SuperScope PSD410 Transcribing / Recording Hardware

Shortly after my post on transcribing software, I was able to get a good deal on a SuperScope PSD410 (the device on the left without the CD player in the photo below) so I jumped on it. I've been wanting a SuperScope since the mid 90's or so but they've always been so expensive and I never felt okay with parting with so much dough on something that I couldn't see in person. I know that computer software can slow down tempos, change keys and that you can get a USB mic or USB box with mic inputs and use Garageband which is free on the Mac to record, but still the desire was still burning inside of me.
SuperScope has moved from cassette to CD and now onto RAM based devices over the years. The SuperScope PSD410 is the low end of the new line of recorders. The other two models, the 430 and 450 add a CD burner and a 40GB hard drive respectively to the mix but are otherwise, functionally identical. The 410 only uses SD cards for memory or can use a USB attached hard drive or flash drive. I got the 410 because one, I am cheap, and because two, SD cards are big enough even at 8 GB to hold like 12 uncompressed albums. I am only transcribing the one Bish album right now and it rings in at 440 MB. It will probably take me a year to work my way through the album. The 2GB supplied card is more than enough.

Anyway it takes a little while to get used to. There are so many things that you can do with it. Right now I am just trying to use it for practicing along with Blues in the Closet to get my transcription of Bish's solo up to speed and under my fingers. Sound quality of the slow down is definitely not up to the level of the Elevation software that I discussed earlier. I'd say that it is at the bottom of the food chain so far. Just a hair below the quality of Amazing Slow Downer for the iPod Touch. Definitely workable but 25% is a bit hairy and even 50% isn't all that clean. Slow down wise it seems the functional equivalent of Amazing Slow Downer but is much more convenient to use with the footpedal and knobs and buttons to control and adjust the loop points and playback speed. I suspect that I will be using it more to practice and work my playing of the transcriptions up to speed rather than doing detailed transcription with it. I will probably still use Transcribe for the detailed stuff as it sounds pretty good at 25% if I need to go there and having the measures and beats laid out makes the solo easy to navigate. But this SuperScope is great for practice, bringing your playing up to speed, recording, and normal transcription duty. I love this thing, it really has made my 'shedding more productive.

These things are still really expensive new, like $800 to $1200 depending on what version you get. Even getting a good deal on a used one took a chunk out of my wallet. Having this thing is a luxury for me as I already had software that could do much the same stuff, but it is nice. In the next few weeks, I plan on using it to record a promotional CD so that I have something to hand out to restaurant and club managers when I hit the pavement looking for gigs. Back when I had my trio we used a Zoom H2 and it worked great. For this solo piano CD, I plan on just plugging in my digital piano. If that sucks, I'll setup a mic and record my real piano. So in the next few weeks, I'll get a chance to learn the recording side of this machine. And looking through the manual, 90% of it is about the recording features.

After using this thing for the past few weeks, I gotta say that I love it. I use it all the time. It is great for figuring out heads when you're too lazy to find your Real Book and for just practicing along with recordings. Again a luxury but now I am kicking myself for not getting one earlier. Great for transcribing and regular practicing. It is nice not having to boot up the laptop and mess around with the track pad. The Superscope has a good file structure, you can have directories, move files around, rename them, etc. but what is great is that you can create Playlists like on iTunes. So it is easy to put together a practice set and have all the tunes in one place and the Suprscope remembers any fine tuning adjustments, loops, and speed adjustments for each song so you don't have to readjust those every day. And it will play through all the tunes in a playlist. For practicing and playing over tunes this thing rocks. You can just play through the set with it slowing don each track right where you want it and you just sit there and focus on playing, not on loading a new song into Amazing Slow Downer after each track. A real slick operation.

Finally just wanted to let you know that I've started transcribing Alone Together and have some more WBJ material to post so stay tuned. Oh yeah, also I noticed some typos in the transcription for Green Dolphin and have some minor corrections to make on the Blues in The Closet transcription. I will update the PDF's shortly and let you know when I have them on my server.

Peace Out,
Anchovy D

Blues in the Closet ala Walter Bishop, Jr.

Okay, first a note. I realized that not all of you might have WBJ in your record collection so I went back and updated the post on my first transcription in the series, Green Dolphin Street, with a link to an mp3 of Bish's actual solo on the tune. I cropped out everything but the solo, so that you can follow along with the transcription. Also, I think there were like two typos in the pdf where bars with whole note rests had a note marked down. This is due to my fights with the note placement tool, the pointer tool and the pan tool in Sibelius. If you forget which is activated you may accidentally write down some note when you are trying to pan. So I checked and updated that pdf.

Now on to the matters at hand. I present to you the Walter Bishop Jr. fans, Bish's awesome Blues in the Closet solo from the Speak Low album. Here is the mp3. I actually finished this about a week or two ago but was in the process of moving into a new and had to unpack my computer and wait about two weeks for Qwest to hook up my internet connection.

A few things about the transcription, this is a blues. It is in F. And Bish is crushing notes all over the place but I haven't notated them. Most are the typical flat 3rd to 3rd when he is playing a third (3rd and 5th). There were some crushes later in the solo where he is playing fourths and some odd intervals but I couldn't figure out how to make grace notes in Sibelius. It took me about 40 minutes to figure out how to note a trill. Maybe next time.

Click Here to listen to an mp3 of the Blues in the Closet Solo.

About the changes. I looked at them them briefly and will spend more time on them when I analyze the solo. But here is the basic deal:

F7    /  | F7    /   | F7        /     | F7     /
Bb7  /  | Bb7 /   | F7        /     | F7     /
Gm7 /  | C7   /   | Fmaj7  /     | Gm7 C7

This is what I have written over the solo. Listening closely, in some choruses Bish slides up to F#7 for measure 2. Sometimes he puts a ii V in bar 4 (Cm7 to F7 leading to the Bb7 of bar 5). Sometimes he plays a leading chord on beat 3 of bar 6 leading to the F7 and finally sometimes he plays a ii V in bar 8 leading to the Gm7 (Am7b5 D7).

So that is pretty much what he is doing. Throwing in some ii-V's occasionally sometimes sliding, etc. he just doesn't go to Bb7 in bar two.

About next time. It may be a while before I post a new transcription, maybe late June. I have a lot of material here in these two first solos to analyze and work on. I've been going full tilt on the transcribing so far. Time to dial it back and spend more time looking deeper into these two solos prospecting for gold.

Peace out,
Big D