Varispeed audio in DP

[KEVORKIAN]

You guys are getting cheesy.

[newrigel]

It depends what your going after... if your going after an organic thing, pitch shifting falls short and the only way to get it is to do it. Using pitch shifting, I can hear the machine @ work. It has a distinct quality and I think it's cool if your going for that but myself... I'd rather just do it. In the old days I have heard things that today are done with an effect... it's funny but if you don't have something you seem to rely on your own abilities and push yourself to extremes instead of just hitting a button. The trends are getting too reliant upon technology than utilizing their own abilities to achieve it. If you don't have the range to sing a 8va over the tonic then maybe you shouldn't. I'm not a HUGE Beatles fan but some of their double tracking is the best I've ever heard because they have extremely good ears and listen, very very well to what they are doing. You just can't get that with a varispeed or an effect.

[David Polich]

It depends what your going after... if your going after an organic thing, pitch shifting falls short and the only way to get it is to do it. Using pitch shifting, I can hear the machine @ work. It has a distinct quality and I think it's cool if your going for that but myself... I'd rather just do it. In the old days I have heard things that today are done with an effect... it's funny but if you don't have something you seem to rely on your own abilities and push yourself to extremes instead of just hitting a button. The trends are getting too reliant upon technology than utilizing their own abilities to achieve it. If you don't have the range to sing a 8va over the tonic then maybe you shouldn't. I'm not a HUGE Beatles fan but some of their double tracking is the best I've ever heard because they have extremely good ears and listen, very very well to what they are doing. You just can't get that with a varispeed or an effect.

Well, you wouldn't use varispeed to create vocal harmonies anyway. Nor would
I use a pitch shifter. I use Melodyne Editor to create duplicates of vocals
and then change the pitch of the duplicates using Melodyne. That works well.

Case in point, I recorded a girl singer from Colorado out here in my LA
project studio, then she went home. In doing the post-pro work, I realized
I wanted to add a harmony I felt was missing on a chorus for one of the tunes - can't call her to fly her back out for this one thing, so I just
did it with Melodyne. Solved. That's what's great about technology. Pitch-shifters? That's so last century..

[HCMarkus]

It depends what your going after... if your going after an organic thing, pitch shifting falls short and the only way to get it is to do it. Using pitch shifting, I can hear the machine @ work.

Varispeed sounds more organic than any pitch shifter I've ever heard. No artifacts, just a smooth shift in pitch and formant. I may not be the singer newrigel is, but have had wonderful responses to big harmonies I and clients performed using varispeed to keep the formants in harmony voices from lining up. This is my favorite use for this "archaic" technique. We're not talking simple pitch-shift chorus/flange here. Varispeed offers creative engineers, producers, and artists a very cool tool, upon which one can rely (from newrigel's perspective) or, from the perspective of the artist unchained, exploit.

Just another arrow in the quiver, mate.

[newrigel]

When I say pitch shifting I mean using any artificial means to produce something thats not being done in nature. Myself, I'd never use them because to my ears... they just can't touch the real deal. Don't get me wrong... I use things for an effect but have never used them to do something I can't do... for some reason on my voice, I can really hear the machine @ work.
Maybe because of the pure tone harmonics or something but I can hear the machine in it. Some voices it works fine on but if you have a lot of vibrato in your style, it just can't track those semitonic variances and it sounds off.

[mrbillet]

A real-time Varispeed controller in the DP transport would be great for quick overdubs. No futzing about with menus and plug-ins.

If you plug and ADAT into your MOTU would you be able to use it just for the varispeed ability? I've never used an ADAT so I don't know how useful its varispeed range is anyway.

-Ian

[James Steele]

record a solo at reduced speed and then speed it up to normal makes the player sound far better than they actually are.

I think we had a long discussion about recording ethics. I found myself outnumbered though as I think that's cheating. It would be considered rather scandalous in genres like metal or hard rock.

[Kubi]

Varispeed can be *so* very useful - as opposed to modern digital versions of pitch-shifting or time-stretching, varispeed doesn't mess with phase, plus leaves transients pretty much alone unless you varispeed by large margins. Also it of course shifts the harmonics cleanly and in phase along with the main notes, so you can make things beefier or brighter in a very clean fashion.

Earth, Wind and Fire famously doubled their horn lines while slowing the tape down. When played back at regular speed, the original recording gave the horn lines the fullness and sound, while the double recorded at slower speed added extra sheen, plus extra snap to the phrasing. This also works with percussion.

You can also do the opposite, i.e. speed up the tape by about a third or fourth, double the chunky guitars and then play back at normal speed. (No cheating here, you's got to be extra-bonus TIGHT for this to sound properly... any deviation will be magnified on playback and sound extra-sloppy.) The added chunky guitars will have lowered harmonics and be beee-feee. Mix to taste.

So I'm all for having options to easily incorporate old-school varispeed recording in DP...

[bongo_x]

That’s why the Studers have their varispeed settings in semitones.

All this talk has made me want to get an adjustable external clock now…

But the real issue is a processing option, I (and the OP) want to be able to grab the edge of the audio and stretch it and have the option of a varispeed time stretch instead of DSP.

bb

[James Steele]

But the real issue is a processing option, I (and the OP) want to be able to grab the edge of the audio and stretch it and have the option of a varispeed time stretch instead of DSP.

Cool! A time stretching option that will yield completely unpredictable pitch results! I suppose maybe MOTU could make it sort of quantize and as you drag it it could do little steps based on semi-tones. What to do with the rest of the musical elements surrounding it? What about MIDI. Of course the tempo of the soundbite would no longer match everything else around it. Adjust the MIDI to it? Of course without microtonal MIDI, you'd then have to transpose the MIDI notes to a pitch that corresponded with your varispeed-ed audio.... assuming you sort of "pitch-quantized" it to a semi-tone.

Obviously, I'm not among those who see this as a very useful feature.

[bongo_x]

Well, this would obviously be most useful for unpitched sounds; percussion, various beats, sound fx and sound design, where you do this sort of thing constantly. On the other hand you make it twice as long and it drops an octave. Many times, even though it’s not totally unpredictable, it’s mostly irrelevant what the exact pitch is.

This has little use for you if you’re recording guitar-bass-drums-singer and want it to sound realistic. It’s for other things.

bb

[James Steele]

No that's fine and your explanation helps me understand better. So, in other words, it's most useful on sounds where the resultant pitch isn't likely to cause an issue... atonal sorts of things, etc.

[mrbillet]

A drug-based Varispeed solution is in the works.

Carbamazepine, normally given to epileptics, has the side-benefit of altering your pitch perception as well. Seems like they have their work cut out to match dosing to degree of pitch shift.

http://www.journalarchive.jst.go.jp/eng ... rtpage=880" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There's a drug for everybody, isn't there?

-Ian

[benmrx]

just wondering in because I LOOOVE to use varispeed effects, and wanted to say that I use this trick ALL the time with all kinds of sources.. both pitched melodic and unpitched percussive stuff. I would be STOKED to see DP integrate a simple varispeed function.

What I do when working on tape (yea... still have a 2" machine here!) is simply record a 440hz tone on track 24, then plug the output into a tuner. Then I can varispeed the tape machine up a 3rd or down a 5th etc. You can create some pretty awsome tones this way with pianos, guitars, voices, etc.. I also have a set of handbells, but don't have every note, so if I need a C# I'll just slow the tape down a half step.

I was producing a band a couple years ago, and I had the guitar player do a simple organ part, and I set the tape machines varispeed to drop by a few steps, then set the machine back to fixed speed, and as he was playing I would flip on the varispeed function at the end of every bar. The result on playback was at the end of every bar the organ would kind of "bend" up a few steps, then bend back down as I would put the machine back to fixed speed.

All kinds of fun....

[HCMarkus]

The excitement generated by this subject is palpable. It sounds like many of us have continuing uses for this "archaic" technology!

Kubi got it just right in his post. I am afraid those of you looking for this function in a digital form within DP are sorta missing the point. It's all about the clock guys!

And yes, an old ADAT does the trick. However, I'd really like to see a reasonably-priced clock that allowed varispeed. Is anyone aware of one that costs less than Apogee's Big Ben? Brad?