Wednesday, July 16, 2014

How varispeed works

It  is difficult to expand or contract time as this requires relativistic speeds.



However on analogue recording it is fairly easy by changing the speed the magnetic tape moves, a disc record rotates or in the digital domain the sampling rate.


This obviously changes the tempo but it is does something else much more important.


Since this process does not naturally occur in real life, for some reason it changes the timbre (formants?) of the vocals making voices sound younger, sweeter and strangely enough more in tune with the equally pitch shifted backing track.


Varispeed experiments.


1    Listening  to the effect.:
Great examples are:
I have a Dream-Abba (notice how different the studio version sounds from a live version withoutt varispeed.
To France, Moonlight Shadow- Mike Oldfield


2   Playing with it:



Try a record player with speed change adjustment and listen to how it affects the voice quality. Try a record that has been recorded with varipeed and slow down to hear how the original voice of the singer was.while they were tracking.










3   Recording with it.:









Say your song is in Bminor. You record your backing track normally.. Then you slow down the tape travel so it becomes eg Bb or A minor. You sing and record at this lower key. Then tape speed  is brought back to normal so all the song is now in B minor with a fresh young full of energy vocal.


If a tape recorder such a Tascam Porta is not available it can be digitaly done with the software Samplitude which has playback (sample rate) micro speed variation at the playback settings which also works on record.


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