Why are some songs recorded out of tune?

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DiscoStuDiscoStu Frets: 5382
edited November 2017 in Music
Not alternate tunings, not one instrument out of tune, but the whole song recorded slightly off standard tuning? I was listening to Metallica's Ride The Lightning album in the car today and remembered when I used to play along to the whole album on guitar and when 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' came on it would always sound wrong cos the original is slightly off tune. Same goes for Radiohead's 'No Surprises', it's not quite in tune with the rest of the album.

Why?? Conscious decision or a mistake made in mixing with the tape speed? 
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Comments

  • BridgehouseBridgehouse Frets: 24578
    Might be they are using an instrument with a fixed (not tuneable) pitch...
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  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10357
    In the days before Protools etc everything was recorded to tape. If the tape machine used to master the track was running at a different rpm to the mastertrack then the pitch of the song would be changed

    Some producers also deliberately used the varispeed to change the pitch of the song as well

    In the very old days people often tuned to the studio piano which could be wildly out of tune


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  • DiscoStuDiscoStu Frets: 5382
    Might be they are using an instrument with a fixed (not tuneable) pitch...
    I did wonder that for No Surprises because of the glockenspiel but I'd have thought that an instrument like that would be made to concert pitch.

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  • BridgehouseBridgehouse Frets: 24578
    DiscoStu said:
    Might be they are using an instrument with a fixed (not tuneable) pitch...
    I did wonder that for No Surprises because of the glockenspiel but I'd have thought that an instrument like that would be made to concert pitch.

    It can depend on temperature and all sorts of factors - specially if an instrument is in the main part made of metal!
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  • I wonder whether it was sometimes used to adjust the tempo slightly in the old days before digital processing allowed the tempo to be varied whilst maintaining pitch.
    It's not a competition.
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  • Street Spirit is also significantly off standard tuning. Try playing along - sounds hideous. 
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  • A song is recorded. Then it’ll be slowed downed slightly. 
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  • The original version of Kind of Blue is slightly flat iirc. Zep's No Quarter is much slower than it was recorded but I think it's still in pitch. 
    "A city star won’t shine too far"


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  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10357
    Or sped up, basically if it's not digital then the pitch of a song could only be maintained if all the tape machines along the process ran at exactly the same speed. Now tape machines in the same studio could be synced by using one track of the multi to carry the time code which was just a reference pitch rather than modern time code but once a multitrack was moved to somewhere  else anything could happen. 

    Everything my originals bands recorded in the eighties was to tape, in the early nineties we started to have to use 8 track ADATS's synced to the 16 track which could often go badly wrong ..... nothing was concrete pitch wise until the advent of digital with the Mitsubishi and Sony digital  machines which were still tape but fully digital ... then came Protools 24 etc and from then on loads of digital harddrive formats. 

    I have quite a few songs recorded in studios in the eighties and early nineties and the pitch is off concert on all of them 
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  • Danny1969 said:
    In the days before Protools etc everything was recorded to tape. If the tape machine used to master the track was running at a different rpm to the mastertrack then the pitch of the song would be changed

    Some producers also deliberately used the varispeed to change the pitch of the song as well

    In the very old days people often tuned to the studio piano which could be wildly out of tune


    I seem to remember that My Best Friend’s Girl was recorded in E but sped up to F leaving generations of guitarists trying to find a way to play it. Certainly if you go back to things like pre war blues tracks they’re often quite indistinct in terms of keys and turntables weren’t always that exact either so there could be multiple interpretations of what key something was  in. Apparently A as 440 hz only came into general acceptance in the 1950s. 

    Just reading about No Suprises it seems they had a lot of problems recording it and the final version was actually the first take but then with the tempo changed which also affects the pitch ( I’m assuming recorded to tape) and part of a different session ( at a different studio) than most of the rest of the album. 
    Tipton is a small fishing village in the borough of Sandwell. 
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  • sweepysweepy Frets: 4158
    It wasn’t uncommon for tracks to be sped up or slowed down to the Producers whim to change the “feel”
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  • Bruce Springsteen's Hungry Heart is speed up, makes his vocal sound like a totally different singer to the rest of the River album. 
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  • ToneControlToneControl Frets: 11789
    weren't a lot of 80s US metal bands using varispeed to create very fast solos that sounded strangely high pitched and shrill?
    I can remember using a 4 track to do the same trick, and getting exactly the same voicing 
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  • ToneControlToneControl Frets: 11789
    I think "Still loving you" by the Scorpions is half a semitone out
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  • DiscoStu said:
    Might be they are using an instrument with a fixed (not tuneable) pitch...
    I did wonder that for No Surprises because of the glockenspiel but I'd have thought that an instrument like that would be made to concert pitch.

    I think some early Coldplay stuff was tuned to the piano they were using, which wasn’t in 440
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  • guitarfishbayguitarfishbay Frets: 7953
    edited November 2017
    Also ‘concert pitch’ for a glockenspiel isn’t necessarily 440, lot of them are made to 442

    Eg

    https://m.thomann.de/gb/thomann_glockenspiel_thtg25.htm?o=1&search=1510299768
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  • In fact entire orchestras in Europe tune to 442 or in Germany sometimes also 443 

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch

    “Despite such confusion, A = 440 Hz is the only official standard and is widely used around the world. Many orchestras in the United Kingdomadhere to this standard as concert pitch.[15] In the United States some orchestras use A = 440 Hz, while others, such as the New York Philharmonic, use A = 442 Hz.[16] The latter is also often used as a tuning frequency in Europe,[3] especially in DenmarkFranceHungaryItalyNorway and Switzerland.[17]Nearly all modern symphony orchestras in Germany and Austria and many in other countries in continental Europe (such as RussiaSweden and Spain) tune to A = 443 Hz.[15][17]The Boston Symphony Orchestra tunes to A = 441 Hz.

    In practice most orchestras tune to a note given out by the oboe, and most oboists use an electronic tuning device when playing the tuning note. Some orchestras tune using an electronic tone generator.[18] When playing with fixed-pitch instruments such as the piano, the orchestra will generally tune to them—a piano will normally have been tuned to the orchestra's normal pitch. Overall, it is thought that the general trend since the middle of the 20th century has been for standard pitch to rise, though it has been rising far more slowly than it has in the past. Some orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic now use a slightly lower pitch (443 Hz) than their highest previous standard (445 Hz).[3][19]

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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71957
    Street Spirit is also significantly off standard tuning. Try playing along - sounds hideous. 
    All Radiohead is like that, it's Thom Yorke's voice.



















    ;)

    Actually Street Spirit is one of two Radiohead songs I more or less like. (The other is Fake Plastic Trees.)

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • CirrusCirrus Frets: 8481
    @ICBM you're usually so right. Does it hurt to be this wrong?
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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71957
    Cirrus said:
    @ICBM you're usually so right. Does it hurt to be this wrong?
    Sorry, I have to admit that I do actually like those songs.

    :)

    He doesn't actually whine quite as gratingly on them as most of their other stuff.

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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