There seem to be a lot of options out there now besides the Amazing Slow Downer. Does anyone know of one that works with Youtube Music (Google’s subscription music service)? Particularly one that changes pitch as well as speed? That’s what I primarily need it for.
I suppose I could get the free version of Spotify but the number of apps I have on my phone to use for playing music is getting ridiculous 😆
I know there is a trend towards player apps with built-in features like this, but I’ll suggest another way of doing this. When I see something on YouTube or anywhere else online I want to slow down or pitch shift for home practice, I use the free open source Audacity audio editor that works on PC, Mac, or Linux.
https://www.audacityteam.org/
You can load Audacity in the background and set it to record any incoming audio like playing a YouTube video. Then use the built-in features in Audacity to slow down or pitch shift, and save it out as an MP3 file to practice with on your computer or phone. Audacity will do much more than that, but I use it all the time as a basic program to capture online audio and manipulate tempo or pitch.
YouTube has a slow downer built in. Just click settings on any video and then Playback Speed
There’s the Loop2Learn app that works with YouTube videos, lets you slow things down, loop sections of the tune etc.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.looptolearn&hl=en_IE&gl=US
Thanks for the replies!
I have used Youtube for slowing down (and looping occasionally)--actually that’s been my only way of doing so and I’ve managed with it so far, although it’s not the most convenient to only be able to choose from 50% or 75% speed.
I’m really looking for something that can change pitch so I can play along with some recordings where I’m really trying to pick up the rhythm (and learn tunes from, of course).
I will check out Audacity--sounds interesting! Would still like to hear about any phone apps too.
This is a brilliant add-in for (desktop) Chrome which does all you want and works with Youtube music:
https://transpose.video/
I have used ‘music speed changer’ for years.
https://musicspeedchanger.com/
(no financial interest)
It works great. Apps for android and iphone, and I see it even has a web based system now. You can slow down without changing pitch; change pitch without speed; or change both. You can set loop points to hear a phrase over and over. You can save a new file with any of these changes. etc.
My process:
“4K Video Downloader” to download .mp3 files from YouTube.
“Transcribe” to slow down and pitch shift tunes.
I wrote it all up a few weeks ago:
http://michaeleskin.com/tunelearning.html
I use AnyTune Pro.
I like it because it also has a lot of other functions that help me learn tunes with features like looping, segmentation, etc.
I actually hook up a midi pedal that allows me to control the tune while I’m learning. This means I don’t have to put down my fiddle to stop / start / loop / unload / next segment / previous segment.
Just read Michael Eskin’s overview. I think it’s similar to what I do, with the addition of the midi pedal to control the tune with my feet.
Thanks for the suggestions everybody.
For anyone who might be wondering, I found out that Spotify is no longer allowing third party apps like Amazing Slow Downer to stream from it as of September 1. I’m guessing Youtube Music is like that too. Looks like I’ll be buying more digital files (or ripping them) if I want to play along.
Vechey, at times I also use a ancient Passport Design Tranzport wireless MIDI control surface device and foot pedal to control Transcribe. Unfortunately, it’s not available anymore except on the used market. What sort of controller are you using?
+1 for Vechey’s recommendation for AnyTunePro.
When I go to workshops I use AnyTunePro+ on my iPad.
It’s absolutely amazing. A bit of a learning curve, but once you understand it, it’s exactly what you’d want to learn tunes.
Essentially Transcribe but on iOS, even more full featured. You can set markers on a waveform of the recording, loop between markers, change the pitch and speed independently, even do some advanced EQ to isolate specific instruments. It has some advanced practice options like looping between markers with incremental speed increase each time.
In the old days where you couldn’t easily transfer files from one app to another without an internet connection, it was the only slow-downer app that also had a built-in recorder feature. This was crucial for workshops in remote locations that had no WiFi or cellular service.
I also use Anytune Pro on my iPhone. It’s pretty much where everything I’m working on goes. I love the looping and speed/pitch controls. There are fancier features too, like a visual EQ “box” that can do things like cut the piano out of Michael Coleman recordings (yes, it actually works, but it leaves the fiddle extremely thin and tinny sounding). And when I’m feeling lazy, I just play audio from streaming services or YouTube on my computer speakers and record it using my phone’s mic, instead of going through the trouble of pulling the video and ripping the audio out of it. I do that sometimes, too, but if I’m learning a tune off of a looped audio file on my phone, I couldn’t really care all that much about the fidelity of the recording as long as I can hear the melody.
Reverend: you just saved me a bunch of hassle.
For AnyTune you can easily import anything you own from your iTunes library. So it won’t import something from Apple Music, but if you’ve bought on iTunes or imported files into your library it works.
If you are on android, then ‘AUDIPO’ ìs fantastic, feature laden, and their innovative full track visual display (even several hour recording) is game-changer
Full features, slow down, pitch change, loop repeat, and save clips etc - best of type by mile
Try it 🪕🎶😎
If you are able to do command line stuff, there’s a tool called youtube-dl that allows you to extract the mp3 or download the mp4 of a youtube video with a command. Then once you have the mp3 or mp4 you can do what you want with it.
Same general idea, but with a nice front end, can download individual YouTube (and also public Facebook) videos as well as entire YouTube channels either as .mp4 video or .mp3 audio:
https://www.4kdownload.com
I have any number of ways to capture and slow down audio from the usual suspects.
But I always appreciate someone like Shannon Heaton who provides a tune every month w/mp3 download.
https://www.mattandshannonheaton.com/TOTM/
She is not the only one.
Thanks, sbhikes. I had not come across youtube-dl before. Thanks for bringing it up. I found a G.U.I. & downloaded something without a hitch. Old-school & that’s what I like to know it is something still available & working.
@vechey I’d also love to know what midi foot pedal you are using to start/stop.
For my MIDI foot pedal, I use one of these:
http://www.frontierdesign.com/Products/TranzPort
with a generic Yamaha electronic piano foot pedal plugged into it.
They don’t make the TranzPort any more, but they are available on eBay, generally around $50. Make sure you get one that includes the wireless USB interface, it won’t work without it.
There’s a nice one available today (9/16/2022) on eBay for $45 including the USB interface.
Every control on the device puts out a specific MIDI event. To use it with Transcribe, I go into the Transcribe MIDI control settings, select the Tranzport MIDI driver as the MIDI interface to use, and map the play start/stop to the Tranzport foot pedal event.
For Android Chord ai is very good. It’ll find mp3s on my phone, which neither audipo or anytune is able to see, you can stream from any URL, open a file on your phone or input from the microphone. It plays through the tune at any speed or pitch or looped section you fancy and shows the chords as it’s playing. The basic edition is free which I find adequate - the pro version offers deeper chord analysis which you might need if playing serious jazz - half diminished with flattened 9th and 13th kind of stuff.
I use MediaHuman’s YouTube to MP3 Converter (https://www.mediahuman.com/youtube-to-mp3/23/) to download just the audio from YouTube videos. It’s available for Mac, Windows and Linux. It also works for pulling audio from Vimeo, Soundcloud etc.
Then I can use other tools such as Audacity on a local audio file. I also use the Play Local Audio software we built for our tunes website at https://irish.session.nz/playLocalAudio/
This is the same interface we use on our tunes web pages e.g. https://irish.session.nz/tunes/abbey-leix.html
There’s also a page for handling local ABC files which allows looping and slowing down at https://irish.session.nz/playLocalABC/
I’ve also used Music Speed Changer on my Android phone - works well!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.smp.musicspeed
There’s a comprehensive list of other options at:
http://www.seventhstring.com/resources/transcription.html
Thank you, Andy! I use use Media Human to mp3 but forgot it works with SoundCloud. So now I just downloaded… https://soundcloud.com/www-tradconnect-com/caitl-n-nic-gabhann-the?in=www-tradconnect-com%2Fsets%2Fthe-gathering-festival-2017
Quick and easy online tool for slowing and looping YouTube videos:
https://www.dkthehuman.com/slowtube/
I built Looptube for exactly this purpose.
Load a youtube video of a tune, set start & end loop points and slow it down so you can practice.
You can save the loops too and come back to them.
Amazing slow downer was my inspiration but I wanted something web based where I could quickly load a tune.
Here’s an example - https://www.looptube.xyz/?vid=SAW-eo2SelA&start=8.3&end=17.512856990463256