ORIGINAL: RTGraham

You can do it in V-Vocal, or in Melodyne. Record your background tracks without varispeeding, but then select the entire clip afterwards, load it into V-Vocal or Melodyne, and shift the formant up or down as desired. Different amounts on different tracks will give you results something like the stacked "sheen" and "emphasis" that you describe.

ORIGINAL: DaneStewart

For those who don't get why VariSpeed is so important, here's a quick real-world example:

I am holding in my hand a beautiful, hand-made Navajo flute.
Its notes are perfectly in tune with each other, BUT - it is not in tune with the rest of the world, meaning its "A" is not in tune with A at 440.
The instrument is not tunable. It is carved out of wood and does not have an adjustable mouthpiece or anything that will affect its tuning.
I want to play it over an already recorded piece of music.
How do you do it?
Oh sure, you could bounce the whole mix down to a new track and apply a pitch shift. But what if the player needs to hear certain instrument tracks turned on and off at different times - like some off during record and then back on during playback check.
Spending a bunch of time making a bunch of different bounces, and then getting the right ones selected or muted, in theory it works fine....
EXCEPT those extra steps and slowdowns have a way of KILLING THE CREATIVE FLOW OF THE MUSICIAN.
Again, this hodge-podge method might work fine for me at home by myself with all the time in the world.
But this versus "One Knob Set And Forget" is a huge difference.

ORIGINAL: Vovchik
I would temporarely route all prerecorded tracks to separate bus and insert real-time pitch shifter into that bus. After the flute part has been recorded, delete temp bus and apply destructive pitch shift to the flute. Radius or MPEX algorhythms both are very good.

ORIGINAL: ...wicked

Does digital vari-speed work the same way as tape though? (program agnostic) I wouldn't think it would "sound" the same, but I reckon I could be wrong.

ORIGINAL: evansmalley

It's easy. Can't believe Sonar can't do it when a bare-bones elementary app like Reaper does it front and center on the main page. That's why I reluctantly bought Reaper.

HTH-
Ev

ORIGINAL: evansmalley

hey Vovchik-

You COULD maybe do it that way... but reassigning 30+ tracks one at a time is WAAAAYYY more trouble than just one global slider. That's why guys who record lots of acoustic instruments really miss a simple vari-speed knob.

ORIGINAL: Vovchik

Believe it or not, many instrumentalists / vocalists / performers, while they may not be golden-eared engineers or audiophiles, actually have very sensitive ears, and notice when an effect is being applied to audio. Good musicians and vocalists are trained to listen, and they *do* hear when something "isn't quite right." You can get away with varispeed much more easily than with a pitch shift plugin, without setting off the performer's "messing-with-the-audio alarm."

It depends on how far you need to transpose original audio. Instruments like flute, accordion, old Rhodes and such usualy require less than +/- 50 cents, so it's not gonna sound too bad.

ORIGINAL: papa2004

Great example...The "harpischord" solo on "In My Life" was actually a piano track recorded at half-speed...Sir George (Martin) once stated that even the most accomplished musician would have difficulties playing that part precisely on a real instrument in real time...

ORIGINAL: papa2004

The "harpischord" solo on "In My Life" was actually a piano track recorded at half-speed...

My response won't help you unless you have Samplitude Pro or are willing to buy it (or know someone who already has it) but this type of thing is as simple as can be in SamPro.

ORIGINAL: papa2004
...I'm not even going to go into the "print-through effect" because I know that YOU know it's not possible...