Music? can you slow it down

quique13

is there any attribute that you can do so that the music slows down?
i know you can lower the volume!

thanks
cheers

gyroscope

Hi @quique13 There's no way to do that for a Music file in GSC; in fact, a music file can't be altered in any way, only started, stopped & paused; or the volume altered, as you know.

You can slow down the speed of a sound in GSC but this is a by-product of altering the pitch... by making the pitch lower, this will stretch the sample accordingly to play for longer (or shorter if the pitch is made higher).

For proper speed change without altering the pitch, the only option for you is to do these in an external Audio Editor ( that has a filter to let you to do that... Amadeus comes to mind) and bring each different version in as separate files into GSC.

vafurlogi

gyroscope beat me to it so my answer is about the same:

Well... I guess you could import your music as a sound and then use the pitch to slow it down, but that would also mean.... well... that the pitch would change with the speed. Other than that, I don't think you can.

quique13

@gyroscope how do you alter the pitch of a song when you press a button thanks

gyroscope

Hi @quique13 You'd be better off with two buttons for raising the pitch as well as lowering the pitch. (You could also do this with a slide but that involves more programming).

So back to the buttons, these can be used to raid or lower the pitch in .1 increments if you wished; i'll quickly get together a demo for you, give me 10 mins.

P.S As long as you fully understand now that the lower the pitch is made, the slower the sound will play, and the higher the pitch the faster it will play....

Socks

You can slow down the speed of a sound in GSC but this is a by-product of altering the pitch...

This is a 'proper' speed change (to me at least) ! When you slow a record player down by placing your finger on the record or slow a reel to reel down by placing your finger on the feed reel, you will get exactly this, the speed and the pitch dropping together, I think this is what most people expect to hear when something slows down.

For proper speed change without altering the pitch, the only option for you is to do these in an external Audio Editor ( that has a filter to let you to do that... Amadeus comes to mind) and bring each different version in as separate files into GSC.

Depending on the material, for example if it's something short, like a drum loop or vocal sample, you could slice the audio into discrete pieces and trigger them in sequence, altering the speed they are triggered at will change the speed without changing the pitch, might work in some situations.

Socks

Here's a simple pitch slider:

https://www.mediafire.com/?oxo0fzkj4jjgpbz

gyroscope

Here's the buttons in a game file as you requested, to raise or lower the pitch of a sound, hope it helps. (I'll say again though, it does speed up or slow down the track, as there's no time stretch in GameSalad).

P.S I'll put here the same as I've put in the file: the track Route F used in the game file (Also known as Trancer 05) is composed by David John Griffin (me, that is), who also owns the copyright. For interest, I wrote it about 6 or 7 years ago.

If you can find a use for it (a small chance, I guess! But I dunno, roaring through space, or heavy-duty truck driving, or something.... ;-) ), I'll allow anyone to use the track in one game only, for free, providing you credit me, along the lines of:

"Track F" composed and produced by David John Griffin ©2014

gyroscope

Hi @Socks

You can slow down the speed of a sound in GSC but this is a by-product of altering the pitch...

This is a 'proper' speed change (to me at least) ! When you slow a record player down by placing your finger on the record or slow a reel to reel down by placing your finger on the feed reel, you will get exactly this, the speed and the pitch dropping together, I think this is what most people expect to hear when something slows down.

But with the advent of modern-day software audio generators / samplers / editors / sequencers, etc., came time stretch (amongst a thousand other new things), whereby changing a pitch of a track without altering its speed became perfectly normal.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep07/articles/cubasetech_0907.htm

For proper speed change without altering the pitch, the only option for you is to do these in an external Audio Editor ( that has a filter to let you to do that... Amadeus comes to mind) and bring each different version in as separate files into GSC.

Depending on the material, for example if it's something short, like a drum loop or vocal sample, you could slice the audio into discrete pieces and trigger them in sequence, altering the speed they are triggered at will change the speed without changing the pitch, might work in some situations.

Sounds a lot of work, especially if you've multiple samples needed to change pitch without altering the speed, plus, I'm sorry to say, your method wouldn't work anyhow, you have distinct gaps of varying times, in between your individual little slices... easy to use time stretch!

Socks

@gyroscope

But with the advent of modern-day software audio generators / samplers / editors / sequencers, etc., came time stretch (amongst a thousand other new things), whereby changing a pitch of a track without altering its speed became perfectly normal.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep07/articles/cubasetech_0907.htm

Yep, agreed, time-stretching is great, but I think to most people (certainly most non-musicians/producers/engineers) a track slowing down is that film/tape/record spinning down sound.

Sounds a lot of work . .

Yeah, it can be a lot of work, but if you were desperate to have control over speed without altering pitch it could be done, even if in only a limited way, it's what people used to do before time-stretching appeared.

especially if you've multiple samples needed to change pitch without altering the speed . .

Yep, agreed, which is why I said: "if it's something short, like a drum loop or vocal sample".

plus, I'm sorry to say, your method wouldn't work anyhow, you have distinct gaps of varying times, in between your individual little slices...

Not quite sure I understand what you mean when you say: "you have distinct gaps of varying times, in between your individual little slices" ?

The idea would be to slice up an audio sample into equal length parts (rather than varying length parts) and trigger them in sequence. Like I say, it's how time-stretching was done prior to actual time-stretching arriving, it does work !

But the real issue here would be GameSalad's limited audio functionality, not being able to address an audio file with an expression is itself very limiting, so trying to access a sequence of 40 or 50 audio files would quickly become a real pain.

At the end of the day you are right, stretching the audio before importing is going to be easier.

gyroscope

And you're probably right as well, @Socks, that @quique13 doesn't worry about pitch change altering the speed... I just assumed it would be a problem, hence the time-stretch suggestion in an external audio editor....they don't call me Mr.Assumption for nothing, you know...

:-)

gyroscope

Not quite sure I understand what you mean when you say: "you have distinct gaps of varying times, in between your individual little slices" ?

Didn't explain it properly, I meant that if you run a sequence of sound slices as you suggested, with the intention of speeding it up (with the slices remaining at the same pitch), then the slices will overlap, and if you decided to slow the slices down as a sequence, the gaps in between the slices would widen with silence, so would produce a stuttering. So I'm not sure that time stretch was done this way at any time...

Socks

@gyroscope

Didn't explain it properly, I meant that if you run a sequence of sound slices as you suggested, with the intention of speeding it up (with the slices remaining at the same pitch), then the slices will overlap, and if you decided to slow the slices down as a sequence, the gaps in between the slices would widen with silence, so would produce a stuttering.

Ah ! That makes sense, I see what you mean now.

So I'm not sure that time stretch was done this way at any time...

Having spent years in studios where everyone was doing this I can say "I am sure this is how it was done !" : )

This was exactly how people time-stretched audio prior to real time-stretching, split your audio up into as many sections as you were willing to do - 64 was common on short samples like drum loops and breaks, music samples and vocal lines- more if you had the patience ! , map them out across your keyboard, slow the sequencer down, manually play in the 64 steps, quantise to the relevant period, speed the sequencer up to whatever you want, bingo, time stretching on the fly ! Works great for certain things.

Even modern time-stretching uses a form of this method, albeit much more complex as it factors in frequency/period, rather than relying on equally spaced edits.

The audio slices overlapping is not much of an issue, try it, you'd be surprised at how little it impacts on the audio, of course (just like proper FFT time stretching) some things work better than others . . . . and when it comes to pitches lower the original pitch you'd simply loop the individual samples (again this is what proper time stretching does) so there would be no gaps.

gyroscope

@gyroscope

Didn't explain it properly, I meant that if you run a sequence of sound slices as you suggested, with the intention of speeding it up (with the slices remaining at the same pitch), then the slices will overlap, and if you decided to slow the slices down as a sequence, the gaps in between the slices would widen with silence, so would produce a stuttering.

Ah ! That makes sense, I see what you mean now.

So I'm not sure that time stretch was done this way at any time...

Having spent years in studios where everyone was doing this I can say "I am sure this is how it was done !" : )

This was exactly how people time-stretched audio prior to real time-stretching, split your audio up into as many sections as you were willing to do - 64 was common on short samples like drum loops and breaks, music samples and vocal lines- more if you had the patience ! , map them out across your keyboard, slow the sequencer down, manually play in the 64 steps, quantise to the relevant period, speed the sequencer up to whatever you want, bingo, time stretching on the fly ! Works great for certain things.

Even modern time-stretching uses a form of this method, albeit much more complex as it factors in frequency/period, rather than relying on equally spaced edits.

The audio slices overlapping is not much of an issue, try it, you'd be surprised at how little it impacts on the audio, of course (just like proper FFT time stretching) somethings work better than others . . . . and when it comes to pitches lower the original pitch you'd simply loop the individual samples (again this is what proper time stretching does) so there would be no gaps.

Interesting, I see what YOU mean now, too. :-) Cheers, @Socks, I've learned something tonight.

Thanks for taking timeout to explain.

Socks

@gyroscope

Interesting, I see what YOU mean now, too

The only real difference between proper time-stretching and using this method is that real time-stretching chops up the sample by scanning for a complete cycle of a waveform*, it then loops (for lower pitches) at the end point of the waveform, the slicing method simply makes arbitrary (but equidistant) chops so it is always going to be less refined, but it can work really well a lot of the time - and as you probably know even the best proper time-stretching can be a bit hit and miss sometimes.

(*really simplified, but you get the idea)

On the subject of time-stretching, I recently picked up a fairly rare Roland VP7000, they're not expensive (£3,000 when they came out . . . . . £200 now ! ), but very hard to find and the time-stretching is amazing ! Much better than any software I've tried.

gyroscope

See what you're saying, @Socks. Yep, the loops beginning and end of the slices have to be darned good for a decent time stretch....

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Socks

See what you're saying, @Socks. Yep, the loops beginning and end of the slices have to be darned good for a decent time stretch....

I always used to do a very quick fade in and fade out at each end of each slice (by quick I mean a few samples) this gets rid of any non-zero crossover clicks, works great for music and voice especially. For more rhythmic loops you'd need to cut stuff on the beat (even if the beat was not quantized to anything obvious), kind of like how ReCycle™ works - both these methods are applicable to GameSalad (if you have the time and patience ).

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