How to Slow Down Music to Learn Songs by Ear

Why slowing down works

At full speed, a fast passage is a blur: you hear the general shape but not the individual notes, the exact rhythm, or how one note connects to the next. Slowing the recording gives your ear and hands time to catch every detail. Practising slowly and accurately also builds cleaner technique than repeatedly stumbling through at full speed.

The key is to keep the pitch unchanged. If a recording simply plays slower, it also drops in pitch (at half speed, by a whole octave) and you can no longer play along on a tuned instrument. Pitch-preserving time-stretching avoids that.

Step 1: Isolate the part (optional but powerful)

Bass lines, rhythm guitars and piano comping are often buried under vocals and drums. Run the song through the Stem Splitter first:

• Bassists: practise with the bass stem soloed, then with everything except bass as a play-along.
• Drummers: the drum stem makes ghost notes and hi-hat patterns audible.
• Guitarists and keyboard players: the "other" stem removes vocals, bass and drums, leaving harmony instruments much clearer.

Step 2: Cut out the passage you're learning

Looping a 10–20 second section is far more efficient than playing the whole song. Open the stem (or the full song) in the Audio Cutter, select the passage plus a bar before it as a lead-in, and export it. Play the clip in any music player set to "repeat one" and it will loop continuously while you practise.

Step 3: Slow it down

Open the clip in the Audio Speed Changer, keep Keep original pitch switched on, and render a few versions:

Step 4: Build speed gradually

1. Play along at the slow version until you can do it cleanly three times in a row.
2. Move up about 5–10%, for example from 0.7× to 0.75× or 0.8×.
3. If it falls apart, step back one level. Speed comes from accuracy, not the other way around.
4. Join sections once each one is clean at full speed, then play the whole song.

Tuning problems?

Some recordings aren't at standard pitch: vintage records were sometimes sped up slightly, and some bands tune down a semitone or more. If your instrument sounds slightly out with the track, use the Key Changer's cents adjustment to bring the recording in line with your tuning, or transpose a whole semitone for down-tuned songs.

Frequently asked questions