Pitching Dance Music?

[Wildstyle K]

A discussion in the chr/pop area about whether or not stations sound better if they pitch their music 'got me wondering'; Are there any dance / dance leaning stations that pitch, or play their regular playlist music at a higher speed?

OH, and READ ONE OF THE COMMENTS TAKEN FROM THAT DISCUSSION, BELOW! (I highlighted some of the best parts for your reading pleasures):

If everybody pitches, nobody sounds exciting. Or everybody does, I don't know. To me it seems like an upward/downward spiral. ;D

There is one CHR in Holland (the big ones are nationwide, we're a small country!) that pitches all the songs by 2%. I have had regular people and friends with untrained ears remark how certain songs sound like the smurfs. That's not a good thing imho.

Then again, take a look at the charts. There's so much turbopop nowadays. Do we need any more excitement? The music is already jampacked with trance-synths, whirlwind basses and awesome huge beats. I see no need for pitching to get more exciting.

Pitching is common amongst chr's, but KKFR, which is not a chr, pitches their music 3 bpm's higher than the normal speed (at least that's how it was last time I checked). In other words, Kid Cudi "Day 'n' nite" (crookers remix), which is normally at 130 bpm was played at 133 bpm during regular rotation (on KKFR).

 

[DJ_Perry]

Mr Oaks would pitch the entire library at Energy Az. He would open the track in Cool Edit or whatever, pitch it up, then resave every song before importing

 

[DJ_Perry]

KKFR, which is not a chr, pitches their music 3 bpm's higher than the normal speed ....(so songs) normally at 130 bpm become 133 ...

Actually that example only works if the song is 100bpm. If you do the math, 3 percent of 130 is 3.9. All the pitch controls I've dealt with go by percent, not bpms.

 

[Wildstyle K]

I wasn't aware of all that. I only measured the speed of their Kid Cudi "day 'n' nite" (Crookers Remix) one day when I noticed how fast their music was to see what was going on, and it registered at 133 bpm, so I figured that everything they played was increased 3 bpm's higher. That just happened to be the song playing when I thought to measure it.

 

[Wildstyle K]

So, now that I think of it, I guess that falls somewhere within the 2% range.

Most songs I've noticed that are one full bpm lower than another song played at regular speed will match at 0.78% higher, or if it's two bpm's lower than the other song at regular speed, it will match at 1.58% (or sometimes 1.52%), and when you hit three bpm's lower than another song played at regular speed, 2.32% tends to get it matched. 2.32% also puts the song 3 bpm's higher, so I assume that KKFR plays their stuff around 2%, which, after all, is not as unusual as I thought now that I actually think about it.

Knowing that most productions are all done around the exact same beat time structure regardless of bpm also makes mixing easier because odds are, whether something is 90, 100, 130, 140...etc bpm, it will all match at 0.00% if all songs are within the same exact bpm range (rather than you having to do things like 0.32, 0.56, 0.14...etc). Not sure why it turns out that music productions from each bpm range tends to almost all be precisely the same speed, but that's just the way it is. I rarely run into something that's in between, or that has to be set at something like 0.45 to match a set of songs that all match at 0.00%.

These measurements are according to the type of turntables I use. All figures may change on a different brand, but I'm sure any other brand will have it's own "typically common measurement elements".

 

[DJ_Perry]

So, now that I think of it, I guess that falls somewhere within the 2% range.

Correct. 3 is too much

 

[Mid West Clubber]

That explain why alot of MIKEs edits are under 3 mins when the original EDIT is like 3:08... I actually like this practice on radio cause it gives you more music per hour,, plus ive alway liked the single edits,, the Choppy club EDITs and the mixed off the old 45 rpm records better than the 12 inch mixes.. A 12 inch remix in full wont do well on radio.