How to Chop and Screw a Song

You just can't get enough of that superslow, extra-slurred song you heard on the radio? Now that you've found out it was "screwed," you're reading these steps to find out how to screw your own songs. The following shows you how to "chop" and "screw" a song for your personal listening pleasure.

Things You'll Need

• Computer
• Turntables (optional)
• Digital audio program

Instructions

1. Find a song that you want to screw. Get to know the history of the music, and listen to a few of the songs by the artists mentioned here. DJ Screw of Houston, Texas, popularized this music style that has a slurred effect. Many southern artists--such as Three Six Mafia, Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Lil Boosie and Mike Jones--rap or have rapped using the chopped and screwed style.

2. Get an audio program to chop and screw your song with. You can use digital audio programs such as Cakewalk Sonar, Virtual DJ, ScrewLab 3.2, Ableton Live or Cubase to chop and screw your song. Scour the Internet to find other programs that may be comparable if any of these don't suit your fancy. Use any of these programs at your own risk. Also, you can use turntables if you want.

3. Screw your song. Try getting a couple of songs to play around with. "Screwing" is basically slowing down a song. You can do this by slowing down the pitch between whatever range you see fit. You can slow down the whole song if you want. Check out some of Mike Jones' music. He's screwed entire songs, and they actually sound really good. Paul Wall has done a full album that is screwed. Continue to slow down the pitch until you get the slowness or slurring that you want.

4. Chop the song in one of two ways. You can chop the song by playing two songs at the same time and cross-fading them into one another. Do this by switching back and forth between them. You can also split up the songs track by track.

5. Use a turntable if you like, or if you have a DJ friend. Try adjusting the pitch and cross-fading to see how the slurring effect sounds. You can see how both the chopped and screwed parts sound. Have fun playing around with this.