EarBee

A player for transcribing music

Learn the song
by ear, one bar
at a time.

Slow a song down without changing its pitch. Loop the hard part. Step through it from the keyboard.

EarBee is a desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux. Open this page on a computer to download it. See the downloads

Windows, macOS and Linux

Free. The whole thing.

Every feature on this page is in the download. Nothing is locked.

EarBee playing a concert video at 0.75× speed: beat and bar lines on the waveform, a section named Main riff, and one bar looping.
A concert video at 0.75× speed, looping one bar of the main riff.

It hears the beat.
You loop the bar.

EarBee finds the beats and bars for you, so you can loop one bar at a time.

Find the beats and bars

Press B. A line marks every beat, a stronger line the start of every bar, and you see the tempo.

  • ← → jump to the next beat or bar.
  • Shift + B plays a click on every beat.

On Intel Macs: beats only, no bars.

Loop a bar, then the next

Press \ to loop the bar you're in.

  • = doubles the loop, - halves it.
  • Shift + ] moves it to the next phrase, Shift + [ back.
  • Loop edges snap to the beats. Hold Alt to place them freely.

What it does

Slower, same pitch
Play from 0.25× to 3× speed without changing the pitch. Or change the pitch, not the speed.
Beats and bars
Press B to mark every beat and bar, and see the tempo.
Loops
Shift-drag across the waveform, or press \ to loop the current bar. It repeats without a gap.
Marks
Press M to mark a point, R twice to mark a section. Name and colour them.
Video
Videos stay in sync at any speed. Show them big, or in a window on a second screen.
From YouTube
Paste a link, or search by name. Chapters become marked sections.
Projects
Save your marks, loop, speed and EQ in one .ebee file, with or without the song.
Long files, offline
An hour-long concert opens in seconds. No internet needed, except to download.

Hands stay on the keys

Listen, stop, go back, listen again: each step is one key. Press ? in the app for the full list.

Seventeen colour themes

EarBee's own dark and light themes, plus popular editor themes. Automatic follows your system.

Download

For Windows, macOS and Linux. Free and open source.

Windows

Portable .exe: nothing to install

Download

If Windows warns you, choose More info, then Run anyway.

macOS

Disk image, .dmg, for Apple Silicon or Intel

Drag it to Applications. The first time, right-click it and choose Open (it isn't signed by Apple). Not yet tested on a real Mac: tell us how it went.

Linux

.AppImage, any distribution

Download

Make it executable, then run it: chmod +x EarBee*.AppImage

All releases · Source code, or build it yourself: npm install && npm start