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Back in the 1960s and 70s, it was common to slightly change the speed of a tape machine when recording vocals, and sometimes other instruments. When the tape was played back at normal speed, the singer sounded younger and the performance was more exciting -- an important consideration back then. The tape speed was only changed a small amount, around 2% was typical. But the effect could be amazing.

There were other applications for tape speed changes. For example, if a piano needed to be overdubbed on a song that had been recorded with the instruments tuned a bit off from standard tuning, the tape speed could be adjusted to bring the song to the tuning of the piano. And instruments could be recorded at speeds even farther off standard than you could get away with with vocals, creating an entirely new sound.

Digital recording does not lend itself to variable speed recording, although some DAWs are capable of changing speed. But not too many engineers know about this classic effect.

In this episode, I describe how it was done in the past, and how you can achieve the same thing in the digital world.

You might notice that it has been a while since the last episode of this podcast. My voice was even worse than it usually is for a couple of months after getting a severe cold. I blame it on my 18-month old grandson, but he is worth the price I had to pay from catching his colds!

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