During the weekend when I’m not blogging, I often play the Bass guitar for our Praise and Worship team at church. Normally, an email is sent at the beginning of the week about the songs we need to play and practice on. We then try to follow the original music compositions as much as possible which often include tough sections such as the interludes. With the help of Capo, an iPhone app from supermegaultragroovy.com, I can now practice more effectively and efficiently.
Capo for iPhone Features
- Capo allows you to put markers in a song so you can go to specific sections of the song quickly.
- Capo allows you to loop between a specific section in a song automatically.
- Capo allows you to lower the speed so you can listen and learn a hard passage easier.
- Capo allows you to adjust the pitch of a song.
After opening Capo, you first have to import the songs that you want from your songs library. Unfortunately, there is no way to import a whole playlist or a few songs at the same time so you have to add the songs one by one.
Adding the markers (tagged as “M”) is quite easy and it really helps to identify certain points in a song, such as verses or the chorus. This way, you can quickly go to that specific point without having to guess using the slider. The loop feature is done by placing the A and B markers (start and end) in a song’s section. When you press the Play button, Capo will play the music from the A to B and then back to A. Sometimes, there is a hard passage to learn in a song and you may have to listen to that passage over and over again. With the help of Capo’s looping markers, it can never get easier than this.
Even if you’ve repeated a section many times, often you may not be able to catch some tunes because everything goes too quickly (or the song has a high beat-per-minute rate). Capo can lower the speed of the song by 3/4, 1/2, or 1/4 times the original so you can slowly write down the chords or even plays slowly on your guitar. When you’re ready, put it back up to the original speed and play along!
Sometimes we play a song in a different pitch (the original song might be in D but we may sing it in the church in C). With the pitch adjustment tool, I can match the key to a song so I can practice easier. Unfortunately the music tends to get muffled (or voice becomes like the chipmunk’s) if I go too far.
I used a similar plug-in to my Winamp music player in the past called PaceMaker but Capo is definitely much more powerful. It’s a pity though that the iPhone version does not have Capo’s sophisticated chord detection (the Mac does). If you are a musician, this app is a must on your iPhone!
Capo – SuperMegaUltraGroovy, Inc.
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