Varispeed audio in DP

[Dwetmaster]

Turntablist does exactly this and more.

http://destroyfx.smartelectronix.com/audiounits.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's free...

[philbrown]

It is also a great way to make harmonies sound richer.

Exactly. Especially if you've only got one person overdubbing harmonies. Besides changing mics, room position and signal chain, recording each pass at a slightly different speed changes the vocal formants and creates a little more of an illusion of multiple people singing.

Actually varying pitch, like with an LFO also goes by the term 'Varispeed' AFAIK. My best guess for an example would be the beginning of Magical Mystery Tour "Roll up" vocals.

[David Polich]

Turntablist does exactly this and more.

http://destroyfx.smartelectronix.com/audiounits.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's free...

I was going to mention this and I just forgot what the name of
the plug-in was. And I actually have it in my components folder...

[newrigel]

It is also a great way to make harmonies sound richer.

Exactly. Especially if you've only got one person overdubbing harmonies. Besides changing mics, room position and signal chain, recording each pass at a slightly different speed changes the vocal formants and creates a little more of an illusion of multiple people singing.

Actually varying pitch, like with an LFO also goes by the term 'Varispeed' AFAIK. My best guess for an example would be the beginning of Magical Mystery Tour "Roll up" vocals.

Sorry, but being a singer, I beg to differ on using any tricks. If your good, you can achieve anything. What happened to just being talented for Christ sake? If all it takes is digital tricks and manipulation... who needs to actually have any talent or gift? You can sort the men from the boys on this. If you can't well, your just on your ipod listening to T-Pain and his voice machine. Sorry, I'm against cheating.

[philbrown]

It is also a great way to make harmonies sound richer.

Exactly. Especially if you've only got one person overdubbing harmonies. Besides changing mics, room position and signal chain, recording each pass at a slightly different speed changes the vocal formants and creates a little more of an illusion of multiple people singing.

Actually varying pitch, like with an LFO also goes by the term 'Varispeed' AFAIK. My best guess for an example would be the beginning of Magical Mystery Tour "Roll up" vocals.

Sorry, but being a singer, I beg to differ on using any tricks. If your good, you can achieve anything. What happened to just being talented for Christ sake? If all it takes is digital tricks and manipulation... who needs to actually have any talent or gift? You can sort the men from the boys on this. If you can't well, your just on your ipod listening to T-Pain and his voice machine. Sorry, I'm against cheating.

We're passing around ideas here. Not absolute right or wrong judgments about those ideas. Well most of us are on that page I think, you being an exception.

[bongo_x]

[quote="newrigel”]...
Sorry, but being a singer, I beg to differ on using any tricks. If your good, you can achieve anything. What happened to just being talented for Christ sake? If all it takes is digital tricks and manipulation... who needs to actually have any talent or gift? You can sort the men from the boys on this. If you can't well, your just on your ipod listening to T-Pain and his voice machine. Sorry, I'm against cheating.[/quote]

First, it’s not cheating. There is no cheating in recording, if you recording, you’re cheating (unless it’s live to 2-track, and that’s still debatable). Robert Downey Jr. can’t really fly, it’s not cheating when he does it in Iron Man.

Secondly, it just sounds different when you do this. There’s no other way to achieve that effect, it has nothing to do with skill. That’s like saying you should be able to sound like you have a flanger on your voice if you’re good.

bb

[David Polich]

It is also a great way to make harmonies sound richer.

Exactly. Especially if you've only got one person overdubbing harmonies. Besides changing mics, room position and signal chain, recording each pass at a slightly different speed changes the vocal formants and creates a little more of an illusion of multiple people singing.

Actually varying pitch, like with an LFO also goes by the term 'Varispeed' AFAIK. My best guess for an example would be the beginning of Magical Mystery Tour "Roll up" vocals.

Sorry, but being a singer, I beg to differ on using any tricks. If your good, you can achieve anything. What happened to just being talented for Christ sake? If all it takes is digital tricks and manipulation... who needs to actually have any talent or gift? You can sort the men from the boys on this. If you can't well, your just on your ipod listening to T-Pain and his voice machine. Sorry, I'm against cheating.

Oh, I'm not against cheating - because there just aren't that many
great singers around.

The T-pain thing is a stupid, worn-out effect. It's not the same thing
as running a vocal track through Melodyne and fixing the odd flat note here
and there. Or, tuning a vocal track sung by a client who has lousy pitch.

No plug-in can fix a voice that is poor quality to begin with. That will
never happen in this universe, ever. That said, I treat a vocal track just
like any instrument track - do whatever it takes to make the track the
best sounding it can be. A great Stratocaster is a great Stratocaster, but
running that guitar into something else (like an amp) is standard procedure.

Sometimes, you want to create an impression with effects and that's why
you would do something like pitch-shift them, distort them, or modulate them
on purpose.

Btw, I believe the T-pain Auto-Tune era is officially over. Yes, Shakira used it on her latest hit, too, and there was no need to. That was an
embarrassing, poor decision on the part of her production team. Maybe the
T-pain track was hot when they started her latest album - goes to show you
just how quickly something becomes dated.

[newrigel]

I just responded to a post referring that using a pitch shifter is going to make it sound richer than actually doing it because of formant dissonance etc. I'd like to hear some examples. Please post up your examples of your synthetic harmonies and I'll post up mine. I'll sing the harmonies and then I'll pitch shift some and you tell me which is richer. Voice is my forte' and no-one here can tell me about pitch shifting sounding richer than the real deal. If your good, you can change the formant to sound different (like different people are singing ensemble like) and to some, maybe doing it this way is the only way, but some have skills and can do it. There's cheese and real. Some have it, some don't.

[stephentayler]

Actually, before this all gets out of hand, I would like to refer back to the original post, which quoted my question. (I am the chap in the UK)

Back in 1990 I invested heavily in Akai technology, namely the DD1000. It was essentially a stereo digital editor that had some basic EQ and DSP (Pitch shift, Time-stretch and Varispeed). Pitch shift changed pitch without changing the time scale, Time-stretch changed the speed without altering the pitch, and varispeed changed pitch and time in tandem, just like changing tape speed.

This kit cost me a small fortune, but it soon paid for itself on numerous gigs, as I became a bit of an expert in digital manipulation long before the Mac made it all possible.

I often have a use for pitching sounds without time correction (as in ProTools). As a sound designer I often bring in sounds that need to be tuned, not pitch shifted. As a music mixer I frequently edit sounds with all the tools for pitch shifting, time-stretching etc and I do find the need occasionally to retune a note using a sampler or switching from DP to PT to do the offline alteration. I could quote examples of how and why this might be useful, but it may be too involved for this post. It’s nothing to do with cheating or laziness, more to do with creativity and problem solving.

I’m not looking for a realtime varispeed plugin option for playback. If you want to record at a different ‘varispeed’ setting, you can make a bounce of the track, speed it up or down, do your overdub, and then speed that recording back to the original speed/pitch. The same goes for recording backwards overdubs, just like flipping the tape in the old days.

So I actually have all the tools I need to do these pitch/varispeed/tuning things... it is just that I don’t think it can all be done in DP.

However, DP really is great, there are so many things I am using it for, including synchronised video playout, but that is another story, and I am so intrigued by the next update. I am actually going to be involved in an Apple Store presentation later this year, where I will be boasting about DP in my Mac workflow, rather than Logic, haha!!!!!

Cheers

Stephen

[stephentayler]

OK here is one ‘for instance’ of a great use of varispeed in the digital domain.

Tape phasing is a great sound, but really rather complicated to achieve. It involved using playback from 2 tape machines, varying the speed of one against the other while recording the result to a third machine. And then splicing or mixing the result back into the mix. Fun, but time consuming, and requiring rather a lot of kit.

Digitally, you take the mix, make a copy, varispeed the copy by a tiny amount, play them back together and offset slightly to set the peak where you want it, and it works. Sounds exactly like tape phasing, but controllable, repeatable and fast. It became a bit like a trademark for me, as I found a way to use the lucky phasing on all my projects!

Incidentally, there is one other 'lucky' motif that appears on all my projects, but that will have to remain a secret!!

Cheers

Stephen

[bongo_x]

You’ve said too much already. You may need to take the whole board down to keep that flange thing out of the wrong hands.

bb

[KEVORKIAN]

You’ve said too much already. You may need to take the whole board down to keep that flange thing out of the wrong hands.

bb

+1

I just added that trick to about 40 Hip Hop tracks... T-Pain can't stop me now!

(seriously, that's a cool trick! Thanks for sharing.)

[David Polich]

I just responded to a post referring that using a pitch shifter is going to make it sound richer than actually doing it because of formant dissonance etc. I'd like to hear some examples. Please post up your examples of your synthetic harmonies and I'll post up mine. I'll sing the harmonies and then I'll pitch shift some and you tell me which is richer. Voice is my forte' and no-one here can tell me about pitch shifting sounding richer than the real deal. If your good, you can change the formant to sound different (like different people are singing ensemble like) and to some, maybe doing it this way is the only way, but some have skills and can do it. There's cheese and real. Some have it, some don't.

Perhaps the use of the word richer is the culprit in the
post which apparently bothered you. I think by "richer", what is meant
is "modulated" or simply, chorused/flanged/phased. I've had clients
ask me if I could make a guitar solo "richer" and what they wanted was
a chorus or flange effect on it.

No one is disputing the value of a good vocalist here. We're discussing
the use of effects to alter sound. I love vocoder effects, and vocoded
vocals are nothing if not "synthesized".

Cheese has its place - I like some cheese every now and then.

[bongo_x]

I’m pretty sure I have cheese.

bb

[David Polich]

My wife calls me the "king of cheese".