Become a Real Guitar Hero: Learn to Shred with GarageBand

I like to obsess over things. As soon as I find something interesting enough, I’ll invest a good ninety percent of my time just to get the hang of it. Old school Gillette razors, chess, hold ‘em and Jeet Kune Do have all had their share of my attention over the past few years, but this Christmas I avoided a disaster.

If you can feel where I’m going with this click the jump.

If you haven’t heard of the game Guitar Hero, please step out from under the rock you have been living under, and give it a try. It is an incredible game. You know it’s a great game when you can watch people play and be just as entertained as playing the game yourself. My in-laws have neighbors who are all good at the game. They sit around and pass the plastic guitar around and make musical magic. My eyes widened as I was subjected to star power, whammy bars, boos and standing ovations. This was definitely something that I could be obsessed with.

“But wait,” I thought, “I play guitar for real…” Still thinking, “Why not spend the time learning how to really shred like… Weezer?” The thing is, these guitar solos are just way to face-melting to learn in real time. I need some way to slow it down to a manageable tempo. After some considerable searching, I found a way to do this with GarageBand and some demo software.

GarageBand will import selections from your iTunes library as a “don’t mess with me” media file. You can’t change tempo or pitch on imported media files without a special little spell that you can cook up with your keyboard.

This is what the main window looks like when you’ve imported a track:

Notice the track preview is a orangey-yellowish color. Media tracks need to be changed to instrument tracks to respond to tempo or pitch changes made in the master track or editor window. Here’s where the keyboard shortcut comes in. Hit “ctrl-option-G” and then click on the orangey-yellowish track preview.

It now should look like this:

Be sure to double click on the preview (now blueish purple) to open the editor and tic the box marked “Follow Tempo and Pitch” like this:

There are several ways to slow the tempo down, but if you show the master track and adjust the tempo, you can speed through the song and slow through the guitar solos. Save the file and you can come back when your fingers stop bleeding.

Another way to do this is through Annotation Transcriber by zeitAnker. This program is designed specifically for adding subtitles to films, but it can slow down audio to 30% tempo without a change in pitch. Annotation Transciber even sounds a bit better than GarageBand in the quality department at slower speeds. The downloadable version of AT is a demo that fully functions for shorter media (it worked for me on media over ten minutes) and you can purchase a fully functioning program for €29.

GarageBand has the ability to loop even the smallest selections for repetetive learning, and Annotation Transcriber can handle foot pedal operation so your hands can be ready to free small countries under communist control and save the ozone layer all through your Mexican made Stratocaster.

iTunes has playlists(iTunes link) available from each game for your downloading convenience. You’ll be able to learn the songs sweet enough to make the Guitar Hero Soundtrack. Instead of five button mastery, you’ll be able to plug your guitar into your Volkswagen just like Slash and grind your axe, burn your frets, and battle for your soul like he does every day of his life.