Tunings on recorded songs

socialleper · #1 09-25-2009, 12:52 PM

Occasionally I like to learn a song or two off an album and play along to keep my chops up. But I've notice on older recordings, like mid-80's and earlier, the tunings seem to be a little sharp a lot of the time. I first noticed this with Metallica's Ride the Lightening and Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast. Just recently I've noticed it with the Police's Every Breath You Take, which is supposed to be in D tuning but comes out just shy of D#. Queen's Another One Bites the dust is supposed to be regular E tuning, but is also just shy of E#.
Most other songs modern songs I play along to, I just tune and go.

Has anyone else ever noticed this? Why would someone tune in between like that? Could it be because of old tape master speeds or something?

lunarpollen · #2 09-25-2009, 02:13 PM

It's common for recordings, especially ones done on analog tape, to be sped up and/or slowed down during the process of recording, mixing, etc. So the final product isn't in tune with standard tuning. Even in the age of digital recording and mixing, people still pitch shift stuff slightly sometimes. Sadly, it's something you have to deal with yourself. If i need to learn a tune by playing along with a recording, and it's slightly sharp or flat, I'll just import the file into Soundforge and then use the pitch feature to apply a slight shift so that its in tune with my instrument. Then I save a copy of the slightly pitch-shifted tune, and just practice along with that, and maybe give my bandmantes copies so they can practice along with it too.

bassist4dalord · #3 09-25-2009, 02:20 PM

I've noticed that with my recording of The Who's Baba O' Riley. It seems like they tuned to 441 or something.

socialleper · #4 09-25-2009, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lunarpollen

It's common for recordings, especially ones done on analog tape, to be sped up and/or slowed down during the process of recording, mixing, etc. So the final product isn't in tune with standard tuning. Even in the age of digital recording and mixing, people still pitch shift stuff slightly sometimes. Sadly, it's something you have to deal with yourself. If i need to learn a tune by playing along with a recording, and it's slightly sharp or flat, I'll just import the file into Soundforge and then use the pitch feature to apply a slight shift so that its in tune with my instrument. Then I save a copy of the slightly pitch-shifted tune, and just practice along with that, and maybe give my bandmantes copies so they can practice along with it too.

Good tip about using soundforge; I'll have to look into that.

lunarpollen · #5 09-28-2009, 01:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by socialleper

Good tip about using soundforge; I'll have to look into that.

Yeah, I had to adjust two songs in particular, Gary Numan's "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and Pink Floyd's "Lucifer Sam,"* because they were "in between notes" and I didn't want to change my tuning a quarter step or so just to practice along with the recordings.

*Funny thing was, when the remastered version of Piper at the Gates of Dawn was released, the song was actually in tune, so if I had waited for that instead of using my old CD, it would have saved me the trouble.