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One of the things I've always wished I could do is to play along with a recorded song at about one-quarter the speed of the original recording -- without changing the key. Think about how handy that feature could be when it comes to hearing individual notes, understanding a guitar player's phrasing, and deciphering their technique.

I just discovered two pieces of software that allow me to do exactly that. The first is called The Amazing Slow Downer (Mac and PC -- from Roni Software) and the second is called Capo (Mac only -- from SuperMegaUltraGroovy). I just bought Capo, and I'm loving the way it works.

When you load the program, and select Open from the File menu, it presents you with the songs in your iTunes library. Select one of them, set the speed of the song to your desired tempo, then click on the Play button. You can easily set loops so the program keeps playing a certain passage over and over, if that's what you want to practice. I haven't tried this, but I imagine the program will also yank in songs that aren't in an iTunes library, perfect for those 14 remaining holdouts who don't use iTunes.

I thought about these two pieces of software today while I was watching a student video, thinking that playing slower and following the phrasing of the original recording could benefit him.

Also, I haven't provided links to the software publishers because...well, you know why.

I first became aware of this type of software when I went to a bluegrass jam about a week ago. The guy leading the jam, a terrific player, mentioned that every guitarist he knows has bought either of the two above-mentioned programs in order to learn songs.

Anyway, thought you might be interested.

Thanks Dennis, I found a video demo of the product on YouTube.
And a good review on cnet.com

Jim

Thanks Dennis.

Dennis,
Thanks much for these helpful tools. Regards,
Tom

Thank you Dennis,,i try a demo of the amazing slowdowner on a song i worked on this morning,,loaded it in the programm (mp3) and i know the chord progression so i could slowly play along and could almost set the lyrics on chord changes,,the demo allows you to listen to apart of the mp3,,,great stuff,,i know there is also a slowdowner for video and keep on pitch..

Here's a handy-dandy (free) tool that will slow down videos. I know it works for Windows Movie Maker on my WinXP machine. Don't know about other Video Editors or other versions of Windows. Here's the XML you need to load into WMM:

































If you don't know what to do with the XML let me know and I'll try to help you. I'm sure there are others here who could help as well.

The XML slows down video (and the audio in the video track). It doesn't affect the separate audio track. Apparently it also doesn't affect the PIP video (if the PIP effect has already been applied). Here's an example of a video slowed down by 50% (notice the PIP video is at full speed):

willem wrote:

Thank you Dennis,,i try a demo of the amazing slowdowner on a song i worked on this morning,,loaded it in the programm (mp3) and i know the chord progression so i could slowly play along and could almost set the lyrics on chord changes,,the demo allows you to listen to apart of the mp3,,,great stuff,,i know there is also a slowdowner for video and keep on pitch..

PS you can use audicity to cut your mp3 in pieces,so you can use the demo that alows you to play 1/4 of the compleet mp3

Nice info Dennis. I use my MicroBR to do this. When you play a song, you can push the little A-B button to start your loop section and then push it again to end it (or just play the whole song). Then from there, you can slow down the song in 1% increments to a comfortable speed. It is indeed a very useful tool. Especially the fact that it keeps the original tone. The tool you are talking about sounds awesome if you can grab a song from your i-tunes library! I have to load my songs onto a SD card (max size 2GB) and then get them that way. The 2gb lets me load about 250-300 songs though, so that is nice. Plus it is portable.

Technology rocks sometimes.

Thanks again for sharing these.

J

Regarding the slow down of the moviemaker videos, can you give us some instructions for applying this XML? Also, is there another XML to use to get the PIP affect in Moviemaker?Thanks in advance.

This could be very handy. Thanks for finding and sharing, Dennis. I'll even overlook the put-down on the iTunes comment. Yes, I am one of the 14.... Iz