Varispeed...

[Phil O'Keefe]

Does you DAW (hardware or software) have it?

 

Do you ever use it?

 

If so, in what ways?

[wwwjd]

I hit it by accident in REAPER once. kinda funky. The part that REALLY thrilled me was pressing the middle mouse button in the middle of the track and dragging back and forth did a VERY EFFECTIVE "analog tape machine reel rocking" sound. It was very clean and clear all the way down to the "BROOOB" at the end before stoppage. Those sounds will be in my next tune! A sound not normally found outside the analog world.

 

um, but no, never REALLY use varispeed. really.

[Lee Knight]

Pro Tools doesn't... does it? I'd love to have varispeed. Some ways I used it back in the tape days. Both in studios and at home on the Portastudio.

 

It's great for harmonies that are too high for you. You sing the harmony part as best you can. On the bits you crack, etc. you punch in sped down. Then sped back up of course.

 

For doubles it's fun to record at a sped up or down speed then return it. It changes the formant which is great for stacking.

 

For that shimmer guitar. Double detuned. Instant 80's.

 

Record guitar at 1/2 speed and return. Instant Lindsay Buckingham.

 

Tom fills recorded at fast speed. When returned to 0 you are a god behind the tubs.

 

Record shakers at slow speed. Fairy dust.

[WRGKMC]

I used a form of it when I was a video producer in AT&T Studios (Or a form of it) to compress or expand music/video to fit a certain time frame was very important. In my case the credits had to match exit or entrance music, or the narration had to fit the video clips being shown. Its basically time compression or expansion for either video or audio or both.

 

In the case of the varispeed the place I used it most was with actual tape decks when I couldnt quite hit notes singing and would bring the speed down a bit and the pitch would drop as well. Problem was when you brought the speed back up the voice would sound unnatureal / munchkin like so it could only be used a littel. You could use it for instruments more effectively. Les Paul was a testimony to that recording leads at double speeds. I used to do that stuff playing rocket speed leads with the old 3 speed 1/4" decks.

 

I could see it being used as an effect with the music coming to a stop or spinning off at high speed. But I think having a varispeed version where you can have pitch shifting only or time compression without modulation are more handy/popular now. Guitarists use time compression to slow down lead riffs for learning purposes, and guitarists that do the SRV tuning a half step lower can modulate the playback down to match theyre guitar tuning.

 

There were alot of older material that was recorded out of pitch where modulation helps as well.

 

The only other place I can see it used is if a whole band is off a few semitones you could tune it in for adding tracks but it would depend on weather it creates digital jitter/ sound quality issues. in that case its just easier to tune to the playback.

[IsildursBane]

The varispeed on the RADAR is better than most, if not all, of the pitch-shifting plugins I've tried for large amounts of shifting.

 

-Dan.

[The*Ataris]

There's a Radiohead song that was entirely slowed down/transposed, except the vocal.

 

The effect it has on the drums/groove of the track is uncanny.

[UstadKhanAli]

I did much of what Lee is describing when I was recording analog. Such a shame I can't replicate that now. Even if PT did have varispeed, unless it replicated the mechanical nature of it, I'm not sure it would have the same effect. I'd like to be wrong about this.

[wwwjd]

 

I did much of what Lee is describing when I was recording analog. Such a shame I can't replicate that now. Even if PT did have varispeed, unless it replicated the mechanical nature of it, I'm not sure it would have the same effect. I'd like to be wrong about this.

 

 

I'm sure I've heard speed/pitch/time changer plugins doing a very effective job of this effect. look around, I'm sure it's out there. just not as populare as the latest granulators, tempo'd gates and bit destroyer effects of late

[nerol1st]

Pro Tools doesn't... does it?

 

I'm fairly convinced (can't check ATM) that pro tools 7.4 does have it.

 

No idea how good it sounds or how easy it is to use.

 

 

I don't think cubase SL3 has it but I could be wrong because you can lock audio to the timeline and mess with the tempo so that's essentially the same thing right?

[Phil O'Keefe]

Pro Tools does have a scrub feature (what wwwjd was describing in Reaper), and a half speed play / record mode, and a varispeed option for the elastic time, but no traditional style onboard varispeed control "knob".

 

I really wish it did.

 

That doesn't mean you can't get around that though... external clock with varispeed or adjustable sample rate. I use an old ADAT deck and run it at something other than 44.1 kHz via its varispeed controls...

[nerol1st]

Ah. I see what we mean now. Like tape slowing down right (so pitch and time together right?).

 

Then I'm pretty sure cubase does not have this at all.

[hangintree]

We use the varispeed function on Soundscape to compensate for our out of tune piano on a couple of sessions. Worked well as a quick fix but we've had it tuned now!!

[Phil O'Keefe]

 

We use the varispeed function on Soundscape to compensate for our out of tune piano on a couple of sessions. Worked well as a quick fix but we've had it tuned now!!

 

 

This is one of the classic uses of varispeed from the old analog days. If you had a song partially recorded at concert pitch (A=440 Hz) and wanted to overdub an instrument that was difficult to tune, and that was in tune to itself, but set to a different pitch standard than that which was used on the rest of the recording, such as a harpsichord tuned to Baroque pitch (A=415, a semitone lower), you could use the varispeed to tune the recording to the instrument, as opposed to the other way around.

 

Since you were recording the harpsichord with the tape slowed down, upon playback at standard (A=440) pitch, the tuning of the harpsichord would match up with the track, although the tonality of the harpsichord would also be affected; it will tend to thin out and the note attacks will also change (speed up and execute faster than "normal"). The more drastic the varispeed, the more drastic the tonality changes...

 

That can also be used for creative effect as well. For example, listen to McCartney's vocals on Here, There And Everywhere - that's varispeed applied to the lead vocals - they were slowed down when recorded, then played back at a faster speed for the mix; resulting in the timbral changes you hear on the final release. As some of you mentioned, that can sometimes be useful to help a singer hit a particularly high note, but unless that note is only a semitone ("half step") or so higher than what they could normally hit comfortably, it's not going to make a huge difference before you start to notice a significant difference in timbre, although if it's just a quick punch in on a single note, you might get away with it.

 

Another classic use of varispeed is for shimmering guitar overdubs that Lee mentioned. Record a guitar track at standard pitch, then record the double with the varspeed set slightly faster or slower but without retuning the guitar itself - instant chorusing.

 

There's a Radiohead song that was entirely slowed down/transposed, except the vocal.

 

The effect it has on the drums/groove of the track is uncanny.

 

If you record with the varispeed set fast, then play back at standard speed, the effect is to not only lower the pitch, but to slow down the note attacks. It can indeed make things sound "heavier" or fuller, but if you push it too far, the note attacks can become indistinct.

 

Recording with the varispeed set slow, or with the recorder running at half speed (15 IPS instead of 30 IPS, or 7.5 IPS instead of 15, or half speed on your DAW) will increase the pitch upon playback at normal speed. When you've used half speed to record, and then play back at standard speed, the pitch of your performance will rise one octave. Because the track will be playing very slowly (and an octave lower) when you're doing the overdub, it may be easier to execute really tricky or fast passages as you're playing - but again, there will be a significant timbral change to the instrument when played back at "normal" speed - the classic example being Sir George Martin's piano solo overdub on In My Life - the piano takes on a almost harpsichord-ish timbre. You'd have to be a particularly technically proficient player in order to pull off some of the runs in that solo at standard speed.

 

When the tempo is cut in half, it's easier to play in time too. Upon speeding it back up, the performance will sound really tight - any slight timing discrepancies in your playing will be cut in half. When you reverse that (record fast, play back slower), the timing can become looser sounding; which is further accentuated byt the increased time it takes for the note attacks to sound, so timing precision becomes more of a concern.

 

Some DAWs and SIAB's (studio in a box) have a varispeed control; with digital, it's a matter of raising or lowering the sample rate, as opposed to adjusting the speed of the tape machine's motors (analog decks). My Yamaha AW4416's had this feature, and I really miss it in Pro Tools. So now, when I want to varispeed, I connect the lightpipe out from an ADAT deck to the lightpipe in on one of my Pro Tools interfaces, and have PT slave to that incoming lightpipe's embedded word clock data. By using the varispeed controls on the ADAT deck, I am able to get the PT system to slow down or speed up by whatever percentage I've specified on the ADAT deck.

 

It works fine, but since I don't normally want to use the ADAT deck's internal clock as the master clock for my system, I have to set it up each time I want to do a varispeed recording... which takes a bit more effort than just clicking on a software button and rotating a virtual varispeed "knob".

[Lee Flier]

Yeah, Reaper has it. And yes I've used it, mainly for the same purposes I do with tape: either for the overall effect of the pitch shift, or to compensate for some instrument like a piano that's not tuned to 440. Most recently, I recorded bagpipes on a rock tune which is in the key of A. Highland bagpipes tune to around 470. So I sped up the track in Reaper so that they matched while recording. Then brought the whole thing down to normal speed after the session was done.

 

I also still record on my Yamaha AW4416, which as you know Phil, has varispeed. I've used that to compensate for my not-quite-in-concert-pitch old upright piano on many occasions.

[nice keetee]

Tape Stop is a great freebie vst.

[Ethan Winer]

I use SONAR and I honestly don't know if it has vari-speed. But even if it does, it wouldn't work for me since most of my projects are a mix of audio and MIDI. But I do use vary-speed for vocals, especially background harmonies, to raise or lower voices one or two half-steps to get a slightly different timbre. That way one person can sing multiple parts and sound like different people.

 

So I do it manually. First I export the part of the tune I'll overdub to as a Wave file backing track. Then I shift the pitch up or down as needed being certain that "preserve duration" is not checked. Then I bring that into a new project in Sonar, add the overdubs, and save each overdub as a new Wave file. Then I shift the pitch of each overdub file up or down to what it should be, then import that into the original SONAR project. It's not as tedious as the above probably sounds.

 

--Ethan

[lasaxman]

Sonar does not have it. There's been a really big discussiong about it recently. Hopefully, the people at Cakewalk are listening, and put it into an update, or the next release!!!!