I'm going to make a suggestion that is both not software to run on a pc and not free. But for doing what you are describing it is bar none my favorite tool. You may want to checkout the boss micro br-80. New in the box it runs a bit under 200 dollars. However it has:
- an mp3 player which can slow down music. But the big thing is that it slows down the music while keeping the frequency the same! This is awesome for learning riffs, solos etc.
- metronome
- A center cancel feature which does an ok job of removing center content (vocals solo guitar etc)
- A large supply of drum loops you can play over.
- A large supply of backing tracks you can solo over
- A builtin drum machine
- A builtin 8 track multitrack recorder
- Can act as a USB sound card for your main computer.
- Two builtin stereo mics for live recording
- Builtin effects like guitar amps sims, delays reverb, phase, vocal, mastering, etc
- Pretty descent guitar -> bass guitar simulator
- Runs off of a few AA batteries or a 9v pedal power supply.
- More that I can't think of right now.
I have a whole computer rig setup with ardour and a bunch of plugins. But I almost never use it. I'm a professional computer programmer and the last thing I wanna do when I sit down to play music is mess around with a computer. Sure for more serious recording I bust out the big rig. But I use my little boss br-80 all the time. If you are sitting down with your guitar to play guitar and not fuss around with software this thing does what you want. It does not get in your way with constant updates, driver issues, sound interface latency issues etc. So, if you have the budget, I'd give it some consideration.
Mike
