Do Many Stations Usually Pitch Their Music?

[GeneSavage]

David,

Really?!? I am absolutely shocked; I would have assumed that was a requirement for the NYC market in the 80s!

...Then again, you are talking about 1988 - forward, and by that time CD players were starting to come into the studio... I wonder if they did in the early or mid-80s?

Thanks for your truly surprising response!

 

[chriscollins]

I'm standing by my original comment that only an idiot PD would make the pitch or speed of their songs sound different than every other source of music available. Good programming is adapting to changes in the music landscape.

Pitching=Stupidity. In my opinion.

 

[WNTIRadio]

Chris, I agree 100% with you. As for Z-100, they didn't need cheap gimmickry to get an audience. Good programming and good music, along with exciting imaging and processing to make the whole thing "pop" is what got them to #1.

Maybe WEMP in NYC should start pitching the news?

 

[davideduardo]

I'm standing by my original comment that only an idiot PD would make the pitch or speed of their songs sound different than every other source of music available. Good programming is adapting to changes in the music landscape.

Pitching=Stupidity. In my opinion.

Pitching, well done, is not obvious or even detectable other than timing the songs.

What it can do is create the impression that other sources are just not as "nice" to listen to.

 

[davideduardo]

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.

Were songs to be sped up, it is for the psychoacoustic advantage... if such really exists... not to add spots.

Stations set commercial limits in minutes and / or units. Adding minutes or units has a negative effect on listening, as should be obvious. Since speeding up the music an unnoticeable amount adds only a small amount of time to the hour, what we are talking about is perhaps 40 to 70 seconds... a tidbit of a song.

The only advantage of speeding up music is to subtly alter the songs so that listening to other stations seems dull without it being obvious why.

 

[gtomas]

There are radio automation software that allow stretching and squeezing audio (without changing pitch) in order to fit the content perfectly in the planned time window. For example, so that the songs end exactly at the TOH, without being faded out or going over the TOH, every time.

I must say, this is the first time I've heard that radio stations pitch their songs, for "artistic" purposes... I don't think it's ever be done in Europe.

I'm in the camp that finds this neither artistic nor appealing. Quite the contrary.


Regards,
Goran Tomas

 

[GeneSavage]

Unless these posters are trolls, here are some interesting (young!) listener comments:

love stations that speed up their songs... they sound so much better!!!

http://pulsemusic.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=radio&action=display&thread=58007&page=2

So this is going to sound crazy, but im so used to listening to all my favorite songs on the radio and when i've played them in their regular nature by Ipod... its noticable to the point where i'm annoyed with having to switch from two different speeds. I took it upon myself to download Audacity which lets you edit mp3s and all that jazz, i sped up the tempo of alot of songs i like that are played on the radio station, it just sounds better and its true!

I have noticed that some songs sound a lot better sped up just a little. Especially Hip Hop/R&B songs. Some sound painfully slow at their original speeds when I listen to the song on the CD or from the iTunes single.

http://pulsemusic.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=radio&action=display&thread=58007&page=1


So-o-o... um, THAT'S interesting... 8)

 

[rrsounds]

David,

Really?!? I am absolutely shocked; I would have assumed that was a requirement for the NYC market in the 80s!

...Then again, you are talking about 1988 - forward, and by that time CD players were starting to come into the studio... I wonder if they did in the early or mid-80s?

Thanks for your truly surprising response!

Actually, exclusive use of CD players in the Z100 air studio didn't occur until 1996, right before I left. Music was all on cart up to that time.

As for whether songs were sped up the first five years before my arrival...you might ask Frank, but I would not be at all surprised if it was a policy from Day One not to pitch them.

Kind Regards,
David

 

[Kmagrill]

Songs were sped up until the 1980s on some stations, but the reason wasn't to make them sound better, nor was it originally intended to get more spots in play. Top 40 stations did it to get more songs in an hour. Common promotions of the day included "Count the songs" and "Nobody plays more music". Songs of the 60's seldom exceeded 3 minutes and songs of the 70's usually were around 3.5 minutes. If one station played 5% up pitched tracks, it was possible to squeeze and extra song per hour compared to standard pitch. The rise of longer songs put an end to most of the pitch wars since it became harder to fit extra songs into an hour due to the extended lengths.

Our station couldn't afford varipitch gear, so we resorted to wrapping Scotch tape around the motor spindles to affect the speed.

Later, as ears became used to hearing the pitched audio, people started to think that normal playback speed sounded like it was dragging. That opened up a secondary debate about which sounded better and that debate continues today, though I suspect the majority of the up-pitch lovers have long since faded away.

 

[satech]

All I can say is that the high-pitched male voices that are becoming very common in pop music these days (Bruno Mars, Train, Maroon 5, etc.) sound terrible when pitched-up. It's also much more noticeable nowadays because since the mid-'90s or so, pop music has been produced with the vocals very loud and "up front in center" in the mix -- not like '70s and '80s music where the drums and instrumentation often drowned out the vocals, so you could get away with speeding up the music much more easily back then.

 

[kogi19]

Another reason for pitching up songs not mentioned.

Stations could shave off enough time to fit in another commercial.

 

[ssivers]

Does anyone pitch commercials?

 

[Kmagrill]

Does anyone pitch commercials?

I've seen it done to fit a 62 second spot into 60 seconds, but that's kind of a lazy fix and it doesn't sound as good. Most of the time spots are not pitched. Editing can usually fix a few seconds of overlap. If the problem is more severe than that, the spot just needs to be redone.

 

[Nostalgia]

Does anyone pitch commercials?

Audition and many other digital audio workstations can adjust the length of tracks + - 10% without affecting pitch. An absolute necessity for stations with sat formats that need exact :30 and :60 spots to fill the breaks. Also usefull for cramming the car dealers disclaimer into the final 5 seconds of the spot!!

Of course this would work with music tracks too but as discussed earlier I dont believe this is happening much.

 

[rrsounds]

When I was CE of AC WASH-FM in '85-86, I was messing around in the dubbing studio, playing with Simply Red's "Holding Back the Years." I had heard a rumor that the song sounded like Carly Simon when sped up a few percent. And it was true*.

But here's the weird part: the PD heard it, and said we should dub it to cart and play it on-air that way.

Which we did. Go figure.

Kind Regards,
David

(*Like ARS's "Imaginary Lover" from LP sounding like Stevie Nicks when played at 45)

 

[awsherrill]

I remember reading that years ago, a disk jockey accidentally played the 45 of Brenda Lee "Coming On Strong" at 33 rpm. It sounded close enough to a different artist's version that listeners started requesting it....allegedly.

 

[dannyscott101]

We are a Hot AC in a market with 2 CHRs. One of the CHRs is a CC station that just flipped from Hot AC.

I'm NOT wild about the idea of pitching up music in general, but our 'pitch' up rate has varied between 1% and 1.x%. One of the other stations pitches up 2% or more, and the other may have NO pitching. These are estimates, as I have not confirmed by airchecking them.

It's VERY hard for me to notice the 1% or even a smidge over, so I don't mind it for one reason only...

When switching from us to another local station that is pitching at 2% or over, the difference is almost not noticeable... Same as switching between us and a station that is 'flat'. We are still preserving most of the integrity of the music, but not sounding 'draggy' when a listener switches from the competition, particularly if we happen to be playing the same song at the time!

What I extremely dislike is the local CLASSIC ROCK station that has decided to pitch its music nearly 3%! It is very audible and annoying! In addition, it is usually a bad idea to pitch music that is older and more familiar to the listening audience.

Our station's pitching is also a straight 'speed up' of the music by altering sample rate in the playback system, rather than a 'pitch preserving' speed up such as what might be done in Audition. It seems to me that if there is a psychoacoustic advantage to pitching up music, it would be lost by simply speeding it up and preserving the pitch. Also, this method sometimes introduces audible artifacts into the music, particularly during sustained notes.

In addition, our music library is loaded 'flat'. Since the pitching is only done at the playback stage, it can be lowered or eliminated at any time at the touch of a button.

 

[Kelly Watts]

Maybe I am among the miority but the previous post I feel "Has it right." Radio, over teh past few decades, has become nothing more than a juke box, with only the coin slot missing. No waitm you have the with Sirus/XM.

Know your market, the folks sitting in the corporate towers don't, play music that was popular in your area, not what tests good in Calif, unless you are there, and be local. I love the idea of "people in the seat" sometimes it is not practical from a cost standpoint, BUT you can make your station sound more lively and local with a little effort.

As far is pitch, a station I worked for in the mid 70's did that all the time, the P.D. called it 'revving." His idea, was that we would get in more music and still carry a heavy commercial load, oh, he also edited songs as well. That brough back memories of "Minute Masters" albums from the 60's, anyone else remember them?

 

[tjm_pro]

What I extremely dislike is the local CLASSIC ROCK station that has decided to pitch its music nearly 3%! It is very audible and annoying! In addition, it is usually a bad idea to pitch music that is older and more familiar to the listening audience.

Yes, Cox's Eagle (classic rock) in Houston is obnoxiously pitched up which is an absolute turn off for me. For example, Boston's Rock N Roll Band - "Well, we're just another band out of Boston on the road..." sounds like a kid with his finger on a turntable spinning the record around..