Funky Music Tip #5 - Slow Down Solos And Transcribe Them With Audacity Software

I want to share with you on this segment of the “funky music tip” the software Audacity.  I downloaded  this recently and it works great as a way to take your audio file of that solo you were trying to learn and slow it down to a speed where you can hear the fast runs and quick passages.  The best thing is that it keeps the file in the same key even though you can slow it down to any speed you wish.

Any audio editing software like ProTools, Melodyne, Logic, Reason, Soundforge, Transcribe, and others, will do the same thing as Audacity but Audacity is an easy to use simple audio program and it is a lot cheaper… free.  I bought a version of Transcribe a while ago for about $9 but when I read about Audacity I had to check it out.  Audacity works a lot like Soundforge without some of the Sony bells and whistles.  

The way to slow down an audio file in Audacity is to import the file (or drag and drop from your folder), then go to the “effect” tab and click on “change tempo.”  Then drag the icon to whatever percentage of the speed you want.  Usually 50% is a good speed to slow down fast runs. 

Try it out and I hope it helps you in your practice sessions.

Download Audacity from their site

* I added an update to the original post.  You have to click on "change tempo" and not "change speed" as I wrote in the original post.  The "change tempo" function plays the track in the same speed.