stevec
I never realized it was that common for so many instruments to not be tuned to 440. Particularly pianos, accordians, organs, and 12 string guitars (really?). I guess these common instruments can never be played live in an ensemble.
But things like pipe organs, percussion and simple wind instruments - yeah, having no "tunability" makes it difficult to do anything if they weren't tuned to 440 during manufacturing. Which honestly does seem like an odd choice in the 21st century, though for older instruments...
Twelve-string guitars are often tuned down one semi-tone. Twelve strings put alot of tension on the neck so many players opt for tuning lower to avoid warping. This can also be tied in to string thickness - I use extremely heavy strings on most of my guitars, other players find it brutal. I call it tone. It's often easier for an engineer to accomodate a 12-string if they can Varispeed. And I know that many will want to chime in with all the possible "fixes" but there are many reasons the Varispeed is easier. When a customer is footing the bill it's in your best interests to satisfy them as quickly and painlessly as possible. Also it's not necessarily the best thing to try and convince an "artiste" that they should capo or tune alternately. Sometimes the easiet solution is Varispeed.
If you record a piano on location, or even one that has been rolled between studios (Studio A to Studio C) a few times then you often do not have the time nor the luxury of tuning the piano before a session. Welcome to life in the professional fast lane.
Most engineers and studios are always on the clock. The client is paying. Should they pay $xxx an hour while you call in a piano tuner at 3:00 AM? Not when you can use Varispeed. Ditto for many of the above listed instruments. Time is money. Tuning can be a fairly time consuming issue with some instruments.
So you tell the band to make sure the "insert ethnic instrument here" is tuned when they show up. It isn't. How do you deal with the issue? Lecture them and force them to tune while you lose a client? Or accomodate them and make them smile.
Sometimes a band will want to record bed tracks simulataneously. You may tell them a thousand times to tune up, and to use electronic (or better yet, strobe) tuners, but when you sit down to record that isn't always the case. Sometimes they have tuned "together" but it's not perfecftly on pitch at A440. So you end up with a great take only to realize, after the fact, that they are tuned slightly off. Now when you roll in the perfectly tuned piano you have a problem. Varispeed can be the easiest solution.
Some people deliberately like their instruments tuned slightly off of A440 for timbre preferance. And some do it for quasi-spiritual reasons:
http://www.528records.com/ Either way, if you want to incorporate a "fixed pitch" instrument into this mix, like the piano that was in fact just tuned, then Varispeed makes the job quicker and easier.
Simple wind instruments, old analog synths...both are among many 21st century instruments that may well have been in "perfect" tuning when manufactured but have "drifted" over time. Acoustic and analog instruments are prone to change over time, that unique quality is part of what makes them special. Wood dries and expands. Oscillators drift. So you deal with it.
The vocalist shows up for the third straight day of tracking. The band purchased a block of ten days and this is this last day, no exceptions. Eighty percent of the vocals are recorded but today, as the vocalist is starting to lose it after two heavy days of recording, the only way they are gonna pull off all the vocals is to finish the parts singing one half step lower.
Those are a few examples. And please, let's not repeat all the workarounds again.
The fact here is that often if some members of the forum don't see immediate personal use then the request is questioned, scrutinized, ridiculed, opposed...it shouldn't always be the responsibility of a poster making a request to have to justify the requests with long-winded explanations that are often not read in their entirety nor interpreted correctly. Trying to justify a request to someone who doesn't need it or doesn't understand it is one of the bigger hastles on this forum.