I should also add...the reason why I say I do this "all the time" is because I often do my own backing vocals. By recording as described above, with one vocal one brighter and one darker, it sounds like there are two different singers.

Lynn

CakeAlexS
Sounds like a nice idea. But I want the meat and potatoes features first...!

That used to be part of the meat and potatoes of analog recording.  I agree with what Craig said, though, and I'm sure that the gap between realtime and offline processing of "tape speed" will narrow soon.

Not really. It was razor blades, chalk and tape and a tape machine. Oh and a desk with a patch bay! Wasn't an everyday use feature. Thrash metal bands loved it though.... (Talking 80s 90s here just from personal experience).

Still its a nice feature to have and now it's 2014.

skinnybones lampshade
Hi Craig Anderton,
 
To answer your question: Sometimes, I used vari speed purposely to get the "chipmunk effect", not to avoid it. I'd put a couple of background voices in, singing in harmony "answering" the lead voice, for a comic and/or childlike effect. It was quite effective and above all, it was fun !
 
I'd love to have it back. Maybe it's already my second childhood talking or something!
 
LJ

I think this will let you have it back - I'm not at my music computer, but give it a try and let me know if it works
 
Let's suppose you want the chipmunks to be an octave above the original music. It's testing the limits of stretching, but the following should do the job.
 
1. Create a premix of your tracks. Mute the other tracks.
2. Transpose the premix down 12 semitones with Process > Transpose. The premix will now sound like crap.
3. Ctrl-click the end of the premix and drag to 200%. It will now be twice as long and sound like even worse crap, but it should be good enough for you to be able to sing along with it. Record your vocal.
4. Don't transpose the vocal up +12! Instead, bring the vocal clip file into your sampler of choice.
5. Transpose up an octave (this will cut the length in half and transpose up an octave), render, and drag the rendered clip to the right location on the timeline. You can transpose by changing the root key, leaving pitch bend all the way up, holding down a key an octave higher, etc.
 
The fidelity of the pitch-up voice will be pretty much identical to what you got with tape. Happy Chipmunks!
 

Anderton
 
 
I'm still not quite understanding what people actually want to accomplish. Tape vari-speed affects all tracks of an entire recording, and the process changes both pitch and duration - you couldn't change one without changing the other. Is this what you want?

Hi Craig,
Thanks for the idea for the workaround. I truly believe if someone needed to know how to make Sonar brew coffee you would find a way to do it (which would tie in with the phantom Sonar coffee cup).
 
The way we used to use tape speed was to record the backing tracks first, making sure they were in pitch. Then, if the offending instrument was sharp, increase the tape speed slightly during tracking so the original tracks were in tune. Record and return the speed to normal. It was very effective and a common technique.
 
Again, a way to do this would be to change the sample rate by degrees I would think. Am I wrong about that?
 

skinnybones lampshade
Wow, Craig Anderton, thanks a bunch! I'd have never come up with that, especially the part about bringing the vocal clip into a sampler instead of transposing it up an octave just like that.
 
I do have one question: Is there a certain sampler that you have in mind that this would go especially simply/quickly with?
 
I can't wait to try it. Thanks again  :)
LJ

As usual scook comes through. Actually I've done this kind of thing with Dimension Pro, but IIRC I had to write a basic SFZ file first. It's not hard for something as basic as just placing a sample on a keycenter and stretching it an octave - this article should help.

southpaw3473
The way we used to use tape speed was to record the backing tracks first, making sure they were in pitch. Then, if the offending instrument was sharp, increase the tape speed slightly during tracking so the original tracks were in tune. Record and return the speed to normal. It was very effective and a common technique.

 
[Edit - I have a better way to do this now, which I'll describe in a different thread. This method works only with fairly short sections, 128 beats or less. The improved version works with files of any length]
 
If you know your way around the Loop Construction window, it's easy. If not, you'll have a slight learning curve. But the learning curve is worth it. The Loop Construction window can do a whole lot more than just create loops; it can to the tape-style transposition mentioned so many times in this thread, does it in real time, and can resolve pitch to fractions of a cent. Not to get too off-topic here but I even use it to add variations to vocal phrases - no looping at all.
 
1. Set the project default pitch (i.e., the key).
2. Premix the tracks whose pitch you want to raise (or lower, but we'll use your example above as the basis).
3. Calculate the exact number beats in the clip.*
4. Open the clip in the Loop Construction window, and turn on looping. Enter the number of beats from step 3.
5. You don't want any slices, so move the transient slider all the way to the left (0%), and select no slicing.
6. There are windows for adjusting semitones and cents. Do NOT enable the pitch button, pitch changes can be done without it and enabling pitch will just confuse matters. Cents will do +/-49 cents which should be enough. (You can actually do any amount of pitch change but explaining that is more typing than I want to do right now. I'll assume half a semitone either way is enough for you.)
7. Now your premix is sharp or flat by however many cents you entered. Play the part along with it.
8. When you're done, delete the premix. Follow a procedure similar to the one described above to process the newly-recorded track and change its pitch in the equal and opposite direction.
 
Because you didn't enable stretching, the duration will change slightly with pitch, just like tape. However this is also what helps maintain fidelity as you're asking Sonar to change only pitch, not pitch and duration.
 
* Some people have reported issues with clips over 256 beats but I think they're trying to do looping. That may not matter here because you're not preserving duration, it acts just like tape varispeed. If there are issues, break the premix down into smaller clips.
 

"Vari-speed techniques with Sonar" would make a great column for Sound on Sound...hmmm...as people seem to have figured out the take lanes, maybe I'll do the vari-speed one first since there seems to be so much interest. Thanks every one for the inspiration!

konradh
My VS-1680 (and all Roland hard disk recorders) have this feature.  It is useful for a number of things and this is NOT a stupid request.  It is logical to ask for this.

Yes, but my point is that so far, the vari-speed functions people seem to want most can already be done in Sonar using either the iZotope transpose algorithms or the loop construction window. Of course some of the techniques I've described are workarounds, but plugging a sine wave oscillator into a Macintosh amp to drive a capstan motor at 110V wasn't exactly "plug and play" (that's how we did variable speed back in the dawn of history, when dinosaurs ruled the earth).
 
But also note that some of these workarounds allow stretching pitch and time independently, which tape recorders (or ADATs, for that matter) couldn't do. I'm not sure the 1680 could do that, either. And the procedure I described for doing sped-up or slowed down vocals sure seems like it would be easier than dumping audio into a different program, processing it, and then bringing it back into Sonar. It's certainly easy enough that I use that particular type of "variable speed" frequently, as evidenced in the song link I posted.
 
One thing that isn't possible with Sonar is real-time control of all tracks simultaneously, like if you wanted to speed up or slow down an entire project while it's playing. However, that was rarely done in the tape days either because changing speed changed pitch. It was far more common to continue on the multitrack at the existing speed (especially because not that many multitracks had variable speed initially), and speed up or slow down while bouncing to two-track...and Sonar has no problem speeding up or slowing down a two-track master without changing pitch (which is usually what I want). If you want to change pitch by a few cents, you can do this in the loop construction window or by semitones, using the iZotope algorithms.
 
No matter how you stretch it messes with the sound, so I tend to think of it as a last resort anyway. While I might want variable speed on rare occasions, for me it's not a priority because what's already in Sonar (as detailed in the techniques above) takes care of what I need on those occasions.
 
Personally, I'd rather see a really great tremolo plug-in and multiband distortion

rodreb
Check out Lindsey Buckingham's use of vari-speed on many of his guitar parts. Awesome!
 

Is vari-speed the effect Todd Rundgren used on a lot of his guitar parts... ie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xP_D0tYoJ4
 
Edit: come to think of it, if that is the technique used I'll bet it's the way he got his really tight vox harmonies too?

I would also like a stop/start tape effect. Currently I export and do it in Reaper and import it back into Sonar.
Would be nice to be able to do it inside Sonar.
 

Add me to the list that would like to see this added at some point too.
 
Mike

Thank you, scook and Craig Anderton, for your very helpful replies!

I'd still like to have vari-speed for its ease of use:

1) Turn pitch wheel all the way to the left (one octave)
2) Sing with the very slow and low tracks while recording
3) Turn wheel back to centre and play back

Done :)

I don't know if I'd use such a thing as this but I'm having a blast with the audio editing tools already here. I can cut-n-paste-n-slip-n-stretch-n-transpose-n-boost-n-bounce my way to playing guitar like I never could without it.
 
Sure it's a lot of work, but not as much as spending 10 years trying to learn how to play a certain way.
 
Just don't ever ask me to play live what you hear!

Craig, Personally, when I think of vari-speed, all I'm thinking of is "just like tape". That's what I've grown up with so, that's all I really thought of. Anything else would just be extra, to me. As you said, I have no idea how much coding it would take, either. It does seem that, since people are willing to talk about it as much as they are in this thread, it might be worth thinking about. Of course, it's not a deal breaker and, I love X3 but, it would be nice to have, IMHO.