Not true, unless, perhaps, you qualify as "most people".
Lemme add, I hate all generalizations.
Last edited:
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Hungry Heart. Was this record sped up drastically?
- Thread starter ElectroVibe
- Start date
Not true, unless, perhaps, you qualify as "most people".
Lemme add, I hate all generalizations.
Probably insignificant, but the sheet music is in Cmaj and the recording in C#. And they did use tape back then.
Yeah I basically agree. I grew up in Los Angeles, and being on board since BTR (I'm 63 now) my perspective, being a fan of course, is that he was huge even before Darkness. We certainly were into him, as were other Western cities. (The official Rosalita video was Tempe, AZ in 1980 -- I was there.)
But to your point, what happened in the early 80s? M-Freaking-T-V! Which changed everything. So yes, BITHUSA of course was a perfect storm for MEGA success, of the newly minted "muscled" Bruce, as opposed to the scrawny Bruce of prior years. And now instead of the Forum, the Spectrum, MSG, for multiple nights, it was stadiums.
Hungry Heart of course, was the first MEGA single, as in people who cared less about him before were all of a sudden singing along at the laundromat, but it was not his first national success.
It wasn't sped up. If you read his biography, or listen to the e-book that he narrates (really well, by the way, that's my preferred way to experience it), he was razzed by bar managers etc for not being a very good singer, and he probably was insecure a bit about that early on and trying extra hard to create a sound.
To me, though, it just sounds like him?
To me, though, it just sounds like him?
It can't be speeded up, it does sound like it's got a lot of tank reverb though, it's dripping with it, it almost sounds disconnected, buried like, but if it's speeded up it would have to be a whole half step up as the key is right at C# and there's keyboards in it, piano I believe, and to go from C to C# would have been very noticeable, in fact I have a 4 track reel to reel with varispeed and just sped up a tape a 1/2 step and it was starting to sound a little bit like the Chipmunks, it's very noticeable.
Last edited:
drumvsbass
Commercial User
- Aug 20, 2011
- 1,985
- 4,325
- Disclosures
- I work for Long and McQuade Musical Instruments Canada in Sales.
Finally... 3 pages in and no one mentions the recording is in C# Major!!! That's the smoking gun.
Last edited:
Plus he had gotten rid of that scraggly beard by the time Darkness had come out, cut back on the Spectorian arrangements, and had gotten through a huge legal go-round with his manager. Darkness did OK, but I’m sure the label was leaning on him to do better; they could also have been worried that the The River, being a double album, would be a hard sell, so a single would have to be heavily pushed. Having won some artistic freedom with the sucess of all that, he followed up with Nebraska, a stark, dark, brooding solo album recorded on a cassette four-track. It could have been a career killer for anyone else, but his following was strong enough. CBS still had to make something big with the next one, and yes, with the help of MTV, it went huge, but at a cost. That “Dancing In The Dark” video, with him pulling a pre-Friends Courteney Cox out of the audience was pure cheese, and while he gained a larger, more generic audience, many old fans fell by the wayside.
Last edited:
It is significant in that they cannot speed up a tune a whole half step with analog tape as it becomes very noticeable way below that. It's got a piano in it and had to be recorded in C#. This was done way before they had digital effects that can speed up or slow down a song without raising or lowering the key.
Last edited:
It's fair to say that if Springsteen had stopped making records in 1982, he never would have become a household name.
The whole point is that his voice sounds higher than normal, compared everything else he's ever recorded. It doesn't even sound like Bruce to me.
Let me point out that the Wikipedia article does not mention that the song is sped up, just that Springsteen's voice was.
I mean, they sped up Robert Plant's voice, they could have easily done it to Bruce.
It sounds like they did, also.
I mean, they sped up Robert Plant's voice, they could have easily done it to Bruce.
It sounds like they did, also.
Either they sped it up to make his voice a higher pitch, or that's someone else entirely on lead vocal.
Frankly, it's also kind of a miserable song, and always bugged me. It certainly treats the lead character very sympathetically, despite his abandoning his family. He just "keeps on flowing" and has a "hungry heart" and likes to drink, his children really don't seem to concern him. This kind of poopie was popular with that generation. But honestly this song is really pretty sympathetic to an awful character.
It's possible they could have slowed the tape down slightly and had him sing to that and then sped it back up to normal, that would make his voice sound higher, in fact that may be what they did but it would have had to have been slowed down only a semitone, just enough to give it a slight edge when sped back up to normal. Some of those analog engineers back then were phenomenal.
A more knowledgeable sax player can correct me on this if I'm wrong:
Clarence Clemons played baritone sax on "Hungry Heart." Bari saxes are transposing Eb instruments and come in two different varieties: low Bb or low A. The lowest note a Bb bari sax can play is concert-pitch C# or Db. The more popular low A variety extends the range down to concert C, but as a tradeoff, sacrifices the low C#/Db. (In bass terms, imagine detuning your open E string a half-step to D#/Eb, but the fretted notes all stay the same pitch. Now you can play low Eb, but there's a gap between Eb and F, so it's impossible to play low E.)
Therefore Clarence Clemons needs to choose the correct saxophone based on the key of the song; it would be physically difficult, if not impossible, to play "Hungry Heart" using the wrong tool for the job. Based on YouTube live performances, it seems to me like Bruce and the E Street usually performed the song in the key of C, strongly implying that Clarence played the low A variety bari sax.
This is an additional piece of corroborating evidence that "Hungry Heart" was originally recorded in the key of C, and then the tape was sped up to C#/Db Major.
Clarence Clemons played baritone sax on "Hungry Heart." Bari saxes are transposing Eb instruments and come in two different varieties: low Bb or low A. The lowest note a Bb bari sax can play is concert-pitch C# or Db. The more popular low A variety extends the range down to concert C, but as a tradeoff, sacrifices the low C#/Db. (In bass terms, imagine detuning your open E string a half-step to D#/Eb, but the fretted notes all stay the same pitch. Now you can play low Eb, but there's a gap between Eb and F, so it's impossible to play low E.)
Therefore Clarence Clemons needs to choose the correct saxophone based on the key of the song; it would be physically difficult, if not impossible, to play "Hungry Heart" using the wrong tool for the job. Based on YouTube live performances, it seems to me like Bruce and the E Street usually performed the song in the key of C, strongly implying that Clarence played the low A variety bari sax.
This is an additional piece of corroborating evidence that "Hungry Heart" was originally recorded in the key of C, and then the tape was sped up to C#/Db Major.
Last edited:
Nope, that would stick out like a sore thumb. Speeding up music a half step is very obvious, I did it tonight, but they could have, as someone else pointed out, slowed the tape down a little bit (semitone) and had him sing to that and then turn it back to the normal speed, that would make his voice sound higher.
