They did tinker with speeding up and slowing down songs a good bit. I believe "Rain" was recorded faster and slowed down, and of course there's the patching together of "Strawberry Fields" from two takes at different speeds & keys.
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McCartney and old time needle jumping (??)
- Thread starter So Low Bass
- Start date
I remember that book was not very flattering to George (H) as a guitarist. Whatever the birth process was, the product came out great!
Yes, the Beatles played tricks with tape speed, but there is no technical reason why their pitches were often "in the cracks". Perhaps people who know about EMI tape technoligy could chime in here.
The frequency of "A" varies throughout Europe. The American standard has been 440 since the beginning, I think, but European orchestras often tune higher. This would account for frequency being sharp on some recordings. I've read that the Beatles tuned to 435, but that doesn't seem right.
Whatever their pitch, it HAD to match the stable keyboards they played with. There is no logical reason why even the tunes on Abbey Road don't "line up". Listen to the piano entering in The end...YUCK! The worse one though, is the Stones Jumpin' Jack Flash, with the organ at the end.
Perhaps it was the water in London at the time. If so, bottle it and let me bathe in it!!
Perhaps it was the water in London at the time. If so, bottle it and let me bathe in it!!
Found this on -- what else -- the Internet, at Beatlenews.com:
"On Friday, in a new interview in Q Magazine, English pop star Cliff Richard slammed the Beatles, saying some of their music was "horrific" because it was "out of tune", and maintained some was so off-tune it was "unbelievable" and "unforgivable".
Enough is enough. Please let me clear up this so called out of tune statement!
My name is Gary Mettetal, I am in a Beatles Tribute band called the English Channel here in the States, and have been playing their music for over 40 years.
Knowing their music as I do, I can tell you that the Beatles were definitely NOT out of tune. Please let me explain. The Beatles played ALL of the early songs at what is known as 435 semitones, not the traditional 440 semitone tuning.
So if someone tries to play a song like Please Please Me, for example, at the 440 tuning, they will seem to be out of tune with the Beatles recording.
However, if you take a guitar and tune it perfect on a Peterson strobe tuner set at 435 semitones, you will see it is a perfect match to what is on the record. The guitar will be in perfect tune including the octaves, but slightly lower than the 440 tuning.
The band later changed the tuning to 440 to accommodate all the orchestra, which is at the standard tuning of 440 semitones."
Maybe our buddy Ronn Roberts of The Eggmen will weigh in on this.
"On Friday, in a new interview in Q Magazine, English pop star Cliff Richard slammed the Beatles, saying some of their music was "horrific" because it was "out of tune", and maintained some was so off-tune it was "unbelievable" and "unforgivable".
Enough is enough. Please let me clear up this so called out of tune statement!
My name is Gary Mettetal, I am in a Beatles Tribute band called the English Channel here in the States, and have been playing their music for over 40 years.
Knowing their music as I do, I can tell you that the Beatles were definitely NOT out of tune. Please let me explain. The Beatles played ALL of the early songs at what is known as 435 semitones, not the traditional 440 semitone tuning.
So if someone tries to play a song like Please Please Me, for example, at the 440 tuning, they will seem to be out of tune with the Beatles recording.
However, if you take a guitar and tune it perfect on a Peterson strobe tuner set at 435 semitones, you will see it is a perfect match to what is on the record. The guitar will be in perfect tune including the octaves, but slightly lower than the 440 tuning.
The band later changed the tuning to 440 to accommodate all the orchestra, which is at the standard tuning of 440 semitones."
Maybe our buddy Ronn Roberts of The Eggmen will weigh in on this.
This is from Mark Lewisohn's "The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions":
Thursday 14 April
...
The other song recorded today was 'Rain'. "One of the things we discovered when playing around with loops on 'Tomorrow Never Knows' was that the texture and depth of certain insturments sounded really good when slowed down," recalls Geoff Emerick. "With 'Rain' the Beatles played the rhythm track really fast so that when the tape was played back at normal speed everything would be so much slower, changing the texture. If we'd recorded it at normal speed and then had to slow the tape down whenever we wanted to hear a playback it would have been much more work."
...
'Rain' features not just instruments slowed down but slowed down vocals too. John's lead on take five of the song, the first to feature vocals, was recorded at 42 cycles per second. Tape machines usually ran at 50. ... "An offshoot of ADT was that we had a big audio oscillator to alter the frequency of the tape machines," says Emerick. "We would drive it through a power amp and the power amp would drive the capstan wheel and enable you to speed up or slow down the machine at will. John--or George if it was his song--used to sit in the control room on mixes and actually play the oscillator."
Hey Mc...
I would never say that the Beatles were "out of tune". I am expressing my frustration trying to play these nine tunes tomorrow "in tune". They simply are NOT as they relate to each other.
True, Paul's "G" string was sharp at times in the later days, but in those days you didn't have guitar tecks tuning everything before hand. All Paul had was Neil, and he was too busy rolling stuff, so it seems. I've played in a major (American) symphony in Carnagie Hall and... musicians DO play out of tune and mistakes happen!!! Kids that have grown up in the sterile studio sound world of today might not understand this. My point: when an orchestra plays a Mozart Piano Concerto, the #$%U*^& oboe player better take the "A" from the piano!!!
As for "Rain", if they could have settled on any "real" pitch, they should have. They didn't. It wasn't the musician's call... it was the guys in the white coats. They never thought people would be playing along with them over 40 yrs. later!
I would never say that the Beatles were "out of tune". I am expressing my frustration trying to play these nine tunes tomorrow "in tune". They simply are NOT as they relate to each other.
True, Paul's "G" string was sharp at times in the later days, but in those days you didn't have guitar tecks tuning everything before hand. All Paul had was Neil, and he was too busy rolling stuff, so it seems. I've played in a major (American) symphony in Carnagie Hall and... musicians DO play out of tune and mistakes happen!!! Kids that have grown up in the sterile studio sound world of today might not understand this. My point: when an orchestra plays a Mozart Piano Concerto, the #$%U*^& oboe player better take the "A" from the piano!!!
As for "Rain", if they could have settled on any "real" pitch, they should have. They didn't. It wasn't the musician's call... it was the guys in the white coats. They never thought people would be playing along with them over 40 yrs. later!
I know for certain that "When I'm Sixty Four" is horrendously 'out of tune', it's halfway between C an C sharp. This is because they sped the recording up in an effort to make Paul's voice sound younger.
Who cares what it's absolute pitch is (347 vs 440) as long as the relative pitches are correct? Musically it doesn't matter. When you're playing along, yes it's annoying, buuut get over it
Who cares what it's absolute pitch is (347 vs 440) as long as the relative pitches are correct? Musically it doesn't matter. When you're playing along, yes it's annoying, buuut get over it
I remember reading an article from Bass Player magazine that featured McCartney in the 1990's. He mentioned how he finally took his Hofner into Manny's for repairs and how they "got it to play in tune for the first time in it's life." He mentioned that one of the Hofner's big problems was how the third fret G note on the low E string was "never in tune" which may explain why he rarely played the bottom notes, but seem to prefer the higher notes.
But that doen't explain away the ric.
For whatever reason, by the time of Abbey Road, the bass tone on the vinyl was perfect! I remember first hearing "Golden Slumbers" in High School on my friends big 15 in., all tube, german made something. The Low "G" on the second verse was the most beautiful thing I ever heard. I also remember my shock when, just a couple of years ago, learning that it was George on a J!!
For whatever reason, by the time of Abbey Road, the bass tone on the vinyl was perfect! I remember first hearing "Golden Slumbers" in High School on my friends big 15 in., all tube, german made something. The Low "G" on the second verse was the most beautiful thing I ever heard. I also remember my shock when, just a couple of years ago, learning that it was George on a J!!
So it boils down to, did they tune to a studio standard -- strobe tuner or piano -- that was tuned to whatever pitch for "A"? Unless I'm not hearing it, there is no piano on the "Please Please Me" LP ... BUT John plays harmonica. You cannot tune a harmonica -- they would have had to tuned to it, There IS piano on "With the Beatles." So I'm satisfied that they tuned to something. My quest now it to find out what and what pitch A was set at. I'm going to get my Korg out later today and tune to 435 to see ifa that is in fact the standard on Please Please me.
The other part of that is the "tuning center", as I believe I have seen it described on TB, is broader than on most more-modern recordings. That is, most of the instruments are tuned by ear to the source, and multi-tune instruments are usually tuned to themselves (once one item/string is in tune), as opposed to, say, tuning each string of a guitar to the tuner itself over a connection. So that central pitch is a bit "fuzzy" compared to how a lot of people approach it today, and the tunings further from that tend to drift more.
Some people feel it added depth, some people feel it made them sound out of tune.
Some people feel it added depth, some people feel it made them sound out of tune.
This is the same company that, in the same building, and using the same equipment, recorded HUNDREDS of orchestral pieces in Studio One with the likes on Von Karjan, Klemperer, Beecham, and Sargent. THOSE recordings are dead on. The white coats in the “Rock and Roll” side of the building did things differently and it wasn’t the musician’s fault.
If Cliff Richards has a point is that, to a very few people who have perfect, I mean PERFECT pitch, the no-real-note-pitch of “Rain” would make them squirm. NONE of this has anything to do with the Beatles or George Martin. That leaves only the post production people. That's where the issue is.
Wouldn’t it be nice if, when the next round of “Complete Remastered Beatles”- and it will- comes out, it’s all “repitched” to the pitch in which it was played actually?
If Cliff Richards has a point is that, to a very few people who have perfect, I mean PERFECT pitch, the no-real-note-pitch of “Rain” would make them squirm. NONE of this has anything to do with the Beatles or George Martin. That leaves only the post production people. That's where the issue is.
Wouldn’t it be nice if, when the next round of “Complete Remastered Beatles”- and it will- comes out, it’s all “repitched” to the pitch in which it was played actually?
OK -- back from tuning my Hofner Icon to A=435. And indeed, I AM in tune with the entire "Please Please me" LP. So our friend who suggested 435 may be right. However, when you move on to "With the Beatles" through "Abbey Road," it's A=440. I didn't play every song, so I can't speak to differences in tuning between songs on the same LP.
And, through the wonders of the Internet, we have this explanation from physlink.com, answering a query from an unknown user "What are the frequencies of musical notes like G and G# in khertz?" The answer:
There are two accepted musical pitch standards, the so-called American Standard pitch, which takes A in the fourth piano octave (A4) to have a frequency of 440 Hz, and the older International pitch standard, which takes A4 to have the frequency of 435 Hz. Both of these pitch standards define what are called 'equal tempered chromatic scales.' Mathematically, this means that each successive pitch is related to the previous pitch by a factor of the twelfth root of 2. That is, the ratio between the frequencies of any two successive pitches in either standard is 1.05946309436. There is a third Scientific or Just Scale that is based on C4 having a frequency of 256 Hz, but this is not used for musical purposes.
This is contrary to what I thought I remembered and had been told by people who have played in orchestras in Europe-- that European pitch standard for A was higher than American.
This doesn't explain why they chose A=435 for "Please Please me" but went to A=440 for the rest, but it does explain the initial tuning question.
And, through the wonders of the Internet, we have this explanation from physlink.com, answering a query from an unknown user "What are the frequencies of musical notes like G and G# in khertz?" The answer:
There are two accepted musical pitch standards, the so-called American Standard pitch, which takes A in the fourth piano octave (A4) to have a frequency of 440 Hz, and the older International pitch standard, which takes A4 to have the frequency of 435 Hz. Both of these pitch standards define what are called 'equal tempered chromatic scales.' Mathematically, this means that each successive pitch is related to the previous pitch by a factor of the twelfth root of 2. That is, the ratio between the frequencies of any two successive pitches in either standard is 1.05946309436. There is a third Scientific or Just Scale that is based on C4 having a frequency of 256 Hz, but this is not used for musical purposes.
This is contrary to what I thought I remembered and had been told by people who have played in orchestras in Europe-- that European pitch standard for A was higher than American.
This doesn't explain why they chose A=435 for "Please Please me" but went to A=440 for the rest, but it does explain the initial tuning question.
Mc-
Your saying the pitch that the boys tuned to is the pitch we hear today. I say it's often not. I dare you to play along with Rubber Soul from start to finish. Nowhere Man is "Nowhere Pitch". I remember a couple of others are out of wack too.
Your saying the pitch that the boys tuned to is the pitch we hear today. I say it's often not. I dare you to play along with Rubber Soul from start to finish. Nowhere Man is "Nowhere Pitch". I remember a couple of others are out of wack too.
