Guide

Slowed vs Nightcore vs Daycore

Slowed and reverb, nightcore and daycore compared in one table: speed, pitch, reverb, mood, platforms and sources, plus which style to pick for a song.

Slowed + reverb, nightcore and daycore are the three main speed-based remix styles, and all three are made with the same handful of controls. Slowed + reverb plays a song slower, lowers its pitch and adds a room sound. Nightcore plays it faster, raises its pitch and stays bright and dry. Daycore plays it slower like slowed + reverb but leaves the reverb out. Everything else, from mood to the platforms where each thrives, follows from those three choices.

This page is the comparison. There is one big table, then a section on the two related styles people ask about, sped up and chopped and screwed, then a practical guide to picking a style for a given song. Each style has its own definitional guide if you want depth: what is slowed and reverb, what is nightcore and what is daycore. All three can be made in the free web editor with no upload.

The comparison table

A note on pitch. In all three styles the pitch follows the speed by default, which is how the editor works with Preserve pitch off. At 0.84x a song drops about three semitones; at 1.19x it rises about three; at 1.26x about four. None of the three styles uses pitch-preserved playback. A song slowed with its original key kept is a practice track, not a remix style.

The two related styles

Sped up

Sped up is the TikTok era version of nightcore. It runs between about 1.10x and 1.25x, so the pitch rise is one to three semitones instead of four to six. The vocal stays recognisably the same singer, just brighter and quicker. It dropped nightcore's anime visuals entirely and became background audio for short videos, to the point that labels now release official sped up versions of singles in this range.

In the editor, start from Lift and pull speed down to 1.15x to 1.20x, leave reverb at zero and tone around +2 dB. The speed up song page and the blog guide to making a sped up version have the details.

Chopped and screwed

Chopped and screwed is where all the slowed styles descend from. In 1990s Houston, DJ Screw slowed records on turntables so they played lower and heavier (screwed), and chopped between two copies of the same record to stutter and repeat phrases (chopped). There is no added reverb; the effect is woozy, rhythmic and deliberate.

A speed-only tool can give you the screwed half. The chopping is a DJ technique that requires cutting and repeating sections, which the editor does not do. The chopped and screwed maker page explains what you can and cannot get. If you want the screwed feel, daycore settings at 0.72x to 0.78x with a little bass are the closest.

Which style to pick for a song

The right style depends on the song more than on taste. These are the signals that matter.

Tempo of the original. Fast songs, 130 BPM and up, slow gracefully and still have motion at 0.82x. They are candidates for slowed + reverb or daycore. Slow songs, under 90 BPM, crawl when slowed but become mid-tempo pop when sped up, so nightcore or sped up often reveals a version that did not exist before.

Vocal range. A high, airy vocal gains warmth from slowing and turns shrill from speeding. A low male vocal gains presence from speeding and turns to gravel below about 0.80x. Listen to the singer and go the opposite direction from where their voice already sits.

Density of the mix. Busy, layered arrangements turn to mud when slowed and dry, so they want reverb to smooth the edges, or they want to be sped up where the brightness keeps things separate. Sparse arrangements can take daycore, where every element stays audible.

Recording quality. Reverb is forgiving. Daycore is not. A low bitrate or poorly mixed source should be slowed + reverb or left alone. A clean, well mixed source can be daycore.

Lyrics. If the words are the point, pick daycore or a light slowed + reverb under 35 percent wet. If the atmosphere is the point, slowed + reverb at 45 percent and up.

Where you will post it. Long form YouTube listeners expect slowed + reverb. Short form video uses slowed + reverb and sped up as background audio in roughly equal measure depending on the trend of the month. Nightcore has its own communities and performs best when framed for them.

Making all three from one song

The editor applies settings per selected track, so you can make all three versions in one session. Add the same file three times, or add it once and export three times with different presets. Haze Chamber for the slowed + reverb, Lift for the nightcore, Dry with speed at 0.82x for the daycore. Each export is an MP3 at 96 kbps, 32 kHz, which suits YouTube, TikTok and Shorts because those platforms re-encode. For a release master, use a WAV source and finish in a DAW.

Which of the three versions gets more attention is a separate question. The blog post nightcore vs slowed reverb: which style gets more engagement looks at that from the creator's side.

Copyright applies to all of them

Every one of these styles produces a derivative work of the original recording. Changing speed in either direction does not remove the copyright, and platform matching recognises slowed and sped up versions. On YouTube the usual outcome is a claim with revenue to the rights holder, sometimes a block. Monetising requires original or licensed music.

Open the free editor: upload MP3, WAV, AAC, OGG or FLAC, adjust speed, reverb, bass, tone, width and space, then export MP3 or a ZIP of many tracks. Everything runs in your browser.