A Note for CC Boston Engineering

rogerkirk rogerkirk@mail.ttlc.net
Wed Apr 5 14:58:20 EDT 2006


>> Ahem...  I may be completely off on this, but that
>> was
>> a trick in the 60s and 70s.  I don't believe you'd
>> find many(if any) present day Top40's that pitch up
>> their music.  
>> 
>> Am I right on this?
>
>Actually Cooper, I know for a fact that this practice
>is very much commonplace today.  In fact, its not just
>restricted to CHRs either - a lot of Hot ACs, straight
>up ACs, country stations, and quite likely more do
>this.  

Not only is it a "trick", but it's very effective.  With 
70's technology, (speeding up media playback) upping the
the pitch slightly makes a song sound "brighter."  The 
other side-effect is that listeners become used to a song's 
tempo.  Listening to it at "normal" speed on another station
makes it sound draggy & slow by comparison. Of course, it 
also makes it sound draggy & slow on one's personal music
device, too.

As a Mobile DJ, I noticed (back in the 70's) that home-
quality turntables seemed (on the average) to play songs 
just "a little bit" fast, too.  Of course, with today's
technology, the tempo can be sped up without changing
pitch and vice versa.


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