This has been discussed before - there are a lot of different programs to do this type of thing. I personally use Audacity - which is freeware. It is a multi track recording program with the capability to import files and adjust speed without altering pitch. Give it a try.

I suck at picking out tunes by ear, so yet another plug for Audacity from me. That's how I figured out (most of) the main riff from The Insect Surfers' Silver Coast.

Another feature in Audacity that's handy is being able to make a selection of a few notes or a few bars, and have that selection loop ad infinitum. I think you have to <Shift>-click or <Control>-click (or whatever) the Play button to make it loop.

The biggest trick with that is to make the selection such that the beat is consistent when it jumps back to the start of the selection. To do that you can zoom in on the waveform and inspect it for recurring spikes caused by the drums. If your selection starts and ends on, say, the middles of two different snare hits, then it should work. Even better if you can locate entire bars and select two, four, or eight of them.

And, FWIW, the Quicktime Player with MacOS X has a variable-speed playback control that doesn't change the pitch. Audacity is still way more convenient for this purpose.

I'm not a complete idiot. Some parts are missing.

Whenever I attempt to import a song into Audacity it just turns out to be noise. Am I importing the wrong type of file or something?

SURFmole
In addition it allows you to change the pitch or tuning of the song; I've found that's a feature even more useful than the speed change as many recordings can be off a half step or more.

Yeah! Whats up wit dat! And they always blame it on the singer! We tune to Eflat for vocal purposes... Really? I half step really pulls David Lee Roth or Stevie Ray Vaughan out of the weeds? A half step?

So to not totally hijack this thread, I'm not very tech savy, so what do you use to save a song into a format Audacity will read? I once tried to download something that would let me save Audacity files to MP3, and let's just say that today, I cannot save Audacity files to MP3

I try to import a song from Itunes or directly from a CD, and all I get is extremely loud noise. In fact the only thing I can play on Audacity is something I've recorded myself. Any suggestions? I have the LAME MP3 encoder but thought that was for exporting only.

morphball
badash, if we're talking Windows, then you need to install the LAME MP3 encoder.

Same for MacOSX. Direct link to download is here.

morphball
tenderfoot- if I had to guess, your music purchased from iTunes (or ripped from CD using iTunes) is probably in ACC format, meaning it contains extra DRM data that Audacity might not understand. I would follow this tutorial on how to convert AAC to MP3 and see if the resulting MP3 will import correctly.

If you don't need to preserve whatever quality the original format has (since you're going to be slowing it down anyway), it may be much simpler and cheaper to run a mini-stereo jumper cord from your sound out to your sound in jacks, start recording with Audacity, and then start the tune playing in iTunes. It works for streamed audio too, such as from MySpace.

FWIW: The AAC format doesn't necessarily by definition contain DRM data. Ones you create yourself don't have it.

Another nifty thing I use is Metronome for MacOSX. One of the handy features is that you can tap out a beat on the spacebar, and it will tell you the beats per minute averaged over the last few seconds. Divide 1 by that number, and multiply by 60 to get the duration (in seconds) of a single beat.

When you drag-select multiples of that duration in Audacity, and have it loop the playback of a selection (shift- hit PLAY button), the rhythm carries through as it wraps around to the beginning of the selection. Much easier to follow along, instead of stumbling to catch up.

I'm not a complete idiot. Some parts are missing.

Is that really easier? Seems to me Audacity has fewer steps to slow down the segment of a song.

JakeDobner
Is that really easier? Seems to me Audacity has fewer steps to slow down the segment of a song.

Yep, audacity is still easier. My technique du jour is moving the mp3 to my sony pcm-d50 (a very good field recorder in it's own right), which happens to have two very useful features- one is an A-B toggle that loops part of a song, the other is the DPC switch (digital pitch control), which I set to about -40. I then output the sony to my microcube, plug in the guitar, and have a nice, mobile training rig. The recorder can be had on ebay for as low as $350, and can easily handle your recording experiments as well.

Mike
http://www.youtube.com/morphballio