I use the web a lot to discover new music. If you play an instrument I hope you have realized already that the video sharing sites, YouTube being the biggest, is filled with people, amateurs and professionals, sharing videos of them playing.

I want to share a neat method I use to learn tunes and techniques from YouTube (or any of the major video sharing sites).

The basic idea here is to download a video to your computer and play it back slowly, without changing the pitch.

There are commercial products that does this - for audio I use the nice little program Amazing Slow Downer ($50) that has great control and quality - but this method is completely free and works for video without any time consuming re-conversions or re-renderings.

Step 1 - Find a video!

I’m gonna use this one, with Hamilton de Holanda and Yamandu Costa on mandolin and guitar. You can clearly see their hands, so this will be great to see how they do this, exactly.

This video is also available in very high quality, and that is of course nice if you want to study technique, but even with relatively poor quality video it always helps to see something of what their hands are doing when you listen. For a lower quality video you might want to look for something more zoomed in, if available…

Step 2 - Download the video

A note: I firmly believe that doing this constitutes fair use and is fully legal. You might want to check if this applies in your location. If it is not allowed in your jurisdiction, consider fighting for making it legal.

There are several methods of downloading content from video sharing sites. The one I use right now is KeepTube, because it’s simple, fast and flexible. And you don’t have to install anything.

Just copy the YouTube adress and paste it in the URL box on KeepTube (or get the KeepTube Firefox Plugin)

You will now get a few different download options depending on the available qualities of the video. Choose the highest quality FLV version availiable, and the download will start.

(In this case you could go for the HD MP4, but the MP4 option most often requires an additional conversion of the video that reduces video quality).

Step 3 - Get VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is a free media player that works on all platforms (OSX, Windows, Linux). It can play most if not all video formats, DVDs, AudioCD and different streaming protocols. It is the player you’ll want to have.

It also has many advanced features, such as subtitles, audio offset, and the feature we’re going to use here: Playback speed controls!

So download and install VLC from here.

Step 4 - Controlling the speed

So, open your FLV in VLC. This is how it looks.

The box in the lower right corner is the speed control, clicking it brings up a slider that lets you control the playback speed, and the audio pitch is not affected.

This is controlled by a setting under Settings -> Show all settings -> Audio, called “Enable time streching audio”. It is enabled by default so there is no need to change it unless you want to listen half tempo in the low octave.

Step 4 - Listen and learn!

Now, just play along, learn, and make great music!