# Controlling Speed and Pitch

Capo's primary selling feature is its ability to slow down your music without changing its pitch, or adjust its pitch without affecting the playback speed. You can modify these settings using the menu, the mouse, and your keyboard.

## Speed and Pitch controls

The Speed and Pitch settings share the same space in the main window, and you can switch between the two sets of controls using the mouse.

#### To switch to speed adjustment mode

- Click on the SPEED button, and the controls will switch to let you adjust speed using your mouse.

#### To switch to pitch adjustment mode

- Click on the PITCH button, and the controls will switch to let you adjust pitch using your mouse.

At any time, the pitch or speed can be controlled using the keyboard, regardless of whether the controls are displayed on the screen.

### Adjusting playback speed

The playback speed control has 5 preset speeds, but you can adjust the playback rate to any value in between these presets.

#### To set a preset playback speed, do one of the following

- Click on one of the preset labels (1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 1x, 1.5)
- Press the up and down arrows on your keyboard to move between the presets

#### To set a playback speed in between the presets, place your mouse pointer underneath the preset labels. When the slider appears (see below), do one of the following.

- Drag the slider knob to your desired speed level
- Use the mouse scroll wheel (or two-finger trackpad scrolling) to adjust playback speed

By default, the scroller will snap to the preset values to allow you to easily choose the preset speeds using your mouse. If you wish to disable snapping, hold the shift key while dragging the slider.

### Adjusting pitch

Using the pitch controls, you can learn a song in a different key, transpose by entire octaves to hear bass lines more easily, etc.

For instance, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and John Mayer often tune their guitars down a half a step. Capo would allow you to play back the song a half a step higher, so you don't have to change the way your whole guitar is tuned.

#### To adjust the pitch of playback using your mouse, do one of the following

- In PITCH mode, drag the pitch adjustment slider to modify pitch. Holding down the Shift key will prevent the slider from 'snapping' to discrete semitone values.

### To adjust the pitch of playback using your scroll wheel, or using two-finger trackpad scrolling

- Hover your mouse over the pitch adjustment slider, and scroll to modify pitch

#### To reset the pitch

- While holding the command key, press 0

#### To increase or decrease the pitch in semitone increments

- While holding the command key, press the up or down arrow

#### To increase or decrease the pitch in octave increments

- While holding the command and option keys, press the up or down arrow

Finely adjusting the pitch of a song is especially handy for recordings that may be out of tune. If you don't have a tunable instrument (harmonica, saxophone, digital piano), you can use Capo to correct the song to match your instrument's tuning.

#### To increase or decrease the pitch finely (by two cents at a time)

- While holding the command and shift keys, press the up or down arrows

### To finely adjust the pitch of playback using your scroll wheel, or using two-finger trackpad scrolling

- While holding down the Shift key, hover your mouse over the pitch adjustment scroller, and scroll to modify pitch

Adjusting tuning finely is best done while using the looping feature, in a very short loop. See Looping for more information.

### True values

Note that beside the button titles, on the left, you'll find a set of small lights. When the lights are lit, that indicates the value is "dirty", or "not true."

For example, when the light beside the SPEED button is lit, the speed setting is not at the "true" value of 1x. Similarly, when the light beside PITCH is lit, the pitch adjustment is not zero, and the song is not playing at its "true" pitch.

In the screenshot above, you know the PITCH is not true, because the PITCH light is lit (and the slider is obviously not at 0), but you know that the song is playing at its normal speed, because the SPEED light is not lit.

These two small lights are very handy in Capo, because you can tell at a glance whether the song is playing in its true speed or pitch. When you load a Capo document, and you want to resume learning a song for which you modified the pitch, you will know right away.