PRACTICE TIPS
How to slow down songs on Spotify
Practice along with your favorite songs in Spotify – slowed down to the speed you choose.
How to slow down songs on Spotify
As you know, most music is streamed and purchased these days from platforms such as Spotify, Deezer or Apple Music.
Playing along to your favorite tracks is always a huge motivation for guitarists. Now you can slow down songs on Spotify – and use Spotify as a key tool in your practice regime. Let me show you how.
I will show you how to:
- load a song into the Amazing Slow Downer app
- adjust the song’s playback speed in the app
- apply this to your practice regime
The Amazing Slow Downer App
The first thing you need to do is install a very cool app on your iPhone or Android called the Amazing Slow Downer. This app has such a cool name – it does exactly what it says on the tin!
Go to the app store (iOS) or Play Store (Android) and type in “Amazing Slow Downer”.
You will see two results – the full app and the Lite version of the app. Install the Lite version for now as this is good enough for now. You can always upgrade later if you get this working and you feel like you will enjoy practicing this way.
Once you have installed the app, you can open it and connect Spotify. Select Spotify from the list and connect it by entering your Spotify username and password. This only has to be done the first time you access Spotify.
Assuming this is done, you can now select playlists and indeed your chosen song from that playlist. Because the song I wish to practice is Blackbird by the Beatles, I will now create a playlist in Spotify called Fingerpicking Practice and I will add Blackbird to this playlist.
Once Spotify is connected, you can now select playlists and indeed your chosen song from that playlist.
Because the song I wish to practice is Blackbird by the Beatles, I will now create a playlist in Spotify called Fingerpicking Practice and I will add Blackbird to this playlist.
Selecting and slowing down the song
I now open the ‘Fingerpicking Practice’ playlist and select Blackbird which opens up this song in Amazing Slow Downer
Let’s now have a look at what we see in the Amazing Slow Downer app. Firstly, note there is a play, pause and stop button. You can play the track now and you will hear it playing. Feel free to mess around with all the settings.
The key setting here is the speed setting. If you reduce this value, you will now notice the song is played at a slowed down tempo!
Practice Tips
1. Slow Down Songs on Spotify to 75%
I would suggest setting a speed of around 70-75% of regular tempo.
If you slow down the song too much, it becomes almost unintelligible. It doesn’t really sound like the song any more. If you don’t slow it down enough, then it’s hard to practice along with it.
2. Play along with slowed version
The value of being able to slow down a song in Spotify is that you’ll be able to play along with it – and also hear some more of the intricacies of the performance that perhaps you wouldn’t at full speed. One great thing about the app is that it saves the song you most recently opened – and the speed you most recently set it to. Therefore, in order to continue practicing where you left off last time, all you have to do is open the app!
3. Increase the speed
One thing I encourage you to do is to pick a ‘really hard’ song – one that you’ve always dreamed of playing – and see what it sounds like at 70% speed. Can you play along? Can you play even a couple of bars? If so, that’s a big win and something that should keep you motivated!
Playing along at a slower speed, mastering the music and then speeding up is an important discipline. If you do this, you are basically guaranteed results.
Enjoyed this post? I have another tutorial for how to slow down songs in YouTube – also worth checking out!
Get the Learn Fingerpicking Book
Register for the newsletter and I will send you this book (105 pages) and a free lesson once a month.
This is the ideal resource for complete beginners who wish to learn guitar.
