Music Production Hacks #1 - Varispeed

It's 1985. You & your band finally make it in to a studio to record your demo. You've taken way longer than planned, you're running out of money & your lead guitarist can't get the solo right!

Engineering to the rescue

This is a really old trick to help out guitarists in the studio. In fact, until recently it wasn't particularly easy or convincing to do it in the digital realm.

It all starts with the tape machine. While tape is mostly used for mastering applications these days for adding warmth & loudness to recordings done 'in the box' it had one particularly useful feature when it came to recording.

Varispeed

Varispeed allows you to control how fast the tape passes through the recorder, when you slow it down, the tape lasts longer and vice versa.

However, if you play back a recording made at the slower rate at a faster rate - the sounds become higher pitched. This led to a the development of a practical & creative use in the studio.

Example

Let's head back to the example given at the top of the post. You're pushed for time in the studio & your guitarist can't quite nail the solo (it happens!)

Why not slow the track down allowing the guitarist to play slower?

I mentioned above that by recording slower, playback at the normal rate sounds higher pitched so this alone wouldn't be an effective solution - However:

If you slow the track down by 50%, this will take the pitch of the recording down an octave - By playing the guitar an octave lower, the result will sound correct.

Demonstration

For the following, I used Logic Pro X:

First, enable the Varispeed menu (guide here) & set to -12 semitones

Record your track, then reset to 0 semitones
And like magic, you nail the solo!

Here's a crude audio example to illustrate this a little better, the first clip is an octave lower (-12 semitones) and the second is how it sounds when you re-adjust :

(This was recorded from a semi-acoustic into logic and then routed through an amp modelling plugin, using an electric guitar will definitely sound better!)

Conclusion

While it's better to practice the material before recording, all is not lost if it's crunch time and you can't deliver!

Thanks for checking out my post.

Image 1 - Pixabay
Image 2 - Softube.com
Image 3 & 4 - Logic Screenshots