Slow down, stay in key
Slow down music without terrible sound quality- the latest audio stretching from Signalsmith Stretch keeps audio clear as clear as possible instead of smearing it.
SlowBird Music transcription software for Mac and Windows. Built by musicians for musicians.
- Slow music down without changing the pitch, for detailed transcription and play-along practice.
- A working library, not a folder of files you open and close. Every solo you are studying in one place, searchable by tune, soloist and instrument.
- Save the licks you love as named, loopable notes pinned to the audio — and jump straight back to them months later, without hunting for the timestamp.
macOS 14 or later · Windows 10 or later · one licence covers both
A complete transcription environment
SlowBird features everything you need to transcribe music by ear all in one place.
Instead of opening and saving clumsy files alongside your audio, just select the song you want to work on from the sidebar and get right into it.
You can slow down the song, transpose, change the fine tuning make markers and custom notes become loopable excerpts from the music - perfect for saving a library of licks or patterns that you want to bring into your playing.
Expand your vocabulary with the Notes feature
Most players treat a recording as a file to open and close: you find the phrase, you work on it, you quit, and next time you are hunting for the timestamp again. SlowBird treats it as a library you keep adding to. Mark a passage, name it — ii–V into the bridge, that altered line — and it stays pinned to the audio. Months later it is still one click away, still looping, still at the speed you left it.
Notes4
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ii–V into the bridgeThese Foolish Things
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ii–V7alt–IThese Foolish Things
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I–vi–ii–VAnthropology
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rhythm changes bridgeAnthropology
The rest of the toolkit
Pitch heat map
Highlight a bar and use the keyboard's pitch information analyser to help figure out tricker sections.
Seamless looping
Create a seamless loop at any point in the track and save loops as notes to practice later.
Transpose, keep the tempo
Transpose music into different keys without changing the tempo.
Fine tuning so that you can tune the record to your instrument.
Panning
Some records have instruments panned left or right so you can isolate channels for more specific tasks.
A library, not a folder
Search across tune, soloist and instrument, and colour-label the set you are working through this month. Speed, pitch, loops and notes are remembered per track — come back in six months and the tune opens exactly as you left it.
Hold a reference note
Unfold the seven-octave keyboard and press a key: it sustains for as long as you hold it, so you can match a note against the record by ear instead of guessing. Drag up or down while holding to ride its volume.
Five-band EQ
Cut the mud out of a dusty transfer or lift a buried bass line. The heat map follows the EQ, so it shows what you hear.
Zoom to the phrase
Pinch or scroll to zoom around the pointer, right down to individual attacks, with peaks recomputed at full resolution as you go.
Easily mark sections
Drop numbered markers on the head, each chorus, the bridge, and jump straight to any of them with 1–9.
Useful Keybindings
Everything has a key: space to play, [ and ] to set the loop, ⌘↑ to transpose, M to mark.
A quiet experience
Designed to be a good old-fashioned and lightweight (only 3mb!) app that helps you get stuff done.
SlowBird is useful for all musicians
Slow the record down, loop the phrase, keep what you are working on. How that plays out differs by instrument — each of these pages walks through it for yours.
Guitar
Transcribe solos by ear: slow the fast runs, loop the licks, keep every one you are learning.
Saxophone
Take a bebop chorus down to a speed your ear can follow, then creep it back up to tempo.
Piano
Work out voicings with the pitch heat map and drill each section at your own speed.
Bass
Hear buried lines clearly — slow down, lift an octave, EQ the low end out of the mud.
Drums
Turn a blurred fill into countable strokes with click-free loops at half speed.
Vocals
Learn phrasing in the original key, or transpose the whole track to your range.
A practice session, start to finish
- Bring in the record. Drop the file on the window, name the tune, the soloist and the instrument you are transcribing and Slow Bird will keep it organised.
- Select a region. You can also drop a numbered marker on the playhead, and jump using the number keys.
- Loop the phrase. Drag across the four bars that are giving you trouble. They loop straight away — adjust an edge, or nudge it by 100 ms, until the loop breathes where the phrase does.
- Take the speed down. Pull it back to 60 %, or 40 % for a double-time run. The key does not move, so what you learn slow is what you play fast.
- Check yourself against the heat map. Stuck on one interval? Open the keyboard and see which pitches actually carry the passage.
- Name it and keep it. Save the region as a note. Next session it is still on the waveform, still looped, still waiting — and you start where you stopped instead of hunting for the spot again.
Questions
Does SlowBird slow music down without changing the pitch?
Yes — that is its core job. Playback runs from 5% to 200% of speed while the key stays put, through a modern time-stretcher that keeps fast lines articulate. Pitch is a separate control: transpose in semitones or trim by cents, and the tempo never moves.
Does it transcribe the music for me?
No, and nothing does this well for dense, real-world recordings. SlowBird is a player built for transcribing by ear: it makes the recording easy to slow, loop and navigate, and its pitch heat map shows the likely notes — but your ear names the notes.
What audio formats does it accept?
MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, AIFF, FLAC and CAF. Drop files or a folder on the window and SlowBird copies them into its own library; your original files are never moved or changed.
Is there a Windows version?
Yes. SlowBird runs on Windows 10 or later and on macOS 14 or later, and one licence covers both — buy once and use it on your Mac and your PC. There is no iPhone or Android version and none planned.
How is it different from Transcribe!?
Transcribe! is the long-standing tool in this niche and has lots of different features — video, chord guessing, foot pedals, Windows and Linux.
However SlowBird does the core ear-learning workflow with a built-in library and saved, named passages, in a modern Mac interface with no learning curve. There is a full comparison at slow-bird.com/vs/transcribe/.
Does it work offline?
Completely. The app makes no network calls and sends no telemetry; your library lives in your own Application Support folder and playback needs no connection.
Can I save a lick and find it again months later?
Yes — that is the point of it. Mark a passage, give it a name, and it stays pinned to that recording as a loopable note, with its own colour. Your library keeps every one of them, searchable by tune, soloist and instrument, so a phrase you saved last winter is one click from playing on a loop — no scrubbing, no timestamps written down elsewhere.
How do I get it?
Just click the Download for Mac button on this page!
Get SlowBird ♫
A modern music transcription app for slowing down music and ideal for transcribing jazz solos by ear. Build up a collection of solos, licks and phrases.
- macOS 14 or later · Windows 10 or later
- Apple silicon, Intel & 64-bit Windows
- MP3 · M4A · AAC · WAV · AIFF · FLAC · CAF
- £19.99, one-time — no subscription