Playback for music practice

Learn songs from any YouTube video

Slow it down. Loop the hard parts. Practice until it clicks.

Works with guitar lessons, piano covers, tutorials and more.

  1. 1

    Paste a video

    Drop a YouTube link: a lesson, a cover or a live performance.

  2. 2

    Choose the section

    Set the start and end of the part you want to practice.

  3. 3

    Practice your way

    Loop it, slow it down, and play along until you get it right.

See it in action

Try the tools on a real clip.

Interactive demo

Simple Man guitar lesson · Lauren Bateman

Mark the section

Start

2:26.0

End

2:38.0

2:15.02:45.03:15.0

Make your version View source

Keyboard shortcuts

Control playback without leaving the keyboard.

JKL
Back, pause, forward
T
Tap the tempo (in Practice)
Shift
Slow motion while held
O
Turn looping on or off
See all shortcuts
Space
Play or pause
←→
Back or forward 1 second
,.
Previous or next frame
JKL
Shuttle back / stop / forward
O
Loop the moment on or off
[]
Set loop IN / OUT
\
Back to the whole moment
P
Practice: passes, your-turn gap, count-in
T
Tap the tempo (Music practice)
Shift
Hold to slow to 0.25×
M
Mirror the picture left to right
F
Theater mode
Esc
Close panel / Exit theater / Reset loop
?
Show or hide this list
Page Down
Play / Pause
Page Up
Restart loop

On any Playback, press ? for this list. Frame steps assume 30 frames a second, because YouTube does not share the real rate.

Questions

Is the count-in locked to the song's beat?
It leads you back in at the tempo you tapped, and the passage starts when the clicks end. It is not sample-locked to the recording: YouTube's player decides how fast it actually starts, and that varies by a fraction of a second. For practising an entry it works well. It is not a DAW.
Does slowing down change the pitch?
No. YouTube's player keeps pitch constant when the speed changes, and Playback uses that player.
How does the loop work for practice?
Play four bars, stop, one bar of clicks, again. Open Practice, pick Music and tap the tempo (the T key works); park on a downbeat and choose 1, 2, 4 or 8 bars, and Playback works out the loop length. The reset is deliberate: a browser cannot splice a YouTube loop with studio precision, and for a hard riff the stop and count-in is the better drill anyway.
Can I earn the tempo back?
Yes. Pick any speed YouTube offers for the video, and with Speed up on each pass returns one notch faster until you are playing at full tempo. Set a gap after each pass to play the phrase back yourself before the recording returns.
Is there a metronome?
A metronome at the tempo you tapped and a sustained reference note (with an optional fifth) are there for when you put the recording down and play alone. They only sound while the video is stopped; Playback never plays its own audio over a YouTube video.
Is it OK to use someone else's YouTube video?
Playback never downloads, copies or re-hosts a video. The video plays from YouTube's own player, on YouTube's terms, with YouTube's own ads. What Playback saves is a pointer: the video's ID, a start and end time, a speed, and your words. If the owner removes the video from YouTube, it stops playing here too.