Moments of geekery - 1

Wow!

I am like SO EXCITED, it's AMAZING!

No, but really, I am literally excited!

You know that we meet in a restaurant on Sundays, and we don't have a piano or anything?
We don't even have a guitarist just now, so we sing to the MP3 files from Christian Hymns 2.
I have loaded them all onto my little iPad and I play them through a bluetooth speaker.
That's great, and it works just great, blasting out from the corner like an invisible pianist.

But sometimes the recording is just a little high - like the second half of "Before the throne.
And sometimes it goes a little fast, like for Spirit of the Living God...

Steve MacLean, who I got the idea from, plays the files through Audacity on his laptop and you can adjust the speed, the pitch and a whole bunch of other stuff. But I don't want to carry even more stuff to the restaurant and I don't want to muck around with audacity during the service, or spend time learning it.

Well, someone told me about this app for the iPad. It's called AudioStretch, it will play any music file from your iPad, and it permits you to speed up and slow down with one set of buttons, and to adjust the pitch up and down in semitone steps with the other.

Just that.

I tried the free version and it worked just great. We probably could have got by with that, but the paid version allows bigger transpositions and rewards the author for their work, and costs 5€!

How cool is that!

And if I want I can listen to any music in the key of my choice!

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