Options for slowing down audio

[Prime Mover]

I'm shooting a music video this weekend which involves slowing down a track to 2/3rds speed, playing to it, then speeding up the footage by 150% to match the original.

What are the best options for getting precise, slowed down audio. It doesn't need to sound great, because the audio won't actually be used, it just has to be decent enough to play along to.

I could just use DPs speed adjustment, but there might be other better ways of doing it too.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I don't see machFive 3 in your sig but that would be my suggestion.

[usbovine]

Nanosampler, drop 4 semitones. Not sure if it can load a song-sized sample, though.

[bayswater]

Audacity does this, so does Logic. Apparently Garage Band can do it, according to this post:

"You can slow a song down using GarageBand! You don't have to resort to Audacity or whatever.

It's a weird, but very simple procedure:

1. Drag your audio file (MP3, M4A, ...) in GarageBand. It's shown as an orange track.
2. Press Ctrl+Alt+G
3. Click the audio track. It is now blue.
4. Check "Follow Tempo & Pitch" (this is in the wave editor section, which you get by clicking the scissors symbol next to the eye)
5. Now change the tempo (next to the song time display)

Hope this helps!

This info is pretty hard to find on Google, so here a few more keywords: slow down, speed up, tempo-dependent track, change tempo, garageband as guitar trainer, blue track, velocity"

[philbrown]

I bought Amazing Slow Downer http://www.ronimusic.com/ for this kind of stuff.
Complete independent control of pitch and tempo and you can listen/tweak in real time or bounce the result once you're happy with it. Definitely worth the $50 for me.

I use it for:
Learning songs that are a little off pitch on the original recording.
Trying out different tempos
Transposing pitch of a whole song to a different key
Slowing down fast licks to figure them out
Setting up a quick loop to work on a lick, chord prgression, phrasing etc.

[buzzsmith]

To Phil:

Here's another neat one for transcription help. It also has a "Karaoke" function which can help remove the lead vocal to hear what's "behind" it. (Of course, it sometimes removes stuff that you want to hear depending on the panning.)

http://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/overview.html

(Will not resolve OP's question, but worth a mention to you!)

Buzzy

[MIDI Life Crisis]

If you run at 98% of light speed the audio should slow down by 2%. Unfortunately your client will be 200 years older by the time you finish the edit. Be sure you charge by the hour.

[philbrown]

To Phil:

Here's another neat one for transcription help. It also has a "Karaoke" function which can help remove the lead vocal to hear what's "behind" it. (Of course, it sometimes removes stuff that you want to hear depending on the panning.)

http://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/overview.html

(Will not resolve OP's question, but worth a mention to you!)

Buzzy

Thanks Buzz, hadn't ever seen that one before.

[Prime Mover]

Didn't have Garageband installed (never used it, actually), so I used Audacity, and it was "good enough". Sad thing is that it blew away DP8s granular time stretching When I stretched the audio in DP to 150%, it was almost unusable.

[buzzsmith]

Didn't have Garageband installed (never used it, actually), so I used Audacity, and it was "good enough". Sad thing is that it blew away DP8s granular time stretching When I stretched the audio in DP to 150%, it was almost unusable.

Yep. A glaring weakness, IMHO.

Buzzy

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Maybe someday time stretch in DP will be super, but it is not this day!

[stubbsonic]

Another nice feature about Audacity's pitch, tempo, and varispeed (besides that you have all three independently), is that there are some ramp functions so you can gradually morph from one setting to another over time.

[buzzsmith]

Maybe someday time stretch in DP will be super, but it is not this day!

Yeah, it's not something I need often, but when a client is here and asks to just stretch a note to a longer length and the result is not pleasing they have been known to say, "Weird...it works in Pro Tools."

So I've learned to just jump over to Amazing Slow Downer and do the mod there and import it back in.

However, Amazing won't process really short files...I think they have to be 2-3 seconds minimum in length.

Buzzy

[MIDI Life Crisis]

My story too but I use MACH 5/3

[sayatnova]

Hello Everyone,

I also have used Amazing Slow Downer for years, but recently came across http://www.songsurgeon.com and have been using that quite a bit now. I like it because I can see the waveform and create regions and loops, etc, all the while slowing/speeding and/or pitch shifting. I used to use ASD then go to BIAS Peak to do this, now I just stay in Song Surgeon for all my needs. I am happy with it.

Just one caveat, they are still not out with v4 for MAC, and the program does not allow 24 bit files to bounce; it will play them fine however, just converts to 16 bit on the export...) Not truly «professional» for audio studio work at this point because of the format export limitations, but very good if you just want to work with audio. Sound conversion quality is also very good. Hopefully v4 will address this for MAC (I am waiting for it)... No affiliation, just a happy customer,BTW.

~Shea