Ever notice this? Does it make any difference to you? Seems it’s most often done on the rare occassions when they are playing a rock song on a hits station. Sirius Hits One played Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns n Roses this morning, and it played fast. It sounded like a remix (the intro was shorter), and the tempo may have been kicked in the remix, but that’s secondary to my point. I specifically mention the hits stations because I notice them do it with much greater frequency than rock stations. I’ve listened to the mix stations, like (‘Mike FM’, or whatever) very little so can’t really comment on them in this regard (I got Sirius about the same time Boston got one of these stations, and I listen to Sirius 95% of the time).
A couple discussion questions. then.
Do you notice if the DJ messes with the tempo? (and if so) What do you think of this practice?
Me? I don’t like it. I think the musicians know better than the DJs how the song should play, and the DJs should stick to what they know.
I’ve thought many a time that Sweet Child O’ Mine would sound better sped up.
But I’ve heard that in the 70s, speeding up the record was much more rampant, to fit in more commercials, so pop producers would slow down the songs intentionally to get them to play at the “right” speed. So when you hear the torpid-sounding “skyyyyyyyyyyyyyy [beat]…[beat][blink…will they EVER continue???]…rockets in flight”, it’s not necessarily they way it was intended to be played. Which isn’t true for G’n’R (so they have no excuse…HA!)
Most stations of that type are automated nowadays. If they use automation software called NexGen to run the station(s) all day, there’s a setting in it to speed up whatever is going to make the hour content run over, so that it finishes at 59:59.9. That means it may speed up one song, or if the hour is overfilled by a minute or more, it’ll speed up everything. It’s supposed to do an imperceptibe time squeeze, but it will also do the equivalent of speeding up the pitch.
We found out that you have to turn that setting off, on the day when it sped up a 4:00 newscast to 3:40.
It’s been about a decade since I was in the industry, but I remember some stations back then using tempo shift to fit music in so it wouldn’t go over time (Useful if you need to be exactly on time for the news.)
During the god-awful popular period of Eurobeat dance music in the late ninties there were a few stations in Oz that were refusing to play anything under a certain BPM, which meant a bunch of popular tunes like for example “My Heart Will Go On” were played primarily in their dance mix version. It was, how you say, f**king awful.
Back in the 70’s I worked at a genuine, old-school, fast-talkin’, hard rockin’ top 40 AM radio station. They sped everything up by (IIRC) 3 percent. The powers that be determined that was the level that would make the music sound “brighter” without adversly affecting the pitch of the singer’s voice. Three percent works out to about 5 seconds on a 3 minute song.
It wasn’t to squeeze in more commercials (we were at the time limited by FCC regulations to no more than 18 minutes of commercials per hour – and we were going to play them even if we played 20-minute songs). It was for our listeners to subconciously listen for a faster tempo and make the competition sound draggy.
Our FM station played songs just as recorded. Occasionally we’d have a “crossover” song on both stations – the AM version sped up, the FM version at regular speed. Sure enough, listeners would complain that the FM version didn’t sound quite right.
As for artistic integrity, the record companies knew what we were doing and never said a word. If they were concerned about anything it was the crappy compression and volume limiting that was common in the broadcast industry at the time.
To this day, when I listen to the music from that era, it still sounds a little draggy.
I’ve got a simple little program that allows me to play a song sped up without changing the pitch. And the funny thing is that nearly any song sounds better at 110-125% speed, and after you switch it back, it just never sounds right.
I challenge you to listen to Minor Threat that way.
I would have loved to hear that.
The news guy was not too happy!
On my campus station in college, I once played Pachelbel’s Canon at 78 from a 33 rpm record. Does that count?