Slow down tunes for learning.

You can use Windows Media Player to slow down tunes without pitch change, it’s easy to set up. I have the latest WMP version 10 running on VIAO laptop with XP. And it’s free.

Open WMP and goto the View menu;enhancements; and click on speed settings. It works after you have ripped a copy of the tune (say from a CD) to the WMP library which is really simple to do on WMP. But not if you are playing a CD directly on your computer, at least I have not found how to do this.

You can take tunes from the library and add them to a playlist that has only the tunes you want to practice and can play the playlist alone and can loop it. Pretty good organization.

So that in conjunction with Best Practice, which is also free and slows down/changes pitch in real time straight off CD, solves all our ‘playing along’ and ‘learning tunes’ problems, for free! Best Practice is available from here http://www.xs4all.nl/~mp2004/bp/

(I am in no way affiliated to BP - what would be the point? I just love the tool)