I’ve been looking for a way to record fiddle tunes at my lessons. My instructor plays a tune for me, slow and then at speed with embellishments, and then I go home and listen to it and learn the notes by ear. I’ve been using a microcassette. I’ve also been using a program called the Amazing Slow Downer, which takes tracks off a cd or from your computer and slows them down without changing the pitch so that you can pick out the notes. It is pretty darn cool. (There’s another program called Audacity, but I haven’t been able to figure it out… ) A lot of the tunes I put into ASD come from a cd recorded by my instructor or from cds in my collection. But, if I want to try and move the tunes from the tape player to the computer so that I can then put it in the ASD, I have to play the tape player for my computer, record the file into Sound Studio, then put it in ASD, and the quality by then is not great and difficult to hear, even with the volume turned all the way up.

So I got one of these things for my iPod. I’ve not tried it on the fiddle yet, but I recorded my daughter on her harp, and then the other on the piano. Hook it up to the computer and it downloads them, and then I can go get them for ASD…life simplified. Now I can take it to my fiddle lesson and record all I want, without middle steps.

Anybody have or use one of these? Any problems with it? Any “I wish it did this, too” stuff?

Thanks.
Karen