Guitar Crosscurrents

I’m a guitarist who loves gadgets. Even more than gadgets, I love music. Computers and music are getting closer every day. Nearly every gig I get involves musical charts and CD recordings. I like to use my computer to work the music up to tempo and drill any of the more difficult segments until they feel natural.

Amazing Slow Downer (www.ronimusic.com) is the best musical tutor/practice buddy/sparring partner that I can think of for any musician who with a computer (and $50). It’s software that gives you the power to crack the code on any musical excerpt that’s just out of reach—or a lick that’s made you give up hope.

The software gives you the capacity to change the speed of any mp3 without changing the pitch. It also allows you to change the key without changing the tempo, but without changing the speed.

Designed by a Scandinavian guitarist, it’s set up with musicians in mind—easy to use and brimming with functions. The interface allows the use of sliders or smaller arrow buttons to change parameters on a large or small scale.

Open any CD track or mp3 file through the File menu. Hit the space bar to play. Loops can be of any length. Click the ‘Start’ button to set the beginning of the loop and hit the ‘End’ button for the end. Change the ‘Stretch’ slider to vary from full speed to 400% slower. Hendrix, Beck, or Chet Atkins sound just as great as ever, but much slower, laying their cards out on the table for any guitarist to hear the notes in crystal clarity.

Pitch can be varied by half-steps or incrementally––handy for drop tunings or capo’d guitars.

Key commands allow lightning quick changes. I like to use the ‘X’ key to jump the loop coordinates forward to a the next segment of the same length. If you loop 4 bars of a blues head, hitting the ‘X’ key will move you to the next 4 bars.

Command ‘S’ allows you to export any given segment as an mp3 or aiff file. Teachers can burn copies of solos at various speeds for their students.

All those transcription books gathering dust on your shelves can suddenly be useful when you’re able to slow the music down to your reading speed, whatever that is… Bartok’s Violin Duets are relatively simple for violinists, but too tough for guitarists to read with recordings. It’s much easier to follow musical scores when they’re a bit slower. It’s also gratifying to correct mistakes found in many transcription books—why not work on the right notes while we’re at it? Work things up to full tempo and watch hours of productive practice go by.

Working material up for a concert is much more fun when you’re using recordings in the ways described above. One caveat, however: it is important to break it down to metronome-only accompaniment to make sure that you’re not overly reliant on some facet of the recording that may not be there to back you up during performance. The metronome, while monotonous, can really sound like the greatest drummer in the world when you’re playing with great time.