Real 106.1 pitching up? (I hate that.)

When a male artist sounds female you know it's pitched up way too much. I noticed that a few times when I used to listen to KISS 95.7 the I-Heart CHR station in Hartford. When Infinity launched their hip-hop station in Hartford in 2001, I emailed them and thanked them for not pitching up the music like KISS 95.7 did.

WZXL 100.7 played a version of Wish you were Here by pink floyd, and it was pitched so high that it was in a totally different key. I heard it last night believe it or not.

Gary loves that pitch.

Miguelito said:

Gary loves that pitch.

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Yeah, when you do it at the rock station which I'm totally against. Those listeners notice as they have listened to those songs for over 30 years.

Today you don't need to have the chipmunk vocals. You can digitally speed up the music and keep the vocal integrity. I prefer 4-5% 'speed' up with the enhancement of keeping the pitch of the vocal the same, over a pitch up of 3%.

We used to get the special rapless mixes from the radio station for our bar/club/wedding gigs. We always pitched up 3% at the gigs to make the music more exciting. I remember going to a friends gig where he was playing the radio rapless mix which was already sped up 3% and he was adding another 3% to it. It was at 6%, it sounded ridiculous to me, yet the dance floor was packed and no one seemed to notice.

After reading this thread, it makes sense that some turntable manufacturers made it so the a zero pitched record was really playing at +4%. I avoided buying those because I want my music as close to the way it was released.

DOB said:

it sounded ridiculous to me, yet the dance floor was packed and no one seemed to notice.

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Because they were all drunk! Maybe back in the day, if I got good & drunk, I would have been able to leave my dial tuned to 95.1. LOL. I assume if they're still pitching up ZXL, they're still doing it to WAYV as well?

It may be the after-affects of my strokes or me going off my meds, but I swear I heard pitched up songs on both WOGL AND WDAS-FM on Saturday Night. I haven't listened to OTA radio since Prince's death, so this may not be anything new, but PLEASE don't tell me that pitching up AND auto-tune are the new normal on Philly radio.

Were they perhaps airing a remote broadcast with a live DJ spinning? I'm not a regular radio listener these days either so I don't know whether anyone in town is still doing such things. But if so, it's completely feasible for a live DJ to pitch up a song. Otherwise, I would be extremely surprised if WOGL messed with any of the songs in their library. I wouldn't be quite as surprised if WDAS-FM was doing it since they are part of the infamous iHeart family.

MarcB said:

I think I-Heart pitches up all their stations. Sometimes I listen to their Variety Hits station (70s/80s leaning) in Hartford The River 105.9 and notice that it's pitched up. The River plays some of the same music as Full Power Radio's Oldies station in the market and I can tell the difference in how the song sounds.

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I can't speak for many formats but many individual IHM owned stations do this all across formats, including urban, although the vast majority play music as recorded. I did notice Real 106.1 pitch up their songs yesterday even though its urban sisters WDAS and Power 99 don't do this. Examples of other IHM urbans doing this as well: KMEL in San Francisco has pitched their music since the mid-2000s although they deviate to as recorded during mixshows and Gospel Sunday mornings, but I felt it didn't make sense to do that since sister KYLD Wild 94.9 has always done so since its Wild 107 days. Other urbans and rhythmics like KPEZ Austin, 104.5 The Beat Orlando, KLQT ABQ, KJMN Boston and KMJM 100.3 The Beat (when it was an urban throwback) also do this. Surprisingly IHM pitches some of their urban ac's as well: KMJM-HD2 St Louis (Majic 103.7), WRBV V101.7 Macon, WWMG Montgomery and B106.5 Birmingham; even urban gospel station WHLH Jackson is pitched. Just recently last year full-service urban WBTJ in Richmond stopped pitching their playlist and went to "play as recorded" for the first time since its 2001 launch.

JayPee said:

Way, way back in the day, when jocks--or, more commonly, techs and engineers--played 45s on turntables, a station engineer would literally shave some metal from the turntable spindle so the 45s played a few percent faster. (Somebody once told me as much as 10%, but that sounds a little extreme.) The physics behind it--conservation of angular momentum--is the same as that behind a skater rotating faster when she draws her arms closer to her body: make the spindle thinner, and the turntable rotates faster. The theory was--as has been stated in this thread--that a slight elevation in the pitch of the music would make the station sound brighter than its competition.

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Don't forget some electronic companies that produced cassette players. Some played as recorded, while others were pitched up or pitched down as manufactured.

Miguelito said:

Were they perhaps airing a remote broadcast with a live DJ spinning? I'm not a regular radio listener these days either so I don't know whether anyone in town is still doing such things. But if so, it's completely feasible for a live DJ to pitch up a song. Otherwise, I would be extremely surprised if WOGL messed with any of the songs in their library. I wouldn't be quite as surprised if WDAS-FM was doing it since they are part of the infamous iHeart family.

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WOGL was airing a live broadcast, but I don't remember them ever pitching up anything before. As for WDAS-FM, surprisingly, they weren't airing a live remote or live mixing from the studio, just playing songs, which irked me as they played about 4-5 rap songs between 11:30 pm and Midnight, even though they advertise that they have an all rap show from 6-8 pm.

DavidEduardo said:

First, at the vast majority of stations, meaning those that were not union shops, the jocks spun their own 45's. While there were some stations that had "engineers" or board ops, it was not common.

It was not easy or, as far as I know, even technically possible to mill a turntable drive shaft with the degree of precision needed to avoid a lot of flutter. The solution was to vary the frequency of the AC going to the motor itself. The most widely used system was sold by a little firm out of West Texas that had a cheap box that was easy to install.

The fastest speed up I ever witnessed was KIRL in St Charles (St Louis) that was up between 4 and 5 percent. It was very noticeable. And ugly.

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Now that makes a lot more sense than the tale I was told. Thanks for clearing up the bit of misinformation.

I feel so gullible for having believed it. I knew the 10% thing was a bit much, but I hadn't thought of the machining that had to go into actually shaving the spindle.