How to change the pitch and speed of a SoundCloud track

SoundCloud is where a lot of music exists only as a stream — remixes, demos, DJ sets, beats that were never released anywhere else. It is also where you are most likely to want to slow something down, because a lot of it was never transcribed by anyone.

Pitch in semitones, not a vague slider

Capo moves pitch in whole semitones by default, which is the unit that actually matters if you are playing along: down two semitones is down a whole step, and your fingering moves with it. Fine tuning covers the ±50 cents in between for tracks that were not recorded at concert pitch.

Popup · pitch, speed and loop

1Pitch

1aSemitone dial1bFine tune1cReset pitch

2Speed

2aReset speed

3Loop A–B

3aA / B points3bLoop on / off3cCount-in3dClear

Slowing a set down without the pitch dropping

Speed runs from 0.25× to 3×, and pitch stays put the whole way. That is the difference between slowing a DJ mix to work out a transition and slowing it into a droning mess. Below about 0.5× you will start to hear the time-stretching work; above 0.8× it is effectively transparent.

Private and unlisted tracks

Capo works on whatever the tab is playing, so an unlisted or private track you have access to behaves like any other. Nothing about it is sent anywhere — the processing happens in your browser and there is no upload step at any point.

Two things it cannot do

It cannot download the track, and it cannot separate the stems. It can pull the lead vocal down on many mixes, which is a different and less reliable thing — covered in removing vocals from a song.