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Practising music: tuning, tempo and slowing it down
Practice goes better in tune, in time and at a speed you can manage. These tools cover all three on a laptop, tablet or phone with nothing to install, and the microphone is only ever listened to on the page.
1. Tune up
Open the Tuner, press Start listening and allow the microphone. Play one string or note at a time
and let it ring: the big letter is the nearest note (a guitar’s strings from low to high are E2, A2, D3,
G3, B3, E4; a ukulele’s are G4, C4, E4, A4). Turn the peg until the needle sits in the middle and
changes colour, which is within 5 cents.
Playing with a band or a recording that’s tuned a little high or low? Find what A it uses by playing along to it
and watching the cents, then set Concert pitch to match, such as 442.
2. Find the tempo
Play the recording you’re learning and tap along on the Tap Tempo & Metronome Tap button (or Space, once it’s selected) for a few bars. It shows the beats per minute and puts them in Beats a minute.
3. Practise slowly, then speed up
Set Beats a minute to about two-thirds of the song’s tempo and Beats to a bar to its time signature (3
for a waltz), keep Accent the first beat on, and Start. When a passage is clean three times running, add 5
beats a minute. Keep the page in front: some browsers slow sound in a background tab.
4. Play against a drone or a reference note
Singing or playing a fretless instrument, it helps to hear the key’s home note underneath. In the
Tone Generator, type the note, such as D3, choose Sine wave or Triangle wave, set
Seconds to 60, tick Repeat until stopped and Play. Sing or play your scale against it and listen for
the beating that means you’re slightly off. Save as WAV keeps it for practice without the page.
5. Slow a hard passage down to learn it by ear
Open the recording in the Audio Trimmer, set Start and End around the passage, and set
Speed to 0.5. It plays at half speed, an octave lower (like a slowed tape), which makes fast runs easy to
hear note by note. Tick Normalise if it’s quiet, Play the result to listen, and Save to loop it
in any player.
Because the pitch drops too, don’t tune to the slowed version: work out the notes, then play along at full speed.
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