Half speed tape effect

Cubase
1

I searched but didn’t find it here in the forum so thought I would ask if there is anyway to get convincing vari speed tape vocal effect in cubase. Think prince where he raised or lowered the voice by recording the track at a faster or slower speed.

Before you answer use vari audio or pitch shift, That always sounds like it comes with artifacts so I really DONT want to do it that way.

I am thinking something that might take advantage of the elastique algorithm but don’t know how I would do it or where to start as I just want a pitch transposition and all the tutorials I have seen show tempo changes.

Thanks in advance

2

3:00. Is this what you were looking for?

3

The above video link, at 0:19s mentions that this method works on midi tracks too. How can one use the elastique tape on a midi track? If I set the transport bar to fixed, the tempo track disables, if I enable the tempo track, I can set the tempo that way and it does slow down the tempo if I draw in a downward slope, but the pitch doesn’t change along with it like a tape effect. Am I missing something, or is the wording in that video misleading and the actual effect can only be heard on audio files contained in the project?

Thanks.

4

The above video link, at 0:19s mentions that this method works on midi tracks too

The tempo change works on midi tracks…the pitch shifting of the tape algo doesn’t.

5

ya, that is what I thought. I noticed the tempo changed worked, but that was it. I usually leave my midi based projects on fixed tempo anyways.

Thanks for confirming.

6

Nope, Ive seen that and its where I got the idea but the pitch changes with the tempo. I want the tempo to stay consistent but use elastique to transpose the pitch up or down while the tracks remain at the set tempo.

As mentioned this can be done with pitch shifting but to me I think that method doesnt sound as good and has artifacts where as elastic really seems to do exactly what I want if I could only separate it from tempo.
Maybe its not possible?

7

Gotcha.

Does this work (clunky)?

  1. In the pool, put your audio in musical mode, choose Elastique tape, activate tempo track, then drag your tempo track around so that you get the pitch change you want (if you need exact pitch changes can calculate: one octave is half speed/twice speed, etc.).
  2. Record the resulting speed and pitch altered audio to another audio track (don’t worry, the speed altered bit will go away in the next step).
  3. In the pool take that 2nd track, put it to musical mode, then put it to Elastique Pitch (not tape).
  4. Go back to the project window, and turn off the tempo track. Mute the original audio, and hit play. The 2nd track should play back at the original tempo but with pitch shift a la elastique.