copyright law. The fair use doctrine makes exceptions for non-infringing purposes like news reporting, research, education — or just for laughs. Consider YouTube’s first big legal copyright challenge, a 2007 video of a baby dancing to the Prince song “Let’s Go Crazy”. Universal Music Group, the copyright holder of that hit song, sued the baby’s mom for copyright violation. A judge ruled in favor of the mom and the baby, citing fair use.
Two things have happened recently that concern us. Once is that Google has terminated one of our Adwords accounts citing the downloading module as the cause. Even more recently Google has sent a cease and desist letter to a company that sells a YouTube Downloader application, similar to what we provide in Song Surgeon.
Because of these developments we have made a business decision to remove the downloading (Sniffer) modules from Song Surgeon Version 5. We have a similar module in our product Video Surgeon and will also be discontinuing it, when a new version of that product is released.
Version 4 of Song Surgeon will not be affected by this decision and it will continue to contain the downloading modules. However, like all older versions of our products, now that a newer version has been released, it will no longer be updated. Accordingly if this downloading module ceases to function at some point in the future we will NOT provide support for it or fix it.
We know that many customers use and like this downloading feature. What we have done is to consolidate the downloading module found in our other products into a single product called Download Surgeon; plus we have added additional capabilities. This will allow customers who want these downloading features to be able to access them, while at the same time, limiting our business exposure and shielding our main products, like Song Surgeon, from any adverse affects.
Free Music For Mac
If you are a Song Surgeon Version 5 customer you will be able to buy Download Surgeon at a 37.5% discount ($49.95). Click Here To Learn More