I work part-time for a Country formatted station and it recently started pitching their music at 3% I worked at a CHR station before and it was only 2%. Anyone know if this is the norm?
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Do Many Stations Usually Pitch Their Music?
- Thread starter ocradiofreak
- Start date
I can't think of anyone that does this anymore. When a station does, I delete their preset.
In the past, that tactic was used to make your competitor sound 'slow'. Now, it just makes you sound stupid, because they hear the regular version on youtube, pandora, spotify, etc...
It's an old tactic that needs to stay in the vault.
In the past, that tactic was used to make your competitor sound 'slow'. Now, it just makes you sound stupid, because they hear the regular version on youtube, pandora, spotify, etc...
It's an old tactic that needs to stay in the vault.
There was another rather practical reason for stations to speed up music in some cases in the time of having music on carts. It made more sense to put a 3:45 song on a 3.5 minute cart than use a 5.5 minute cart for it.
When I worked for an FM Oldies station in the early 90s, the music we were playing sounded so slow because we were used to hearing it played faster when it was current. We were using Denon 951s, so we sped them up to give the music the same sound as when it was current. Some liked it, some didn't. I loved it because it sounded "correct" to me. Same with compression and reverb, which we used very liberally to bring back the classic Top 40 sound. Our listeners must have liked it because we blew off two other Oldies stations in the market within a couple of months. Neither of those stations did anything out of the ordinary for their Oldies format, so they sounded very ordinary.
When I worked for an FM Oldies station in the early 90s, the music we were playing sounded so slow because we were used to hearing it played faster when it was current. We were using Denon 951s, so we sped them up to give the music the same sound as when it was current. Some liked it, some didn't. I loved it because it sounded "correct" to me. Same with compression and reverb, which we used very liberally to bring back the classic Top 40 sound. Our listeners must have liked it because we blew off two other Oldies stations in the market within a couple of months. Neither of those stations did anything out of the ordinary for their Oldies format, so they sounded very ordinary.
2 percent... More than that does sound "stupid".
Back in the cart days, we would custom-wind the carts to the length of the song plus ten seconds or so.
Running the music 2% fast would drive those with perfect-pitch nuts.
Running the music 2% fast would drive those with perfect-pitch nuts.
With today's Digigram and Audio Sciences sound cards, it's so easy to speed up the tempo in playback without altering the pitch.
We do it all the time with spots in Adobe Audition- turn a 31.5 second spot into a perfect 30. It just sounds a tiny tad faster.
We do it all the time with spots in Adobe Audition- turn a 31.5 second spot into a perfect 30. It just sounds a tiny tad faster.
I find "pitching up" to be less sonicaly bothersome than "time compression." Time compression almost always leaves artifacts that anyone can hear. Pitching up leaves artifacts that require something of a musically trained ear to detect.
Why is this done? The song was made a certain way, so play it that way. If you or your PD/MD etc. feel it is "too slow", then don't play it. It became a hit the way it is, so leave it alone. This is the stupid assed 1970's approach to radio that is causing it to lose listeners!! Think they don't know what it sounds like when it's on their iPod? All they know is it sounds like chipmunks or "too high" when they hear it on your station.
Exciting? No. Stupid? Yes. Imagine if your local TV station decided to air shows sped up or in black and white because they thought the show "wasn't exciting enough".
While I'm at the Louvre, I'm going to put a goatee on the Mona Lisa, because it isn't very exciting to me. I'm also going to pain the Washington Monument like a barber pole, because stripes are exciting.
Sorry for the rant, but radio needs to PROGRAM to it's audience, not sit there and waste time playing with the pitch of songs. This isn't 1977 anymore, get your station on Twitter and Facebook and connect with your audience instead of playing with the pitch of the music. Put some live bodies in the studio and have them give local content. People will listen.
Exciting? No. Stupid? Yes. Imagine if your local TV station decided to air shows sped up or in black and white because they thought the show "wasn't exciting enough".
While I'm at the Louvre, I'm going to put a goatee on the Mona Lisa, because it isn't very exciting to me. I'm also going to pain the Washington Monument like a barber pole, because stripes are exciting.
Sorry for the rant, but radio needs to PROGRAM to it's audience, not sit there and waste time playing with the pitch of songs. This isn't 1977 anymore, get your station on Twitter and Facebook and connect with your audience instead of playing with the pitch of the music. Put some live bodies in the studio and have them give local content. People will listen.
WNTIRadio said:
Shoot, that "rant" would probably turn into a mega-rant if you'd seen some of the stuff I've been asked to do. I'm talking about modifications that go way, way beyond simple pitch adjustment. After completing requests such as these, I believe I've long forgotten about any concept of "integrity to the artist":
- Ashford & Simpson, "Solid As A Rock": Replace the a capella intro with music from the body of the song, so it sounds "less urban".
- Buster Poindexter, "Hot Hot Hot": Delete parts of the bridge that sounded "stupid" to the PD, and lengthen the song by repeating another part of the bridge.
- Jay-Z and Rihanna, "Run This Town": Delete most of Jay-Z's rap. (Seriously.) This was almost half the song.
- Bizarre Inc, "I'm Gonna Get You": Remove an 80-Hz hum that appears in various parts of the track (this one I agreed with).
- Whitesnake, "Here I Go Again": Incorporate parts of the album version into the radio edit.
- And my favorite... the ultimate affront to artistic integrity in the late 80's: Re-carting our recording of Eddie Money's "I Wanna Go Back" with a custom version where he sings our call letters. Oh, poor, poor Eddie...
WNTIRadio said:
Say no more; I will do it for you.
WNTIRadio, your rant cracks me up! I don't disagree with your idea of getting warm bodies back in the booth, but "artistic integrity?" Seriously?!? NOW who's talking about 70s freeform FM!
Good radio, entertaining radio, is like a bumper car at the state fair. Hard, loud, smelly, lots of flashing lights and sharp noises. Lots of fun, but I'd hate to take one on a cross-country road trip.
Good CDs are like a Mercedes Benz. Smooth, dynamic, clean, as honest a representation of the artist's vision as possible. Fantastic for long road trips, but miserable on the midway.
Radio has made the mistake of trying to be a CD so long that iPods are doing a better job at being radio than radio is (with podcasts and the like).
Pitching up a record was extremely common up through the 80s, and now makes younger generations who are hearing 80s pop on AC stations give their parents confused looks: "why did you like this?" The parents' only answer? "Well, it sounded better when I was a teenager..."
...Yes, yes it did. Analog audio compression didn't have zero attack times, stomping the life out of the dynamics. 45s and LPs sent to radio had genuine dynamic range that would let peaks slip through those analog processors, unlike today's digitally clipped promo CDs. Songs were sped up sometime 2%, sometimes more, giving them a faster tempo and a brighter sound. They were segued by hand, instead of having predictable "one size fits all" cue tones that segue sometimes way too early, sometimes way too late. And, they had exciting personalities telling you about the songs, your town, and your friends.
That was good radio, but that was expensive radio and that was hit and miss radio. Spend a bunch of money on a personality and you could have the next Casey Casem... who might then take his audience across town to your competitor. Or, you might have created a monster so irritating to the audience that it drove them away in... well.. DROVES. Yet once the genie's out of the bottle, it's too late to pull him back to just a board-op...
So we went the safe route, pulled our retirement out of the stock market and put it in an interest-bearing checking account. Yeah, maybe it only earned .1% interest, but it ALWAYS earned .1% interest... and when you have shareholders breathing down your neck every quarter, what's a broadcaster to do?
Speaking of "pitch," you ought to take a handful of today's hits (or hits of the past 30 years) and try to find the key for them. You'll find many, but far from all, are in one key or another... but many of them were pitched up or down AT THE STUDIO. For someone with perfect pitch, I'm sure modern pop is like fingernail on a blackboard because of all the manipulation!
I'll go further than that. I'll say (although I have no solid proof) that SOME songs over the past 30 years have been INTENTIONALLY recorded slower and INTENTIONALLY pitched a little lower, KNOWING that radio would pitch them up.
If you need further proof of what a moving target "the right speed" is, take two CDs of your favorite song from two different collections. It can be an album and a greatest hits, or a couple of compilations, whatever. Rip them into your computer and sync them up, one in one ear, one in the other.
Unless you are VERY lucky, you will find one is faster than the other.
Both are CDs; which one is "right?"
(The guys over on "top40musiconcd.com" talk about this problem all the time.)
Even different pressings of 45s from different factories could run slightly different speeds, maybe off by as much as .5%.
Club DJs will pitch their music up and down 4% or more to match tempo.
As far as how "silly" it sounds to today's audience... how do you explain this ridiculously sped up sample in this rap tune (that is one of only many examples)? Shouldn't it sound stupid to the kids?
The Deans List - Dear Professor (LANGUAGE)
http://youtu.be/7--elzfXNuU
...Perhaps it's the other way around; perhaps today's audience has heard audio so manipulated that they no longer hear or no long care about the difference between 0%, +2%, or +4%. Just a thought.
Good radio, entertaining radio, is like a bumper car at the state fair. Hard, loud, smelly, lots of flashing lights and sharp noises. Lots of fun, but I'd hate to take one on a cross-country road trip.
Good CDs are like a Mercedes Benz. Smooth, dynamic, clean, as honest a representation of the artist's vision as possible. Fantastic for long road trips, but miserable on the midway.
Radio has made the mistake of trying to be a CD so long that iPods are doing a better job at being radio than radio is (with podcasts and the like).
Pitching up a record was extremely common up through the 80s, and now makes younger generations who are hearing 80s pop on AC stations give their parents confused looks: "why did you like this?" The parents' only answer? "Well, it sounded better when I was a teenager..."
...Yes, yes it did. Analog audio compression didn't have zero attack times, stomping the life out of the dynamics. 45s and LPs sent to radio had genuine dynamic range that would let peaks slip through those analog processors, unlike today's digitally clipped promo CDs. Songs were sped up sometime 2%, sometimes more, giving them a faster tempo and a brighter sound. They were segued by hand, instead of having predictable "one size fits all" cue tones that segue sometimes way too early, sometimes way too late. And, they had exciting personalities telling you about the songs, your town, and your friends.
That was good radio, but that was expensive radio and that was hit and miss radio. Spend a bunch of money on a personality and you could have the next Casey Casem... who might then take his audience across town to your competitor. Or, you might have created a monster so irritating to the audience that it drove them away in... well.. DROVES. Yet once the genie's out of the bottle, it's too late to pull him back to just a board-op...
So we went the safe route, pulled our retirement out of the stock market and put it in an interest-bearing checking account. Yeah, maybe it only earned .1% interest, but it ALWAYS earned .1% interest... and when you have shareholders breathing down your neck every quarter, what's a broadcaster to do?
Speaking of "pitch," you ought to take a handful of today's hits (or hits of the past 30 years) and try to find the key for them. You'll find many, but far from all, are in one key or another... but many of them were pitched up or down AT THE STUDIO. For someone with perfect pitch, I'm sure modern pop is like fingernail on a blackboard because of all the manipulation!
I'll go further than that. I'll say (although I have no solid proof) that SOME songs over the past 30 years have been INTENTIONALLY recorded slower and INTENTIONALLY pitched a little lower, KNOWING that radio would pitch them up.
If you need further proof of what a moving target "the right speed" is, take two CDs of your favorite song from two different collections. It can be an album and a greatest hits, or a couple of compilations, whatever. Rip them into your computer and sync them up, one in one ear, one in the other.
Unless you are VERY lucky, you will find one is faster than the other.
Both are CDs; which one is "right?"
(The guys over on "top40musiconcd.com" talk about this problem all the time.)
Even different pressings of 45s from different factories could run slightly different speeds, maybe off by as much as .5%.
Club DJs will pitch their music up and down 4% or more to match tempo.
As far as how "silly" it sounds to today's audience... how do you explain this ridiculously sped up sample in this rap tune (that is one of only many examples)? Shouldn't it sound stupid to the kids?
The Deans List - Dear Professor (LANGUAGE)
http://youtu.be/7--elzfXNuU
...Perhaps it's the other way around; perhaps today's audience has heard audio so manipulated that they no longer hear or no long care about the difference between 0%, +2%, or +4%. Just a thought.
That's what a good PD is for, to keep them in check. And it doesn't need to be expensive, grab some kids out of college, preferably one with some kind of radio station and work with them. Pay them $10/hour. They'll work for you and you can grow them into talent the way you want them to be. Start them off simple, just what you played, what you're going to play and some weather/traffic info. I'm not talking about NYC here, I'm talking about the markets that have "given up" and gone to voice tracking and worse, satellite formats.
If they get better and go across town to the competition for more money, then that's your station's fault for not recognizing the talent level and paying them more.
Just play the music as it is. Nobody is tuning out because you didn't integrate parts of the album cut on Whitesnake. More likely, they're tuning out because of long stop sets, bad song selection, lack of any compelling local content and/or wanting news/weather/traffic that another station in town delivers.
Nobody is going to notice the .005% difference between CD players. They are going to notice 3%. In this internet, iPod and Pandora age, it's silly to waste time on these gimmicks. Reminds me of bad used car dealers with people in gorilla suits trying to sell cars. It isn't a rant about artistic integrity, it's more a rant about radio wasting time playing with the deck chairs while the iceberg is ripping a hole in the side of the boat. There's a bigger problem and it ain't song pitch and special edits.
And Eddie Money doesn't count because he sucked anyway. Same goes for all the custom "We Built This City" edits. Bad song to begin with.
WNTIRadio said:
The better question is "why was this done." In the 70's, many stations took advantage of the technology to speed up songs a small amount. For AMs, it made the music sound a tiny bit brighter and when compared with other stations, made them sound dull and draggy. The key was to make the speed-up ever so slight, but just enough for the competitor to sound dull.
Properly done, it is not noticeable except by comparison, and the comparison should be perceived as positive. Done properly, your sped-up version should sound better than the original, not the other way 'round.
Remember, we're talking about the days before Auto-tune. People actually singing on-key was rarer then - although they at least sounded human.
The trick was to get the splicing tape on the turntable capstan pulley with the ends perfectly butted, otherwise you got a thump per revolution. Properly done, it would last about a month before you had to re - wrap it.
If you knew a really good machinist, you could get him to turn you a 2% or so capstan pulley.
If you knew a really good machinist, you could get him to turn you a 2% or so capstan pulley.
B
bilco
Guest
Over 30 years ago, one of the very first things I did when I went to work at Doubleday's KHOW in Denver was to remove the "high speed" crystals from all of the turntables (Yes we used them in those days!) and replace them with stock crystals, to put the music back where it belonged. Management had decided that speed ups was a bad idea. Have not seen anyone do it since, BUT with new modern digital gear, it's possible to time compress without changing the pitch. This is done by a very few folks to get an extra bit of time for commercials in each hour, not to make the sound Brighter. I hate that idea and fortunately our stations are not that greedy.
Anybody know what percentage (if at all) the heavy hitter CHRs of the 80s, in particular 102.7 KIIS-FM in LA and Z100 in New York (and 89 WLS in Chicago?) sped up the hits?
My local CHR did 2.2%. I've found that's enough to "brighten" the songs and pick up "draggers" without sounding ridiculous, but I'm curious what the big boys did in the 80s.
(Additional fuel on the fire: it seemed any record player or tape player of the 70s and / or 80s I bought ran FAST. If you couldn't afford the high-end gear, your records and tapes were playing fast, anyway... often faster than the radio!)
I don't disagree that if your biggest energy is spent on speeding up your records instead of developing compelling content BETWEEN the records, you're fighting a losing battle... but for example my automation system lets me set one slider, and every song on the station is pitched up. The songs are ripped at original speed so if I ever decide to change or eliminate the pitch increase, I can do so in 90 seconds and never have to think of it again. (Cleverly, it looks at categories... so my spots and sweepers are NOT sped up.)
I just think whole-hog rejecting the idea of ANY pitch changes is throwing the baby out with the bath water. It won't make or break your audience, but if .1% of you audience responds positively and you can do it quickly and easily.. why not?
My local CHR did 2.2%. I've found that's enough to "brighten" the songs and pick up "draggers" without sounding ridiculous, but I'm curious what the big boys did in the 80s.
(Additional fuel on the fire: it seemed any record player or tape player of the 70s and / or 80s I bought ran FAST. If you couldn't afford the high-end gear, your records and tapes were playing fast, anyway... often faster than the radio!)
I don't disagree that if your biggest energy is spent on speeding up your records instead of developing compelling content BETWEEN the records, you're fighting a losing battle... but for example my automation system lets me set one slider, and every song on the station is pitched up. The songs are ripped at original speed so if I ever decide to change or eliminate the pitch increase, I can do so in 90 seconds and never have to think of it again. (Cleverly, it looks at categories... so my spots and sweepers are NOT sped up.)
I just think whole-hog rejecting the idea of ANY pitch changes is throwing the baby out with the bath water. It won't make or break your audience, but if .1% of you audience responds positively and you can do it quickly and easily.. why not?
- Status