I think it can depend on the quality of the software program doing the speed-changing, as well as how drastic the speed change is, especially if slowing down. It’s probably not very rock n’ roll as well.
This is a lot more common than people think. I read an excellent book called “45 rpm: The History, Heroes, and Villans” and it mentioned it was commonplace to speed up/compress/add echo and otherwise to singles to match the fast pace of top 40 radio. To say nothing of the fact singles were overwhelmingly mono in the 60s, while mono on LPs was dead by 1968.
I enjoy the LP version much more than the 45 version. And for those who wonder why the sped up version sounds so unfamiliar, remember the only people who bought the single or listened to top 40 radio in 1967 would remember this. All rock and classic rock airplay has been of the LP version; and even oldies stations would almost certainly not have played 45s past 1990. With almost all radio stations today airing centrally downloaded digital copies of songs, the odds of them having the fast version are almost nil.
OK, as a Doors fan I’ve known about this for years. I always have listened to the album track, not the shortened 45 track. But now I’m confused. Can someone please link to the sped up version, and the apparently original version so I can compare? It’s late and maybe it’s just me, but I’m not sure which is which anymore.
Oh, without a doubt. The general idea is to slice up the sound, and pad it out by copying adjacent areas in the least obtrusive way possible. Some software is pretty primitive, and others are more careful to smooth over or avoid the problems that can arise from blindly doing that. If you repeatedly alter the tempo up and down in some programs, you get some really strange slicing and dicing going on. It just occurred to me you might be able to do that for effect if you did it right. I’ll have to try it.
But similar to Photoshopping, it’s convincing at first glance, but obviously not even Memorex when a person knows what they’re looking for. The more information in the track, the more likely you’re going to get something it can’t quite smooth over. As Jeff Lichtman points out, even the analog methods of altering the tempo have other effects on the recording besides pitch that you can look for even if the absolute pitch isn’t known.
Also after thinking about this: players like me pay a ton of attention to delay, reverb, echo and other time delay effects. How do I sound like the Edge? Or a surf guitar player? I am sure that by now, if I didn’t explicitly note it, I was subconsciously aware of it (meaning the slight drag of the slower version).
Also, **Crotalus **offers the clearest example of playing with the recording and having to retune. You end up picking stuff like that out when you listen - something’s different, but you don’t pick out what unless you dig into it.
Make sense? It’s no different than any geek paying extra attention. That’s why I wouldn’t sweat it.
You know, you’re right. I thought it was the single version they played on classic rock radio, but it’s not. The shorter versions on radio today just appear to be a truncated album version (with the keyboard solo cut down). The single versions seems not to have a keyboard solo at all. I give up. I obviously can’t tell the difference enough without a reference point.
Well put, WordMan. I was just as much a Beaties fan at age nine as now, and their music made me just as happy then as now, even though at age nine I wasn’t even aware you could distinguish John’s voice from Paul’s. It’s just a rather different sort of pleasure and way of listening nowadays.
I am with WordMan here: Don’t sweat it!
Oh, I’m not sweating it. I absolutely hear the difference, but only with a reference point. If I hadn’t heard the song in awhile, my suspicion is that I would not notice.
I think you know what I mean, though, puly, as a musician. E.g.: You know when you listened to Purple Rain and knew it sounded different in some un-specific way? That happened for me, but I didn’t really register it; I was just kinda thinking “that’s Prince for you - a different sound.” And then someone pointed out it didn’t have a bass line.
Part of me was :smack: but nothing to lose sleep over. Before I heard about the bassline’s absence, I just hadn’t dug into the song.
You mean “When Doves Cry” specifically. 
I didn’t even realize that until about a year or two ago when it was mentioned.
Also, the song “Kiss” off Parade is similarly bass-less.
:smack::smack::smack::smack::smack:
Yes. When Doves Cry.
:smack:
Yeah, I love Kiss’ minimalism. I love it when sparse songs become hits, like Milkshake and Drop it Like it’s Hot, both Pharrell/Neptunes produced.
How Kiss came about is pretty interesting. SOS article: Prince ‘Kiss’
“That’s the single and you’re not getting another one until you put it out.”
So far, no one in this thread has asked WHY a song may be distributed at the wrong pitch or tempo, if not intentional.
I’ve talked about this before, so I’ll do it again. In my decades in Hollywood professional music, the speed of a tape machine was largely ignored. As long as it was constant, I can never remember any calibration procedures an audio engineer ever did for speed, whether on a multitrack recorder or a stereo mixdown unit.
Tones were always placed at the head of final mixdowns – the ones destined for a disk cutter – but they were used only for level calibration, not pitch or speed.
A 3% speed variation equals about a quarter-tone in musical terms. Pro tape machines were rarely more than 1% off. So how could a commercial disk recorded in A minor become A-flat minor?
Possibly because of accumulated error. If the master multitrack machine is 1% off and the mixdown master machine, another 1%, and the disk cutter transfer machine, some more, by the time 33’s or 45’s were pressed, the key may have changed (or the errors might cancel out).
There are other factors that could contribute to a speed error. Master multitrack tapes were often passed from studio to studio, each one adding more tracks using a different machine. While a sax player could tune his instrument up or down to compensate for a pitch error, most keyboards could not. One solution would be to switch the tape machine from the fixed speed mode to VSO mode (Variable Speed Oscillator) and tune the tape to the instrument. Very minor adjustments like this are inaudible to most.
I had to create lead sheets and other charts from many different sources - open reel tape, cassette, 8-track, disk acetates, disk test pressings, and disk commercial pressings. In order to work with a piano, I would always tune my sound playback to a standard pitch with a finely-adjustable VSO I built just for this purpose. But often I didn’t know what key the piece was supposed to be in, so I had to guess.
If the key appeared to be less than 1/4 tone south of A, I made the assumption that A was the intended key, especially if the work was rock guitar-based. Guitars don’t play often in flat keys.
But I received a final, consumer-grade 33 LP pressing once where the pitch was exactly between two keys (1/4 step too high or low). No point in trying to reach the artist – he was on tour, couldn’t be bothered (no cellphones back then) and the publisher was desperate to get the LP copyrighted since it was already on the shelves, and they couldn’t wait. So I made the best guess I could, and wrote lead sheets for the entire album, assuming all of the tracks were off by the same amount, in the same direction.
Boy, did I get a mad artist when he came back from tour. “All, I mean* all,* the keys and notes are wrong!” When I got him calmed down, I showed him that they had all been shifted by the same amount, and I played the LP back with calibrated equipment to prove my point. I offered to transpose all of them, but there would be an additional charge (that’s union standard). Then he decided they weren’t so bad after all, and yes, I did get paid!
I never found out why this happened, but a pressed LP is at the end of a sometimes long chain of recordings, and that’s my theory. Maybe this is what happened to the Doors.
Very cool background, Musicat - thanks!
I would love to hear other stories that I am sure you encountered with that type of thing. Any reason you can’t name the artist you reference in the story? No pressure or anything - it just doesn’t seem like a slam or like it violates anything.
I really don’t remember the artist or the album for sure. It might have been Norton Buffalo, a sidekick of Steve Miller, and I know I worked for both of them, including Miller’s* Fly Like an Eagle* album.
It would be interesting to get a copy of Buffalo’s LP album(s), the one(s) released in the 1970’s, and see what speed/pitch they show. As long as it is an original pressing, the sound would be preserved exactly as I heard it.
Unfortunately, when I left LA, I discarded several file cabinets of sheet music originals, something which I have regretted ever since.
Waitaminnit - what did you do on Fly Like an Eagle?!
I wrote the lead sheets for some (IIRC, not all) the songs on that album. I doubt if Steve Miller remembers me in the slightest. But I did get a free LP out of it!
Wow - how cool is that?