Audacity Download Player

The Audacity Player is available to download free from the following link (it is only 3.3MB).

http://audacity.sourceforge.net

To use this player for looping sections of your mp3s, or to speed them up or slow them down:

1. Install then open Audacity

2. Go to the Project menu and select Import Audio

3. Select an mp3 that you have downloaded from the Bluegrass College and open it. You should now see the wave form of the mp3 displayed.

4. To play the tune press the Spacebar or use the transport buttons at the top of the page. (These are the ones like the buttons on a tape recorder for Play, Stop, Pause, Shuffle, Fast Forward and Back).

5. To Loop/Cycle part or all of the tune, highlight the 'Selection Tool' in the top left hand corner (to the left of the transport buttons) - this looks a bit like a large letter I. (As you hover over icons in Audacity their function is displayed in the bottom left hand corner).

6. Using the mouse, move the Selection Tool over to the wave shape and 'drag and click' it over the section of the wave shape you want to loop. The section will now be darker grey.

7. To Cycle/Loop this section, press Shift and Spacebar, or Shift and the Play button.

8. To change the length of this section and/or to improve the way it loops, use the mouse to move the 'Selection Tool' to the end of the section you want to alter and a hand will appear. By dragging and clicking you can alter the length of the section. Happy Looping!

Changing the Tempo using Audacity

To change the tempo of all or part of your file, select the section you want to change. Go up to the 'Effect' menu and select 'Change Tempo'. Enter the current bpm rate (which you'll find in the Lesson Notes) in the box marked 'BPM: From' and the new tempo you would like in the box marked 'To'. Hit OK and Audacity will do the rest!

You will usually get better sound quality from 'speeding up' rather than 'slowing down', so for example if you want to practice at a tempo between 'Slow Jam' and 'Performance', use the 'Slow Jam' file. Let's say this is at 90 bpm, and the Performance file is at 120 bpm. Put 90 in the 'BPM: From' box, and 105 in the 'BPM: To' box. This will give you a tempo half way between.

If you want to practice along with the 'Performance' file, it sounds perfectly okay slowing it down by about 10%. You may notice that there is some shifting of the stereo clarity when you slow down a track, and the more you slow it down the more one side will sound 'out of time' with the other; there is nothing we can do about this.

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