Sade - off pitch?

[ardgedee]

Chorus strong enough to make the instrument sound pitchy is also an effect used by Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell, among others. You don't hear it that often these days but it can be an intentional choice.

These aren't the best examples because I'm blanking on the titles of the tracks I'm thinking of, but hopefully you get the idea.

 

[BismarckHerring]

The whole song is about 30 cents sharp. Since there’s a digital synth, it seems unlikely to me that they recorded it that way. It’s more likely that the playback was sped up either intentionally or by accident.

30 cents is quite a bit, so if you’re playing along, you have to compensate. The instruments seem to be in tune relative to one another, but the chorus makes that a bit ambiguous.

 

[doctone]

These were the days when music was recorded by real bands, singing/playing and adjusting by their ears. Of course your new "AI" god says that Paul is sharp due to the heavy chorus effect he used. I wonder how it would judge, say, John Coltrane's, intonation. (But actually, I don't care.)

 

[micguy]

Sade sounds to me like people playing music - the grooves and pitches are artistic, not robotic. People are never completely perfect on pitch or timing - that's part of the charm. If you want perfect pitch and timing have AI record your tunes for you. I guarantee it'll be forgettable.

 

[Winton]

There are a lot of recordings from back then that are off pitch for various reasons. Try playing along with “Just The Two Of Us”. It’s painful, lol.

Some recent artists like Fujii Kaze purposefully tune things a quarter tone off. Like on his 80s inspired “I Need U Back”. Is it in Gm or G#m? We’ll never know…

 

[bikeplate]

Whole track is sharp

 

[mhartman29]

The whole Sade track is SHARP - stop blaming the bass playa or any effects.
If you want to play along with the track, you'll need to tune your bass SHARP of A440 - just use your earz.
This is not rocket surgery. IMFO, of course.
Thanks.

I'm not trying to blame anyone.. lol.

When I play along with my bass it clearly isn't tuned the same, hence my question.

 

[logdrum]

It's fine. and serves the song and its vibe I mean as a sax player I could critic that he scoops too much and they drenched it in reverb. , but he is primarily a guitar player and he is not playing straight ahead jazz Plus these guys put on a very good live show with a very wonderful singer

Can you honestly say that you are on point yourself intonation wise?

 

[DWBass]

I come across recordings that are slightly off pitch all the time. Check out Bobby Caldwell's What You Won't Do For Love. I've yet to come across a version in tune.

 

[Don Kasper]

I'm not trying to blame anyone.. lol.

When I play along with my bass it clearly isn't tuned the same, hence my question.

I was not responding to you directly, but to some of the early responders who started talking chorus/effects/etc., as an explanation.
(I just had my piano tuned last month to A440 and so it was sonically obvious to me what the issue was/is.)
Sorry if I was not clear with my intended "target(s)".
Thanks for your courteous response.

 

[hieronymous]

I'm not trying to blame anyone.. lol.

When I play along with my bass it clearly isn't tuned the same, hence my question.

Your initial post was unclear to me - I was wondering if you meant that the bass was out of tune or the entire track sounded like it wasn't A=440. Sounds like you meant the latter - I love playing along with recordings but it can be frustrating if the tuning is off. I like a lot of "older" music - as in pre-digital age - so those are often off by a little or a lot. I put in the effort to retune by ear. I figure that if you can't do that, how can you tell if you are in tune while you are playing at other times?

The bass playing is pretty awesome, so I am glad that you posted. One of my best friends (musician and otherwise) loved Sade and would talk about that music, but I actually never really listened, other than hearing "Smooth Operator" on the radio etc. since it was released when I was a teenager. Really not my cup of tea but I recognize that it's amazing and appreciated the chance to try and listen more intentionally. Thanks!

 

[mhartman29]

When you say “the pitch seems off” do you mean the bass player’s pitch is off from the rest of the band/recording? Or do you mean the whole song is not perfectly tuned to A440, which your bass is when trying to play along with it?

I guess what I mean is when I tune my bass to A440 and play along with the track my bass is not in tune with the bass track. So I sound out of tune. Playing along with the track itself it sounds bad, imo.

Its pretty obvious to my ears, but I hadn't seen any mention of it online (tabs, grok etc). So I thought I would as for opinions here.

 

[mhartman29]

Your initial post was unclear to me - I was wondering if you meant that the bass was out of tune or the entire track sounded like it wasn't A=440. Sounds like you meant the latter - I love playing along with recordings but it can be frustrating if the tuning is off. I like a lot of "older" music - as in pre-digital age - so those are often off by a little or a lot. I put in the effort to retune by ear. I figure that if you can't do that, how can you tell if you are in tune while you are playing at other times?

The bass playing is pretty awesome, so I am glad that you posted. One of my best friends (musician and otherwise) loved Sade and would talk about that music, but I actually never really listened, other than hearing "Smooth Operator" on the radio etc. since it was released when I was a teenager. Really not my cup of tea but I recognize that it's amazing and appreciated the chance to try and listen more intentionally. Thanks!

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it. Paul Denman is a great bassist. Very tasteful and serves the songs very well.

 

[mhartman29]

It's fine. and serves the song and its vibe I mean as a sax player I could critic that he scoops too much and they drenched it in reverb. , but he is primarily a guitar player and he is not playing straight ahead jazz Plus these guys put on a very good live show with a very wonderful singer

Can you honestly say that you are on point yourself intonation wise?

I'm not sure how it came off that I'm criticizing Denman in any way. He's one of my favorite bassists.

As for me? I play along with recordings in my free time. I'm not even in a band. I'm just a hobbyist asking a question.

 

[ardgedee]

I guess what I mean is when I tune my bass to A440 and play along with the track my bass is not in tune with the bass track.

This is not weird or unusual in recorded music, even the slick highly-polished productions.

A lot of times, especially in 80s and 90s pop music before digital pitch correction was cheap and sounded transparent, it's because the producer sped up the tape to make it feel more energetic. Totally plausible the band were properly tuned to A=440 but the record release wasn't.

Sometimes the equipment was out of sync, for example the three-track deck used for Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue" sessions ran slightly slowly during the first three numbers they recorded, then it got repaired before they recorded the rest, so side A of every edition of "Kind of Blue" was sharp until it got remastered some 34 years later.

Sometimes it's because the band tuned to each other rather than to a calibrated reference (like a strobe tuner). Pretty common in old recordings when all there might have been in the studio is a piano that had seen better days, or when a group didn't know how to use a tuning fork. One of my favorite bands of the 90s, Guided by Voices, had whole albums with each track on a different reference A because they'd tune to however flat or sharp the bandleader's guitar was that day. Every so often I play along with one, it's helped train my ear when playing fretless.

 

[Michedelic]

Another aspect of pitch higher than 440, not relevant to your situation but more of a historical note…
In the days when Top 40 AM radio was everything, there was an imperative that singles intended for hit status not be over 3 minutes in length. There was a wee bit of give and take, but producers generally, if the tune ran overtime, would speed it up to get it under the wire. Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” broke the rules, and as pop music got more adventurous, the limit was laxed off occasionally, “Hey Jude” and “Mac Arthur Park” being a couple of good examples.

 

[micguy]

I come across recordings that are slightly off pitch all the time. Check out Bobby Caldwell's What You Won't Do For Love. I've yet to come across a version in tune.

"Off pitch" is a relative thing. A being 440 isn't written in stone tablets anywhere. The history of music is full of different definitions of what "A" means - everywhere from 415 to 440 (sometimes 442). A 440 is a recent phenomenon. There are myriad things that contributed to this - violins used to have silk E strings, which didn't cope with A 440 well at all; the advent of steel E strings meant they could withstand higher tuning and longer scale length (all those really old violins made by Stradivari, etc have had their necks replaced to deal with this). Orchestras used to tune to whatever they wanted, but the advent of keyboards (who wants to retune the harpsichord or piano?) added some stability to things - you tuned to the instrument noone wanted to retune. Europe ended up mostly on A 430 to 435 for a couple centuries there, with crazy Americans leading the pitch change to 440.

Likewise, in our modern music, we have Van Halen - Eddie used to tune a bit flat (not a half step, just a bit flat), and as the only other thing that had to be tuned was Michael's bass, Michael Anthony tuned to whatever Eddie had on his guitar, and off they went. If you take a trip through their musical catalog, when you get to "Jump", Eddie is playing keys for part of the song, and...it's dead on A 440 suddenly.