The Amazing Slow Downer: An Incredibly Valuable Learning Tool
Learning music by ear can be exceptionally difficult, especially when the drum parts are fast, busy, and layered with lots of other percussion instruments. Trying to separate each part of the drum set only by listening is much easier said than done. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an app or program that enables the user to slow down music and even loop sections of a song? If only...
Actually, there IS an app that does all of that and more: the Amazing Slow Downer.
Available on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, the Amazing Slow Downer puts a lot of power in the palm of your hand. This article will give an overview of the mobile iOS version, which can be found right here (but has to be purchased through the App Store on your device).
Slow Motion
Having the ability to slow down a recording makes it much easier to pick out the details in a performance. However, altering the speed of a recording often damages the audio, resulting in weird distortions and artifacts that really muddle details. For example, you can slow down a video or song on YouTube, but anything below roughly 80% of full speed results in a significant reduction in audio quality, which doesn’t really make it any easier to learn by ear.
With the Amazing Slow Downer, the quality of the audio holds up superbly, even at 50% of a recording’s original speed. The clarity of the sound at slower speeds makes it much easier to decipher drum parts simply by listening.
I typically learn songs by ear, but sometimes, drum parts are just too complex and fast for me to really work out the details. Slowing them down helps tremendously. Around this time last year, I started attempting to learn some of the parts from Tigran Hamasyan’s “Levitation 21” (Arthur Hnatek on drums), particularly the grooves played right when the drums enter. After a few listens and before slowing down the recording (and before discovering the video from the recording session to the left), I was under the impression that the song was in 4/4 with a quintuplet rhythmic rate. But there’s no clear backbeat and there’s an extra hiccup somewhere around the 3rd beat that I just couldn’t quite place. Additionally, it sounds like there’s some type of choked bell rhythm that’s laced into the hihat pattern, which is already pretty disjointed. Long story short, I didn’t have much idea as to what was ACTUALLY happening in the song.
Upon slowing the recording down to 75% speed, I was able to pick out a consistent hihat pattern. That hiccup in the 3rd beat I mentioned? Turns out, the 3rd beat has 6 parts to it, while beats 1, 2, and 4 only have 5 parts each. In other words, the song isn’t in 4/4, it’s actually in 21/16 (I should have been tipped off by the title of the song…). However, the “beats” are grouped into 4 strong pulses so it still feels like 4/4, but the 3rd beat is stretched out ever so slightly. Using the hihat pattern as an anchor point, it became much easier to fill in the other details, such as the snare drum, kick, and that little bell sound. But it would have taken me way longer to arrive at that same conclusion if I didn’t slow down the track. And that’s assuming I ever got it down correctly in the first place!
iOS user interface shown in 3 different colors.
Looping
The other major function that really makes the Amazing Slow Downer a handy tool is the ability to create loops. Trying to practice a portion of a song can be really frustrating when you have to continuously stop playing, rewind the song a bit, miss the mark because you didn’t go back far enough, then go back too far because you forgot the specific timestamp you needed... You ultimately spend more time scrubbing through a song to find the right place compared to actually practicing.
Amazing Slow Downer user interface on iOS - dark mode with looping on.
In the app, it’s possible to program and save multiple loops, allowing users to break songs into smaller chunks that can be practiced individually. Loops are created according to timestamps, which can be refined down to the thousandth of a second. Since the screen is small and it can be a real challenge to set accurate timestamps, users can adjust the precision of sliders by first moving their finger up or down on the screen before moving to the side. While it usually takes a few tries to program a loop just right given the user interface, it’s easy enough to create seamless loops in the palm of your hand.
Practicing along with a slow loop and then gradually increasing the pace is one of the fastest ways to master parts of a song, and it’ll help train you to play through mistakes. Accidentally mess up the groove a bit and lose your place? That’s okay. It’ll cycle back around in a few seconds! Just focus on picking yourself up as quickly as possible to get back into the flow. Eventually, you’ll stop panicking if you make a mistake and will be able to let the momentum push you through without completely stopping to recollect yourself.
Other Features
Aside from the main functions of slowing recordings and looping chunks of songs, the Amazing Slow Downer also has other handy uses. And they’re all accessible through a concise user interface.
The app can pull in songs directly from Spotify and Apple Music, or any audio file stored on your device. Users can alter their headphone mix with a simple slider control, allowing them to more easily focus on sounds that are panned only to one side. There’s also a built-in pitch control, if you wanted to pitch an entire song up or down for some reason. There are buttons that let the user completely rewind a recording, or move one second at a time through a recording, which is very useful for more easily finding the beginnings and ends of sections in a song. And beyond just slowing down recordings, the app can speed them up to 150% of their original pace. It can be a fun challenge to play along with your favorite songs sped up! There are a slew of other settings useful for practice as well, including EQ, incrementally increasing speeds after a certain number of loops, MIDI device integration, and other niche features.
Overall, the Amazing Slow Downer is an incredibly useful tool for all musicians. It’s a very powerful program that can help users more easily decipher and learn music by ear. Slowing down a recording removes a lot of the guessing that often accompanies learning music by ear, especially if you’re a beginner drummer.