Brings back memories of a great remix contest in 2006 where the digital copies of analog tape tracks from Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey” were made available

Brings back memories of a great remix contest in 2006 where the digital copies of analog tape tracks from Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey” were made available to remixers. To my surprise the pitch of the samples was a little lower (and varying ever so slightly over the duration of the song) than what you’d have expected with a440 tuning. It baffled me, since I expected some of the early digital synths used in the original sessions should habe been rock solid 440 tuning. And that’s how I learned about “tape stretch” where analog audio tape stretches just enough to make the pitch of everything a few cents lower over long period of time. p.s. I ended up applying digital pitch correction, so I could “jam along” with my own synths :-)