Welcome back to Sound Bytes!
Happy Halloween! To celebrate, I made a “Halloween Mode” for Pro Tools—because why not? If you want to see that, push play on that sweet, sweet video.
Today, we’re diving into creating the effect of a record player or reel-to-reel tape slowing down, where it progressively lowers in pitch and tempo. This Sound Byte is from The Money with Katie Show by Morning Brew, on the topic of life coaches. You’ll hear the slow-down on the music at the end of the Sound Byte.
Today’s Sound Byte
The TL;DR
Choose a positive, uplifting song and introduce it with a natural “in” line from the dialogue. Just before the spindown, add a music pullback followed by a music drop to intensify the positive emotion so when the spindown happens the surprise and impact are amplified.
Video Breakdown
Breakdown Buffet
I go over the plug-in in the video, but today will mostly be about the setup and how to get the most bang for your buck before even getting to the spindown.
The setup actually begins with the song you choose, and it’s important to consider how you introduce it. As you may have noticed, the song feels uplifting, and that is the first step in this type of setup. You also might have noticed that Katie's dialogue is recognizing that life coaches could be legit or total quackery. So you might be asking, since she seems to be caught between two sides, does the feel of this song make sense?
That’s why I started the music on the line, “at first I was on a high.” This line justifies the positive vibe, creating a natural point to start an uplifting track. You couldn’t start this song after the “quackery” line; it would feel out of place. And if you did start a song there, it would have to be a track that leaned suspicious or malicious. And with a track like that, you’d lose the contrast that makes the spin-down so effective. Using a song that’s already dark or cynical with a spin-down feels redundant—it works but lacks the punch of a cheerful track slowing down.
This song works because it’s optimistic without being overly happy, which would be off-tone. And that's why I picked this track, because it is leaning positive and uplifting without being so sweet that you're getting cavities.
And just as a quick aside, I often describe music as “leaning” (optimistic, sad, or suspicious), reserving “full” emotions for rare occasions. Full “happy” or “sad” music usually feels exaggerated for my productions. If I'm doing full sad or even full happy, it's probably as a gag. For example, Katie is running late for work, and it’s raining, and she drops her briefcase. And the sad violin is playing, something like that, where it's just over the top.
The dialogue in the middle section (00:26 - 02:02) is more of the good and the bad of the profession. But since we had our positive "in" that made sense, this song fits and the listener is being told we're still going up Bliss Mountain, all is well. Just chill!
Then we get to the euphoric calm before the music swell (01:49). I specifically edited the music like this so that you get a bit of that lull. It's still happy, but it's a lull before the drop so that when that drop hits right before the start of the interview, you're convincing the listener again that this is just positive vibes going forward, and our guest is going to clear everything up.
And my friends, the trap is set.
So when we finally get to the interview and it spins down, you have successfully pulled the double cross on your listener. How dare you!
That, to me, is the perfect setup. You have the positive vibes song, the blissful music drop, and then the guest’s first line is, erm, I found some problems in this profession, and they're both laughing, and the spin down happens, and boom, it all comes together, and you've (hopefully!) put a smile on your listener's face.
If you are interested in Vari-Fi, the plugin I used to do this effect, I cover it around 6:40 in the video.
As I reviewed my session for this, some other ideas came to mind. Maybe on a different day, I would have done a spin down and a spin up as Katie flipped on her different positive and negative takes of the profession.
Or how about this idea for a different show/episode/setup? The song comes in, and then someone gets bad news, and then the news gets worse, and then it gets worse, and then it gets worse. And as it gets progressively worse, you pitch-shift the song down (with a different pitch shifting plugin), and then it gets to the very bottom, and then it spins down. I think that could be pretty effective.
Or it doesn't have to be all doom and gloom. Do the opposite. How about somebody starts out with a bad day, and then it gets progressively better, and the song starts spinning up, everything is going wrong. Rain and thunder outside. And then it starts to turn around. They get home, and their dog that ran away has come home. And they won the lottery. The rain and thunder transitions into birds chirping. As the audio plays, the song gets progressively higher in pitch and speeds up until it reaches the correct pitch, and everything is firing on happy vibes.
It doesn't always have to be doom and gloom. I don't know why, but I always seem to go down with this. I actually don't think I've ever used it to spin up. I need to really start looking into that!
And THAT is what I love about this medium. There's no one right way to do things, and it's a playground for audio with no rules. And that fits my rebel spirit.
OK, that does it. Please let me know if you try anything you see here, if you have any questions, or if you've done something similar in the past. I love hearing other audio and picking through Pro Tools sessions. If you want to send me one, you can send me a message on Substack, LinkedIn, or an email to PodSoundBytes@gmail.com. Or I'm also in a Discord called Podcasting Community.
Have a happy Halloween!
Awesome happy you like it! ✌️
I don't use Pro Tools but I love the idea of this!