Maybe it's obvious, but using more or less the same technique with a piece of music and an instrument in your hands works great, too. You learn small nuances in

Maybe it's obvious, but using more or less the same technique with a piece of music and an instrument in your hands works great, too. You learn small nuances in how better musicians play while also getting in some good ear training. Works much better for me than getting sheet music and interpreting it in my own (amateur) way. It certainly works better at correcting little problems than most teachers can. Sound editors like audacity can slow down sections and then do pitch shifting to make it sound like a slow version of the original. It's very difficult to use those features to make a good recording (it usually sounds at least a little weird), but for doing quick and dirty analysis of a song that will be thrown out within a few minutes, it's fantastic and easy. I've used this method a few times over the years and wish I had time to do it more. Now that this article made the connection to learning a new language, I can actually see myself learning a new language, which has always seemed like it would take too much time. Obsessing over sound clips in Audacity seems totally normal to me, though.