Music Production Hacks #1 - Varispeed
It's 1985. You & your band finally make it in to a studio to record your demo. You've taken way longer than planned, you're running out of money & your lead guitarist can't get the solo right!
Engineering to the rescue
This is a really old trick to help out guitarists in the studio. In fact, until recently it wasn't particularly easy or convincing to do it in the digital realm.
It all starts with the tape machine. While tape is mostly used for mastering applications these days for adding warmth & loudness to recordings done 'in the box' it had one particularly useful feature when it came to recording.
Varispeed
Varispeed allows you to control how fast the tape passes through the recorder, when you slow it down, the tape lasts longer and vice versa.
However, if you play back a recording made at the slower rate at a faster rate - the sounds become higher pitched. This led to a the development of a practical & creative use in the studio.
Example
Let's head back to the example given at the top of the post. You're pushed for time in the studio & your guitarist can't quite nail the solo (it happens!)
Why not slow the track down allowing the guitarist to play slower?
I mentioned above that by recording slower, playback at the normal rate sounds higher pitched so this alone wouldn't be an effective solution - However:
If you slow the track down by 50%, this will take the pitch of the recording down an octave - By playing the guitar an octave lower, the result will sound correct.
Demonstration
For the following, I used Logic Pro X:
First, enable the Varispeed menu (guide here) & set to -12 semitones
Record your track, then reset to 0 semitones 
And like magic, you nail the solo!
Here's a crude audio example to illustrate this a little better, the first clip is an octave lower (-12 semitones) and the second is how it sounds when you re-adjust :
(This was recorded from a semi-acoustic into logic and then routed through an amp modelling plugin, using an electric guitar will definitely sound better!)
Conclusion
While it's better to practice the material before recording, all is not lost if it's crunch time and you can't deliver!
Thanks for checking out my post.
Image 1 - Pixabay
Image 2 - Softube.com
Image 3 & 4 - Logic Screenshots
I really enjoyed your post, thank you for sharing with us. Enjoy the vote!
Hi @elliotjgardner Here's some interesting news for electronic music genres, the first DJ mix that's blockchain-enabled. Tracks in the DJ mix get paid in seconds.
Good article, cool to see some production stuff on here, subbed. Iv'e experimented with a similar technique to do some superhuman quick guitar work in not your typical genres for that sort of thing so its not like a wanky dragonfly speed for the sake of it riff fest, but more like a texture or psychedelic special effect.
Thanks for checking it out man, I haven't seen a lot of production based stuff and it's nice to dust off the cobwebs - I spent real time learning all this stuff!
Aside from the timing benefits there are other interesting elements too like transient smoothing but didn't want to come off too nerdy :)
Sounds interesting, do you have a link to the material?
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STOPI am not a musician, nor a guitarist and pretty talentless really, but I find your post interesting Elliott as I'm just creaking the door open into the music scene and the mechanics behind producing music. Good post mate and following for more.
Nice one @flatrider, I like the idea of sharing the 'secrets' of how the industry can manipulate their results. It's a little disheartening at times to hear such 'perfect' sounds in recordings - especially when you start out.
I can imagine Elliot and the music industry does seem to under manipulation of some kind.
This post has received a 12.05 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @elliotjgardner.